Beavers return to Britain

As my regular readers (two cats and a human) will know, back in Autumn I spoke of a project that planed to reintroduce the European Beaver back into the UK. The greatest difficulty with any project like this is in fact education as people develop prejudice against some species.

With the beaver the prejudice centred upon the damage they would do to fish and to woodlands. As Beavers are vegetarian and eat tree bark they would not damage fish at all. In fact the calm pools the create for their lodges actually benefit most species of fish as they create habitats that enable the fish to breed more successfully.

The other prejudice was, is and will be more difficult to counter, as beavers do fell trees.

However, in the control areas where captive populations have been introduced, the activities of the Beavers has actually mirrored much of the tree felling work that has to be done to preserve riverside habitats anyway. As we live on a crowded island, the competition for space has meant that many of the natural processes have been interrupted. Further because of the loss of species, or exclusion of animals, humans have had to resort to carrying out maintenance work to retain the ecology that was there in the first place.

Therefore, by reintroducing Beavers, the trees that would overwhelm river banks get felled naturally. This will save the conservation organisations, farmers and land owners millions over the coming years as work normally undertaken by volunteers, contractors or workers will occur naturally.

A further benefit that was not expected was the discovery that the root systems of the trees felled by the Beavers worked much better as erosion protection. Because the Beavers are felling the trees younger, that would happen for conservation reasons, the micro root systems of the trees retained the soils of the river bank better. Additionally, the made the rivers less prone to adding to the damage caused by flooding. Partly because these root systems acted as a better sponge, but mainly because of the slower flow rates of the Beavers created habitat meant that in a flood swollen river, the water drained away better down the river channel and was less likely to over spill.

So while some people may still object to this reintroduction, the benefits will be imminence. As the species is being introduced into a landscape that has done without Beavers for several centuries, legal permission was required from the Government. This has now been given by the Scottish Parliament, and the reintroduction programme will occur in Scotland.

All the effort in the study of the possible effects of the Beavers on the environment was important as it was possible that the effect would have been like an invasive species that would have seriously impacted existing species and habitats. However, by ensuring that we knew what the likely impacts were and most of them are beneficial, we can all look forward to a time when Beavers will become a part of the British landscape again.

My thanks to Natural England for the picture by Paul Glendell

And here's a link to the Scottish Wildlife Trust and more information about the reintroduction project.