Tag: Bamff

Bringing out the big guns…

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? July 4, 2014

Stop the control freaks who want to capture England’s wild beavers

The government is going against public opinion, and its reasons for wanting to rehome beavers in Devon fall apart easily

British people love wildlife, but the government, yet again, seems determined to show that it hates it.

An opinion poll in Scotland found that 86% of respondents were in favour of reintroducing the beaver. As most people seem to understand, it’s a magnificent animal which can enrich our lives and our countryside. It was once part of our native fauna, but was exterminated by hunting. It’s also a critically important species, essential to the functioning of aquatic ecosystems.

So when beavers were discovered, living and breeding on the River Otter in Devon, after they escaped from a collection somewhere, the public reaction was, overwhelmingly, delight. It’s the first population to live freely in England for hundreds of years.

So how does the government respond to this enthusiasm? “We intend to recapture and rehome the wild beavers in Devon,” says the environment minister, George Eustice. Why?

The government gives the following reasons for capturing England’s only free beavers:

Depending on the source of the animals, they could be carrying a disease not currently present in the UK. In addition, beavers have not been an established part of our wildlife for the last 500 years. Our landscape and habitats have changed since then and we need to assess the impact they could have.

Let’s take these one by one. The disease it’s referring to is alveolar echinococcosis, which infects animals and (less frequently) humans, and is caused by the fox tapeworm (Echinococcus multilocularis). It can be carried by many species. As the government says, the disease is not present in the UK, and it should certainly be kept out.

A government assessment notes that the probability of a beaver brought to Britain being infected with this tapeworm “is negligible if sourced from a free area (e.g. Norway) and low if sourced from an endemic area (e.g. Bavaria).” Free means places without fox tapeworm; endemic means places where some animals are infected.

We don’t yet know where the Devon beavers (or their ancestors) originated. But there’s a straightforward, single-step test for determining whether or not they are carrying Echinococcus multilocularis: a DNA analysis of their faeces. It’s so accurate that you can detect the presence of the tapeworm from less than a single egg. In other words, you can discover whether or not England’s only free beavers are carrying the disease without having to capture them.

This is one of those articles that’s so well written and spot-on in every single way that it’s impossible to choose the ‘good bits’ to quote. You need to go read the whole thing, especially the part where he talks about staying with Paul and Louise in Bamff and delighting in their beavers firsthand.

A couple of months ago, I visited Bamff in Perthshire, where beavers have been allowed to recolonise the valley of a small stream. The results are astonishing: a transformation from dull pastureland to a mosaic of ponds and marshes, little lawns (maintained by the beavers) and coppiced trees, swarming with life of all kinds.

In the evening, hiding under the trees, I watched the beavers, which are shy animals, emerging from their dams, swimming around the pools they have created, feeding and playing. I defy you to do the same without becoming entranced. Watching them turn from hippo to dolphin and back again as they moved between land and water, picking up hints about their elaborate social structures as they groomed each other and swam together, seeing them navigate the marshy maze they’ve built, I was overtaken by an awe and enchantment that I have seldom felt in this country.

Good lord. Can you imagine the conversation that night sitting down to a pint (or a sherry?) with Paul and Louise by a crackling fire in the great room and talking about a UK filled with beavers? I am so jealous I can almost taste it. But thank God for the Ramsay’s and their gentrified protection of beavers. They bring a very classy element to the discussion.

As for the claim that “Our landscape and habitats have changed since then and we need to assess the impact they could have”, Miles King has neatly swatted it on his excellent blog:

Sorry? Defra are suggesting that a once ubiquitous native mammal, which was hunted to extinction, might not fit into our modern landscape and habitats. Surely that’s a problem with our perception of landscape, not an argument for removing a native mammal. As for habitats, look at the equivalent habitats in Europe with beavers and compare them with the UK habitats without, then tell me we will be better off without them … The point is that beavers create habitats and public environmental goods that we have missed for the last 500 years; habitats that support a whole range of other species. Is it better to create a pond with a Hy-mac, or have a beaver create one?

When the given excuses fall apart so readily, we need to look for other explanations. One, perhaps, is this government’s obsession with control, and its apparent desire to imprison anything and anyone that does not conform to an ever narrower range of prescribed behaviour. Another is its determination to appease powerful interest groups, even if they carry almost none of the public with them.

In this case the group lobbying hardest for their removal is, incomprehensibly, the Angling Trust.

