Return of beavers and water voles shows nature is on mend, says RSPB
Fightback from some of our smallest creatures gives reason to be cheerful about future of the planet
THE resurgence of beavers and water voles in the UK are among the top reasons to be optimistic about the state of nature, a leading conservation charity has said.
Beavers returned to Loch Lomond at the beginning of this year, while water voles made a comeback in Cumbria, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said.
“It can be easy to feel despair for the future of our planet and the nature and places that we love. But we do know that conservation works and we know how to restore ecosystems and save species,” said Beccy Speight, the RSPB chief executive.
“Scale, collaboration and the urgency of our response are what matter now.”
Following years of conservation work, two adult beavers and their five young were released in Loch Lomond, after centuries of absence from the area.
Although two of the young died, the RSPB said the animals would bring huge benefits to the wetland by creating and enhancing the habitat to provide for a better variety of wildlife.
“Beavers are ecosystem engineers in a way that humans could never replicate,” said Paula Baker, the RSPB site manager. “Their presence in a wetland will do more to enhance it for wildlife than we could ever hope to do with any amount of man-made intervention.”
Two more adult beavers were added to the site in December, to allow the population to strengthen and spread.
The RSPB also celebrated the return of water voles to Cumbria, after hundreds of them were brought back to Haweswater in the Lake District, and the nearby Lowther Estate.
The animals were virtually wiped out in the area as a result of habitat loss, pollution and the spread of invasive, non-native American mink, which left whole colonies decimated.
Water voles are Britain’s fastest declining mammal, with their numbers dropping from an estimated population of eight million to around 132,000 over the past century.
The RSPB also highlighted the rise in the numbers of seabirds nesting on the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel.
Manx shearwaters and puffins have risen to numbers not seen since the 1930s, following the eradication of rats that had previously arrived as stowaways on ships. The eradication was carried out in a conservation partnership led by the RSPB, Natural England, the Landmark Trust and the National Trust.
“If we can restore over 30,000 birds to one small island in the Bristol Channel, just imagine how much could be achieved if everyone came together to restore nature right across the UK,” Paul St Pierre, the RSPB conservation officer, said.
Meanwhile, corncrake numbers in Scotland have risen for the first time in five years, after the RSPB worked with landowners to improve habitats. The red listed species were previously found across the UK, until their breeding grounds were lost as a result of the mechanisation of farming.
The conservation group’s fifth triumph of the year came with the recovery of the Saiga antelope in Kazakhstan, which moved from critically endangered to near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species.
Conservation efforts over 20 years have pushed numbers from just 39,000 in 2005 to about two million.
The Kazakh government, alongside the RSPB and other NGOS, led the conservation effort with anti-poaching initiatives, stepped up border control and created new protected areas.
“As a real testament to our ongoing joint efforts, the recovery of Saiga antelope in Kazakhstan shows just what is possible when partnerships bring together a range of nations, organisations and authorities to work at the scale needed to tackle the nature crisis across the globe,” said Katie-jo Luxton, the RSPB’S director of conservation.