THE DAM BUSTERS

The reintroduction of beavers in Scotland is troubling Michael Wigan – and the majority of the fishing, farming, and land-owning community on the River Tay

Michael Wigan fears the impact of beavers on the River Tay

With the reintroduction of beavers it looks as though the government has slithered on a very smelly dog’s mess. Despite outcry from everyone at the sharp end, beavers are to be protected. Farmers defending their fields of vegetables and corn, or fishery managers protecting bank-side woods, will soon be unable to. The rapid dispersal of beavers is not in Knapdale in Argyll, where reintroduction was trialled, but in Tayside on Scotland’s best river systems, following a release which was illegal. So what is being addressed is the result of a wildlife crime.

This particular law infringement has, naturally, gone uncorrected. The government believes beavers are popular and will generally be welcomed. The reception that a burgeoning beaver population has had on Perthshire’s river scene as perceived by the Tay’s senior scientist, Dr David Summers, is not exactly what ministers had in mind: ‘This is an absolute nightmare!’

In his view the beaver is a rodent which thrives in modern arable landscapes. It has river-bank trees to cut down and eat, and miles of unoccupied banks to honeycomb with burrows. It lacks predators and can fell trees, make dams and flood farmland with impunity. Damming and flooding are actions for which any human perpetrator would be prosecuted. In other countries where beavers are protected, like the USA, locals burst through the dams when livelihoods are affected and no-one pays heed. Beavers always re-build.

What has startled even the most rabid re-introductionists is the velocity of the rodents’ expansion. Despite many being shot as they invaded gardens and farms the population has mushroomed to 500 in 18 years. A farmer on the River Dochart reports that they shifted up-river at a rate of five miles a year.

Promised benefits in the public consultations in 2007 included alleviating floods and restoring watertables. This was not taken to mean flooding good farmland. The Scottish Farmers Union has been vociferous about the damage to members’ property.

Instead of doing unpaid service as beneficent, riparian engineers, the rodents drilled tunnels in riverbanks in criss-cross formations. Flooding collapsed the banks and the structures were pulverised. Silt slid into the water smothering spawning redds for salmon.

Beaver lodges built on the ponds created by

flooding act as winter larders. They eat the foliage of green branches beneath the ice. Forget folksy ideas about beavers only gnawing and felling small trees. Big old one-metre diameter trees have been unceremoniously flattened.

Not only have private orchards been reduced to spiky woodchipgirdled stumps but recreations like deer stalking are affected. Where once roe and muntjac were stealthily approached through trees there are now beaver battlefields of chewed stumps.

When consultations were originally held about reintroductions in Knapdale two thirds of respondents saw cute furry animals and ticked the ‘Yes’ box. Leisure groups were in universal support. Objectors, also unanimous, were land users and foresters.

No-one believed reintroduction would be contained. How could it be? The chaos which hit Tayside’s floodplain was not in the plan.

Effects on rivers and salmon fishing may take a while to register. If beaver ponds block the flows needed for salmon migration, effects will be cumulative. Low-grade sloping mud replacing vegetated river-bank is not a public opinion issue. But fields of growing food being lost is.

Beaver protection was announced in

March – alongside the inevitable backpedalling. Beavers might need controlling under license.

Beavers will not be twitching their whiskers for photo-snapping tourists, they will become furtive. Nocturnal anyway, tremors caused by walking drive them to cover. Years ago coypu from South America released in East Anglia had to be liquidated one by one. It took a long time.

Coypu were alien invaders, but 400 years ago beavers were here. When Estonia reintroduced beavers (now there are 20,000) national eradication targets followed quickly. That will happen here. We are set for a protracted saga.

“Beavers will not be twitching their whiskers for photosnapping tourists, they will become furtive