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Bringing beavers back to Scotland 'could devastate country's salmon and sea trout populations'

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Published Date: 26 September 2008
By Frank Urquhart
CONTROVERSIAL plans to reintroduce beavers to Scotland should be abandoned before the animals devastate the country's salmon and sea trout populations and threaten a £70 million industry.
That was the warning issued yesterday by the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards (ASFB) after the Scottish Government's decision to allow a trial reintroduction of up to 20 beavers in Knapdale Forest in Argyll.

The pilot scheme is due to get unde
r way next spring and will allow beavers to roam free in Scotland for the first time since they were hunted to extinction four centuries ago.

A conditional licence has been granted to the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Royal Zoological Society of Scotland as part of a six-year trial. But the ASFB has written to Mike Russell, the environment minister, claiming that the go-ahead for the "recklessly irresponsible" reintroduction has been given without an objective appraisal of the impact of beavers on salmon and sea trout.

Hugh Campbell Adamson, the ASFB chairman, said: "Beavers are designed to dam streams. If their dams impede fish migration and thus access to the maximum amount of spawning habitat, then surely it is recklessly irresponsible to release them into the Scottish countryside."

And Nick Yonge, the director of the Tweed Foundation, said: "It would be absolutely monstrous if Scotland was to be set up as a mass experiment, putting in jeopardy the substantial value of these fisheries in Scotland on which hundreds of jobs depend."

But Simon Jones, the project manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, said: "The project is a time-limited trial reintroduction of the European beaver to Knapdale. There are no salmon in the Knapdale trial area.

"It is important to note that beavers and other native species have co-existed naturally for many years."



The full article contains 307 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 25 September 2008 9:41 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Beavers
 
1

Guga II,

Rockall 26/09/2008 03:04:04
It is time these greenies, tree-huggers and so-called environmentalists realised that Scotland is not a wildlife park or a playgound for the idle rich.

This is the same mob of bampots that want to reintroduce the Lynx, Wolves, Bears and who know what else, into Scotland.
2

Boy Wonder,

26/09/2008 03:53:16
Oh let them bring them all back, Guga! The way prices are going, we'll be out shooting and hunting them back into extinction again anyway in a short time. Especially if Sam (the god) has his way!
3

argonaut,

east lothian 26/09/2008 07:57:19
you could bring lynx back but wolves bears given their range and scotlands pop density would make it a prob non starter. you want to protect scotlands fresh water fish - salmon trout etc - the simple fact that these fish exist is testimont to that fact that beaver and freshwater fish must have existed in scotland for 10's of thousands of years together - thriving together until man wiped out all the beaver along with most large mammals. biodiversity itself is a people attraction !
4

iain exile,

26/09/2008 08:19:26
You're such a fearty Guga. Scared they're going to gnaw your leg off?
5

Douglas,

Bathgate 26/09/2008 08:37:31
As a source of healthy snack food it's a great idea!
Very few calories, low fat and generally very little waste.
6

FreddieIII,

Edinburgh 26/09/2008 09:11:51
"Beavers are designed to dam streams. If their dams impede fish migration and thus access to the maximum amount of spawning habitat, then surely it is recklessly irresponsible to release them into the Scottish countryside."

What uninformed diatribe - Beavers are native to Scotland - concrete dams are not - they are made of twigs, branches and small trees and fish can pass through or over them. Complete NIMBY-ism. I was under the impression that conservation meant keeping the maximum number of species that once lived in an area in a stable population - the AFSB are not against conservation are they?
7

Darien,

Panama 26/09/2008 09:37:35
Scottish Wildlife Trust and Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the RSPB etc get away with too much. They constantly meddle with nature and evolution trying to design everything around their particular view of the world and what it should look like. This invariably means disadvantage for mankind; mankind is what they least care about as their priority is the animal kingdom. Aye, reintroduce sea eagles so they can wipe out the lambs and destroy crofting etc. Absolute madness. Who aside from them cares if sea eagles are here or not. These organisations also contain a disproportiate amount of people who are not from these parts. Maybe that tells us something.
8

bill-alba,

fife 26/09/2008 10:41:01
Is it beyond them to ensure that the streams that are used by fish to get to their spawning grounds are kept clear??
9

ignorant townie?,

Scotland 26/09/2008 10:52:20
Instead of all this ill informed nonsense about what will occur when beavers are reintroduced...why not let them try their small scale experimental release...and see what actually happens...

as for this bunch complaining about the effect on their salmon and trout - I dont remember seeing them complain when millions of acid producing trees were planted all over the headwaters of rivers like the Tweed?....and what about the effects on rivers of intensive agriculture, from pesticides and fertiliser, from erosion and eutrophication and the destruction of bankside vegetation by the [until very recently] massive increase in sheep numbers?...probably beacuse the same salmon rights owners and fishermen were making a good living off that?..was all that natural and balanced?...ah dinnae think sae...
10

Darien,

Panama 26/09/2008 11:53:03
#9, 11, 13, 18 Nomada: Such rapid 'informed' information on the supposed 'upside' of these 'policies' reflects I suspect your inside position as it were in one of these dubious orgs/quangos and/or 'charities'? The RSPB etc you may know has been a major constraint on planning delay and added to development costs which in turn holds back economic growth.

Outside of your ranks, however, the ordinary Joe or Doris in the street does not give a flying f**k about beavers, ducks, or bald eagles. The only fish they care about is the one beside their chips, and quite rightly so - a bald eagle does not give a hoot for us!
11

struie,

26/09/2008 12:14:53
None of the previous introductions of Beaver to the wild (to northern France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Baltic countries and Sweden) has been to countries with extensive populations of wild salmon (Baltic and Swedish salmon are now mainly of hatchery origin), like Scotland, so research on dams has not been a priority, and there is now therefore very little in the way of relevant information. In Norway, where Beaver survived naturally in one part of the country, they have not yet re-populated the main Salmon and Sea-trout areas, so little of relevance can be drawn from there.
The only research relevant to the question of whether Beaver dams reduce salmonid spawning success is that which provides actual measures of abundances of fry upstream and downstream of dams. All instream structures, man-made or natural, can obstruct spawning fish – but most are partial barriers that reduce juvenile numbers upstream rather than preventing them from being there altogether. Unless such quantitative comparisons can be made it simply cannot be said if any sort of obstacle in a stream has an effect on spawning or not. This is a commonplace in fisheries management – but the Beaver lobby claim every casual observation of salmonids spawning upstream of Beaver dams as definitive evidence that dams have no impacts at all.
The one paper in the scientific literature, from Canada, that does give quantitative data on salmon fry upstream and downstream of Beaver dams over a number of years found that “spawning in most years (is) confined below the large complex of dams”, so that spawning in most of the study stream was unusable by salmon in most years. The FAQ section on Beavers on the Scottish Wildlife Trust website, however, says “There is little evidence from Europe and North America to indicate significant detrimental impacts of beaver on salmonid fish” which is simply not compatible with these findings.
This SWT statement is also refuted by the Lithuanian National Report to t
12

Geoff,

sa 26/09/2008 17:34:29
Havent readf any of the comments here yet but if may say that it is generally true that natural predation does not significantly reduce prey populations-often the reverse is the case! Predators generally take out weak/injured /diseased animals/fish thus improving the viability of populations at large. Where lions have been reintroduced in fenced game reserves here for eg, the limiting factor on their population growth is always territory-not availability of prey. If beavers occured naturally in Scotland then in theory,all other things being equal, they should improve the environment in general-rebuilding the web of lost links that make up a self regulating environment

 

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