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!
