Campaign to keep Devon’s beavers from being evicted
Yet despite this, the apparently thriving beavers on the River Otter are being handed an eviction notice. Last week Defra announced it would round up the errant beavers.
“There are no plans to cull beavers. We intend to recapture and rehome the beavers and are currently working out plans for the best way to do so,” Defra said in a statement.
The stated reason for their decision is that the beavers, if introduced from an eastern European country, could be carrying an undesirable tape worm.
The tape worm called Echinococcus multilocularis is a nasty parasite, mainly if you’re a fox or a coyote. In North America and Central Europe, where it is endemic predators, can pick it up from rodents like mice. The worm slowly works its way into organs like the liver and can, if left untreated, kill. Very rarely it infects humans.
However, all the beavers imported into England are from Norway or Bavaria where the parasite isn’t found.
Wildlife groups say the parasite is a smokescreen for a government acting in haste to placate a well connected angling lobby that is opposed to the animals returning.
For their part anglers told Channel 4 News they have nothing against beavers themselves, its their impact on England’s poor-quality rivers that must be avoided.
“Beavers could have lots of benefits for rivers, like bringing in woody debris,” said Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive of the Angling Trust. “But our rivers have other problems like low flow, pollution and habitat damage. But by putting in barriers to fish migration right now beavers bring more minuses than pluses.”
That’s right, the fishermen of England have drawn a line in the sand and said, we’ll put up with concrete and pollution and shopping malls but dammit! We won’t tolerate beavers! Milling about and mucking our damaged creeks doing who knows what to our migrating salmonids.
How many times have I written that protecting fish from beavers is like protecting banks from money? A million?
Just because some crazy American (and Norwegian, and Canadian, and Dutch) scientists have consistently argued that beavers have a hugely positive impact on salmonids by creating deeper pools, more food, cooler temperatures and essential habitat, never you mind. English fish are different. They’ve been without beavers for 500 years and they like it that way!
“Mis-placed concerns over fishing have superseded all of this,” said Derek Gow. “There is a huge opportunity being missed here.”
Mr Gow had just returned from a meeting with Defra ministers about the beavers. He said he was hopeful that a way could be found for the animals to be tested for the disease but remain, under close observation, in the wild.
DEFRA wrote me and everyone else this week defending their decision and pretending not to understand why it was outrageous. They are clearly hell bent on making the broadest mistaken intervention since we went to war with Iraq. And like that botched decision this one is being fueled by yes men, ignorant advisers and bad science. And will be paid for for years to come.
If I were DEFRA I’d be very, very careful moving forward.