Hand me the popcorn. If George Moonbiot is really going after the beaver-phobic anglers, I want a front row seat. I am sick and tired of pretend fishermen being revered when they lie about beavers.

I find the trust’s position astonishing. Throughout the period in which beavers last lived in Britain, almost all our rivers swarmed with vast runs of migratory fish such as salmon, sea trout, lampreys and shad. Giant sturgeon swam from the sea into the heart of Britain. Huge burbot lurked on the river beds. Today, burbot and sturgeon are extinct here and the populations of many other species, especially the migratory fish, have been greatly reduced.

Studies show that in both Sweden and Poland, the trout in beaver ponds are on average larger than those in the other parts of the streams: the ponds provide them with habitats and shelter they cannot find elsewhere. Young salmon grow faster and are in better condition where beavers make their dams than in other stretches.

I’m an angler, and the Angling Trust does not represent me on this issue. I know others who are disgusted by the trust’s position, and it would not be surprising to discover that the majority of its members belong to the 86%. Most anglers, in my experience, have a powerful connection with nature. The chance of seeing remarkable wild animals while waiting quietly on the riverbank is a major part of why we do it.

When I visited Bamff in May, the pools and runs the beavers had created were stippled with rising brown trout, feasting on the resurgent insect life. Hawthorn flies and iron blue duns – species of great interest to anglers – clouded the air, in greater numbers than I’ve seen anywhere else in Britain. Why would people who fish not want this?

Oh my goodness. I think I have a crush on Mr. Moonbiot. I haven’t read anything so fun in a while. This should throw a monkey wrench into the works at DEFRA. I hope so anyway. In the meantime I’m just happy Paul and Louise are out there on the front lines, making a difference.

Oh and guess who just came back from a visit with them? Our old friend from New Zealand, William Hughes Games. He wrote about his lovely adventure here, you’ll definitely want to see the visit through his eyes. He also took on those stubborn anglers, well armed with research.

Benefits of Beavers to Fish

However, it would be hard to justify beaver dams just on the fact that they don’t impede the migration of salmon and trout. The really important reason for beaver ponds vis a vis fish is that they are fantastic nurseries for fish. Rather than typing the whole story again, have a look at this site. In point form, Beaver ponds:

* catch twigs, wood chips leaves and so forth which powers a cellulose based detritus cycle which feeds juvenile salmon

* catch spent adult salmon in the fall and incorporate their nutrients into the pond ecology and ecology of the surrounding area – also feeding juvenile salmon when they hatch out in the spring.

* increase the total amount of salmon habitat by turning seasonal streams into perrenial streams and providing perennial ponds.

* clear the water of silt making the habitat more acceptable for salmon and trout and allowing light down to the bottom of the stream so that water plants can root and grow.

* provide deep water where predatory wading birds can not operate

* provide many nooks and cranies around the lodge and dam were small fish can hide.

* provide quiet water so that the energy the fish takes in with its food is used for growth instead of for fighting currents.

* evens out stream temperature.

Oh and because the Gods of beavers combine all intelligent things eventually, William ends his entry with a quote from Mr. Moonbiot on re-wildling.

Lastly a word about rewilding, not from me but from George Monbiot. I put this in because many people in Scotland, amongst them beaver enthusiasts, are determined, in so far as possible, to bring back the exact variety of Castor fiber that existed in Scotland before it was extirpated. The Norwegian variety seems to be the favored one. I can see where they are coming from but I would be inclined to bring some beavers from all over Europe, introduce them into various catchments and see which variety does best in an ecology which is nothing like it was 400 years ago, never mind a thousand years ago. Further more, let them breed together when they meet and with this greater available genetic pool, develop a beaver by natural selection which is most suited to Scotland. George Monbiot, it his book Feral, p8 expresses it much better than I could.

“So young a word , yet so many meanings. By the time ‘rewilding’ entered the dictionary, in 2011, it was already hotly contested. When it was first formulated, it meant releasing captive animals into the wild. Soon the definition expanded to describe the reintroduction of animals and plants species to habitats from which they had been excised. Some people began using it to mean the rehabilitation, not just of particular species, but of entire ecosystems; a restoration of wilderness. Anarcho-primitivists then applied the word to human life, proposing a wilding of people and their cultures. The two definitions of interest to me, however, differ slightly from all of these.

