Farmers shooting invading Tayside beavers

But it has now emerged that the bodies of 21 beavers have been discovered with gunshot wounds since the end of 2012.

Farmers and other landowners are suspected of being responsible for the slaughter and have been urged by conservationists

to adopt non-lethal methods to control the species.

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) has examined the bodies of 23 beavers in the Tayside area and concluded that two died in road accide

nts and the rest were shot dead.

At present, a licence is not needed to shoot beavers as they have no legal protection in the UK. However, possessing and moving a dead beaver is not legal without a licence.

Why on earth should we be surprised at this story? Just because beavers were extinct for 400 years, and scraped their way back from the bistory pile, doesn’t mean a farmer won’t shoot them now. I mean, they happily shoot rabbits, foxes, and badgers. So why wouldn’t they shoot beavers?

The very slanted article is the best answer I could have thought of to Paul’s question. No matter how responsibly you sit on the story and consider your cautions, its going to break soon enough anyway.

Better to make sure you’re in front of it.

Tonight is a full beaver moon. So when you’re looking up in ghostly wibderm think of our Scottish friends.

If I were the editor of Conservation Magazine, I would have a regular feature in every issue called “Who do beavers help now?” Wouldn’t you?

Beavers help out young frogs

Beavers are a boon to the environment: Their dams create ponds that provide homes for birds, amphibians, and other critters. Now scientists have found that beavers also aid their wetland companions by digging canals that young frogs use to hop from ponds to forests.

The canals, which allow beavers to transport branches and hide from predators, can stretch over hundreds of meters. But “the effect of canals on wetland ecosystems has received little study,” the researchers write in Animal Conservation. If the canals help beavers move around, they wondered, do they also help amphibians? For instance, wood frogs are born in ponds, but they must find their way through meadows to forests where they can spend the winter.

…researchers spotted six to nine times more young wood frogs on canals than along pond shorelines without canals.

Well, well well. Beavers help frogs. Who would have guessed? Oh, that’s right, everyone with a pulse. (Except for Roseville where beavers were killed in 2012 to protect frog habitat in vernal pools.) Thanks to Amy Chadwick of Montana for sending me this article. I would be happy for the ammunition, but I know better. If the beaver battle were about having enough research it would have all been over decades ago. In more cases than you want to imagine, facts don’t win the day.

Fears do.

But a well told story might. (Speaking of which, I just reviewed that article on vernal pools I wrote two years ago. It was sadly so much better than what I’m going to write this morning, you maybe should too.)

Here’s something else that beavers help, this photo is from Rusty of the beaver ponds at Napa he is keeping an eye on. He cleverly remarked that this was going to have to be his own version of Gravity Glue balancing stones. Obviously beavers help the wildlife supported by this pond and every other hang in a very delicate balance.

turtle act - Copy — Pond turtles in the balance – Rusty Cohn

If you’re like me you’ve been noticing the increasingly bright shine from above every night. Tonight will be the Full Beaver Moon, so named either because it was a good time to set traps for the winter OR the beavers were so busy making their underwater food storage. You know which one I prefer but step outside for a moment tonight and appreciate what it means to be under a beaver moon.