Campaigners call for beavers to be freed all over Scotland
More than 20 environmentalists, academics and commentators has urged the Scottish Government to allow the release of beavers across Scotland for the first time since the native species was wiped out 400 years ago.
The group, which includes the award-winning filmmaker Gordon Buchanan, conservationist Sir John Lister Kaye, wildlife reintroduction specialist Roy Dennis, and Allan Bantick, founding chairman of the Scottish Beaver Trial, has sent an open letter to ministers calling on the government to open up beaver translocation to all areas with suitable habitat for the protected species.
Their move comes after the Scottish Government’s nature agency Nature Scot announced a single licence for beaver translocation to a farm in Stirlingshire. However, the group claims the release of beavers at Argaty, near Doune, is “only a tiny step in the right direction”. In its letter, the 21-strong group says that most of Scotland’s potential beaver habitat remains closed-off to beavers.
It calls for all suitable habitat to be made potentially available for the translocation of the animals from areas where they are currently in conflict with landowners, worried about damage to trees and flooding caused by dams.
It states: “In advance of Cop 26, the first minister wisely called for ‘credible action, not facesaving slogans’. The undersigned ask that the same principles are applied to the Scottish Government’s approach to the biodiversity and climate crises, and specifically that ‘credible action’ is urgently taken to address a critical shortcoming in Scottish Government’s current beaver policy.
“Since the Eurasian Beaver was declared a European Protected Species in May 2019, over 200 of these biodiversity-boosting animals have been shot under government licence in Tayside.
“That is over one fifth of Scotland’s total estimated beaver population killed in 24 months – the vast majority of which could have been moved to suitable habitat in other parts of Scotland where their ecosystem engineering would bring multiple environmental benefits to both human and wildlife communities.”