Beaver expert: PM was in a dam guddle

A leading conservationist has revealed it was easier to bring beavers back to Scotland than to Boris Johnson’s family farm.

Derek Gow, a rewilding expert, was asked by the prime minister for advice on introducing a pair of beavers on his father Stanley’s farm in Exmoor for his birthday.

Gow told The Times: “They are a chaotic family. We went to meet Boris there, met his dad, met his sister Rachel several times. In the end they couldn’t make up their mind where to put the pond.

“The licence application was done, and everything was ready to roll and between the three of them they couldn’t decide. It was a charade. If it was me I would have done it in a quarter of an hour.”

The 56-year-old, who is known as Mr Beaver, has been a leading campaigner to reintroduce the animal to Britain, where they were extinct for 400 years.

In 2018, the ecologist and his team introduced the beavers down south, nine years after bringing the animals to Scotland for a landmark trial in Knapdale, Argyll.

The beavers were released in England after being transported more than 1,700 miles by truck from Germany.

Gow supplies beavers to restoration projects and estates around the country and believes beavers are the answer to flood mitigation, soil restoration and carbon saving.

He said: “This is a revolution. I won’t stop until there are beavers everywhere. I don’t care how it happens. But I don’t want to be left with an island of pigeons and dogs.”

Gow runs a farm in Devon but grew up in Dundee. He said: “I didn’t come from the farming community; by my generation there were no farms, so I never got the opportunity. But I got my first sheep for my eighth birthday and people lent me little bits of land for grazing. Mum spun wool.

“I read all the Gerald Durrell books, but it wasn’t until I worked for a zoo in the late eighties that I became obsessed by s aving wildlife and started breeding projects.”