The New York Times is the paper that never quite believed all those good things about beavers. They are always eager for a story where crazy conservationists are pitted against the pragmatic and hard-working farmer. Honestly, you’d never know beavers were ever anything but trouble in the state. But at least our friends Paul and Louise Ramsay get to be in the story.
Beavers Re-emerge in Scotland, Drawing Ire of Farmers
Building dams that flood land, the beavers have infuriated farmers. Some have obtained permits to kill the animals — setting off outrage among conservationists.
You mean just like America and Canada? That is so not surprising.
Gnawing and felling trees, building dams that flood fields or wreck drainage systems and burrowing into river banks — sometimes causing them to collapse — beavers have incurred the wrath of a farming community, which won the right to request permits allowing them to kill the animals legally.
But the sanctioned killing of an otherwise protected species has enraged conservationists, prompting a legal challenge and igniting a polarizing debate about farming, biodiversity and the future of Scotland’s countryside.
Say it isn’t so! You mean beavers actually chew trees? Get out! I guess the NYT never got the memo about all the trees that are expanded and multiplied because of their ponds. No willow farmers for the NYT that’s for certain.
This is the paragraph that got me riled the most.
Animal rights advocates say that the once-native species is valuable for creating wildlife habitats and helping to preserve biodiversity, and they view the culling as a symbol of misplaced priorities imposed by intensive agriculture. But to their enemies, beavers are vermin whose mostly unplanned reintroduction to Scotland is causing needless damage and financial loss to food producers.
Call me picky but I’m pretty sure the phrases “ONCE-NATIVE” and “NATIVE” mean exactly the same thing. Especially now that beavers have taken over and are reintroducing their own population. I’m pretty sure it’s a binary thing. You’re either native or your not.
You either belong there or you don’t.
“It’s quite a sad story and one that reflects how difficult it is to have grown-up discussions about these kind of land issues,” said Alan McDonnell, the conservation manager at Trees for Life.
In Tayside, some farmers blame the rising beaver population on escapes from Bamff estate in Perthshire, where Paul and Louise Ramsay run an eco-tourism operation. The Ramsays brought Scotland’s first recent-era beavers to the site in 2002, when there were fewer restrictions, as part of their own beaver rewilding project.
The idea was to restore natural habitats on their land after centuries of drainage designed to maximize farm yields. A significant transformation can be seen in a wild, scenic stretch of the 1,300-acre estate, which has been in the family since 1232.
Paul and Louise! My goodness how far your beaver life has taken you. I bet you can’t remember what your life used to be like before beavers, either.
Though the entrances to burrows are submerged, beavers dig upward into river banks to create chambers above water level. The dams they build regulate the water level of their aquatic habitats.
The 20 or so beavers living here have killed many trees, a point of contention for the Ramsays’ critics. But they have attracted otters, allowed water pools to fill with trout, frogs and toads, and given a nesting place in dead trees to woodpeckers, Ms. Ramsay said.
She said the problem was not the beavers, but farmers who think that any land that does not produce a crop is wasted.
“Their motivation is to drain, drain, drain, so a beaver comes along and wants to make a wet bit here or there — which might be a brilliant habitat — that’s against the farmer’s interest,” she said.
MORE LOUISE!!! That’s what this article needs! MORE LOUISE!!!
Ms. Campbell-Palmer said she found beavers fascinating and admired their dam-building skills, tenacity and single-mindedness. That said, she understands the complaints of farmers and admits that, having seen some particularly destructive tree-felling, has occasionally said to herself, “‘Of all the trees to cut down, why did you do that one?’”
As she inspected a trap filled with carrots, turnips and apples, Ms. Campbell-Palmer reflected on the ferocious debate and concluded that beavers had undeniably achieved one thing in Scotland.
“I think what they are doing,” she said, “is making us ask wider questions about how we are using the landscape.”
Goodness gracious. You had to send photographers and reporters all the way to Scotland to write a story that said exactly the same thing as what you might have written about just a few blocks down. I know the beaver story in Scotland is dramatic, but honestly, the concerns, the outraged farmers, the caring environmentalists, their lines are pretty much the same where ever the beaver appears. They were the same in Martinez. But maybe the outrage gets louder after 400 years.
I believe it was Tolstoy who wisely observed
“All happy beaver stories resemble one another, Each unhappy beaver story is unhappy in its own way.“
Beavers were finally given legal protection in Scotland on 1 May 2019, almost two decades after their return to Scotland. On the same day, the Scottish government issued licenses to certain landowners to allow them to kill beavers and remove their dams.