The rewilding of natural ecosystems that fascinates me is not an attempt to restore them to any prior state, but to permit ecological processes to resume. In countries such as my own [UK], the conservation movement, while well intentioned, has sought to freeze living systems in time. It attempts to prevent animals and plants from either leaving or – if they do not live there already – entering. It seeks to manage nature as if tending a garden. Many of the ecosystems, such as heaths and moorland, blanket bog and rough grass, that it tries to preserve, are dominated by the low, scrubby vegetation which remains after forests have been repeatedly cleared and burnt. This vegetation is cherished by wildlife groups, and they prevent it from reverting to wood-land through intensive grazing by sheep, cattle and horses. It is as if conservationists in the Amazon had decided to protect the cattle ranches, rather than the rainforest.”

by the by, have a look at George’s TED talk on rewilding.

Ok.

Small Beaver World…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Uncategorized January 15, 2011

We here at Worth A Dam we aren’t just focused on our own selfish needs for local beavers, what about other lands? Don’t all free peoples have the right to enjoy beavers? Not according to the Scottish National Heritage which is still dead set (and I mean that literally) on their plan to put the free beavers of the river Tay in zoos, and spend millions of dollars on the fancy radio-tracked beavers. The Tay beaver travesty is getting greater and greater attention. Paul Ramsay and his wife had a meeting with the Minister for Finance who was a little more thoughtful than the confounding Minister of the Environment in this case. They also had a meeting on Tuesday of interested folks, and I asked Paul if he wanted to give me a rundown.

Thank you for your email. Here are Minutes of 1st meeting-1. The meeting went well, I think.

(His wife too the minutes and wrote “Paul summarised the recent history of beavers in Scotland and drew our attention to the fact that the SG is going against its own legal advice of September 2005 when they stated that “the release of European beaver in Scotland would grant the species full legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside act. 1981” He summarised the success of this campaign so far in attracting support, journalistic articles, web presence, letters to SNH and to politicians etc etc.”)

We were lucky to have three members of the North Tayside badger group with us. These folk have a lot of experience of checking on badgers and their dens to see that they are not being persecuted, which is just the sort of skill that we need to develop, along with the organisation.

We agreed to form a company limited by guarantee to give us an organisation through which we could, if necessary, initiate litigation against the Scottish Government in the fullness of time. There was a bit of sucking of teeth when I described this, but we gained the general agreement of the meeting.

I forgot to take a photograph of those present.…Aaaaargh!

Louise and I met John Swinney, our Member of the Scottish Parliament, this afternoon. He confessed himself bemused by the action of the minister for the environment, Roseanna Cunningham. John is Minister for Finance in the Scottish Parliament and thus second only to the First Minister. His advice to us was to press on with our campaign.

As you will see from the attached minutes we are to meet again on 8th February, just after I return from the beaver conference in Oregon.

With best wishes,Paul

If you read the notes you see that they decided to take some brilliant advice and get the children of Perth involved, adopting Eric the beaver at the zoo. You can also see the support given by the ‘badger folk’ which made me smile since Susan Kirks has been such a dynamic friend. You will discover what I believe might be my favorite sentence ever, “ES said it worked for the hedgehogs.” Which is such a profound nonsequitur that I might just start using it in daily conversation. Certainly it sounds like the title of a play EVERY one could enjoy at next years fringe festival! There was some disagreement about whether to pursue legal means or just to threaten the pursuit and a second meeting date was set for after the conference. When you read the notes I think anyone should be forgiven for being reminded of this of this famous civics passage:

Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.) `I’m glad I’ve seen that done,’ thought Alice. `I’ve so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, “There was some attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court,” and I never understood what it meant till now.’

Lewis Carroll

Since Paul couldn’t provide photos of the meeting, I thought I’d add some of the beavers themselves. These were mostly taken by Ray Scott who forwarded them to our wikipedia editor in hopes of getting a great Tay article. This is Castor Fiber. They don’t look all that different do they? They have more chromosomes than our beavers so the two can’t reproduce, but they are equally skilled at causing panic and forcing politicians to do stupid things apparently.

Aren’t those nice? Are you ready for the ‘wow that’s a weird coincidence’ punchline? When Paul told me about meeting with the Financial Minister I remembered that I had met an Environmental Minster, Paul McLellan of East Lothian. He came to California for a vacation and wanted to visit the Muir site and strengthen the bond between us and Muir’s birthplace in Dunbar. I mentioned this contact to Paul thinking maybe he would know someone with some pull in Perth, and he wrote back very surprised saying he hadn’t realized John Muir lived in Martinez and he was actually ON the Muir Trust!

