Too late to stop beavers roaming Scotland

Sir, - In reply to Jim Crumley’s article (July 18) on the Beauly beavers, both Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Scottish Government knew about beavers in the wild in that area as far back as 2010 when they tried to remove the Beauly and Tayside beavers.

The instructions to SNH at the time were to “capture all the beavers on Tayside and in Inverness- shire” (FOI information obtained by Scottish Wild Beaver Group, 2011).

Beauly is in Invernessshire. There is no information in the public domain regarding whether any beavers up there were caught or not, but the likelihood is that none were caught.

In that case, and given that there are young there now, how many beavers are actually in the Beauly area? Probably more than anyone knows about.

We should leave the Beauly beavers alone.

If anyone wonders were they actually came from, and assuming they didn’t come down the river in a bubble, the most likely source is the private collection in that area, although no one can know that for sure.

The bottom line here is that if people didn’t want these animals in the wild, they shouldn’t have let anyone keep them in the first place.

It is a complete failure of regulation. No further explanation is required. Too late now. Victor Clements. Native Woodland Advice, Mamie’s Cottage. Taybridge Terrace, Aberfeldy.