Of course he is. It’s a small beaver world.

s-Tay Beavers!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental January 6, 2011

So wickedly stupid beaver-catchers at SNH went back to their offices yesterday and the hunt is on once again to catch more ‘wrong’ beavers in Scotland. I thought you might enjoy this ‘insider’s view’ from Paul Ramsay of Bamff. I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about when we meet in Oregon at the conference. Remember Bamff is the country estate in northern Scotland that has a controlled colony of these ‘wrong beavers’.

Scottish Natural Heritage is the government body that is targeting the beaver for removal. The chairman is Andrew Thin, the link to whose résumé you give, and the Chief Executive is Ian Jardine (mailto:ian.jardine@snh.gov.uk).

SNH will give the legalistic reply, based on the British Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, that the beaver is not normally present in Scotland and thus it is illegal to release it or allow it to be released into the environment. This itself is curious because in 2005 Scottish Natural Heritage, having applied to the then Scottish Executive for a licence to carry out a trial release in Knapdale (Argyll, in the West of Scotland), was turned down partly on the grounds that if any released beaver had to be shot as part of an exit strategy, if the trial was considered to be a failure, that would be a contravention of the European law. Thus the beaver was thought to be protected under the provisions of the European Habitats’ Directive of 1992 by the government of the day.

The change of government in Scotland in 2007 resulted in a new application for the trial release of beavers in Knapdale to be carried out by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, with Scottish Natural Heritage charged with monitoring the trial. This time the application succeeded, but hedged around with a multitude of restrictive conditions. The suggestion that the beavers, once released and established, might come under the protection of the European Habitats’ Directive of 1992 seemed to be forgotten. We are told now that the beavers in the Knapdale trial were not, and are not, under any legal protection at all.

In the meantime (i.e. between 2000 and 2007) European beavers came to several other places in Scotland, in particular in the area of the River Tay and its tributaries from 2000. The first escape happened in 2001, when a beaver was seen in the River Earn. Later that year a beaver was seen on the A93 road south of Blairgowrie.

Beavers were reported east of Glamis on a tributary of the Isla, itself a tributary of the Tay, in autumn 2006 and near Bridge of Earn at much the same time (November). The problem for SNH is that they are supporters of the official trial, which is costing charities and SNH £2million. The unofficial re-establishment of European beavers has cost taxpayers and charities nothing. The Norwegian University, whose staff carried out the trapping of the animals that were to be taken to Scotland for the Knapdale trial, charged £20,000 for each animal caught.

SNH has been put under great pressure by the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, formerly the Scottish Landowners’ Federation, the National Farmers’ Union for Scotland and the Salmon fishing interests (landowners and salmon fishing interests are, as you may imagine, almost the same thing). Another factor is that the landowners are feeling pressurised by the Scottish Government, which is (rightly) making fiercer sounds about punishing landowners for letting their game keepers poison birds of prey. The landowners are saying, ‘If you are going to punish us for controlling raptors, you must do something about the ‘illegal release of beavers.’

So far as salmon and beaver go, SNH commissioned a report from Southampton University, published in 2010, that showed that most of the literature was in the beaver’s favour as a benefactor to salmon fisheries, but this has had little public impact on the salmon fisheries’ organisations, which remain adamantly hostile to the return of the beaver. Any help on that front would be most welcome.

I read the Prince Edward Island report and discussed it with Professor John Thorpe, a fisheries’ biologist who worked with Atlantic salmon for many years (at the Government’s research laboratories at Faskally near Pitlochry). His view of the beaver/salmon interaction is totally in contrast to that of the commercial fisheries people and is that of the true ecologist and scholar that he is. John Thorpe thought/thinks that the PEI report was mistaken. Curiously the author of the report, Daryl Guignon, had gone on record in the past as pointing to problems of water pollution and run off of sediments from agriculture in PEI as being the main problems for the salmon of that part of Canada. Needless to say the Scottish salmon people fell on the PEI report with enthusiasm.

So far as challenging the SNH/Scottish Government on the legal position of the free-living beavers of the Tay, we are taking legal advice in the hope of getting a judicial review. In the meantime we are mobilising local support to watch out for traps set for beavers.

With best wishes, Paul

Paul! Get Children! Draw some ‘wrong beavers’ on a banner and fly one at your estate and tie the other to the fence outside the most visited park on the river Tay. On second thought since its winter maybe put it on the wall of the most visited PUB on the Tay! Good luck!