Beavers poised for return to Britain

INTERESTING news from across the water – it looks as though Britain is about to gain a new species of mammal.

Beavers are to be re-introduced into Scotland later this month.

These large, water-loving rodents were once found in Britain but were hunted to extinction in the late Middle Ages. A Scottish chronicler mentions that they were common around Lough Ness in 1526. They were probably once found in Ireland also, though I can’t find any specific references. If any readers know of old Irish manuscripts that mention beavers I’d be very interested to hear from them.

They didn’t fare much better in the rest of Europe and by 1900 they were down to a couple of small and isolated populations in France and Germany. They were hunted for their meat and their fur, which was highly prized, particularly for making hats.

Male beavers also produced a valuable anal gland secretion called “castoreum” which apparently has pain-relieving properties. “Castor” is the Latin for beaver (“Castor fiber” is the zoological name for the Eurasian beaver) and the word has the same root as the verb to castrate. This is because the best way of obtaining castoreum was believed to be to remove the animal’s testicles.

Efforts to reintroduce beavers to places where they had become extinct started around 1920 in Scandinavia and have been repeated sporadically ever since. Some of the animals used were Eurasian beavers and others were the closely related North American species.

These efforts have been quite successful. Norway has a naturally regenerating population of more than 70,000 animals. They have also been successfully re-introduced into Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Croatia.

There was a big increase in re-introductions of many species in the 1990s as a result of EU regulations requiring member states to boost bio-diversity and look into the possibility of re-establishing extinct species. The Scottish plan, which will cost £2 million, is also a response to these regulations.

Up to now most reintroduction programmes have concentrated on bird species. The current efforts to bring back golden eagles, white-tailed eagles and red kites to this country are examples. Mammal re-introductions are less common, this is the first-ever in Britain or Ireland. However, there are two outstanding international examples in recent years – Przewalski’s horse in Mongolia and the Arabian oryx in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Israel. Both species had become extinct in the wild and were re-established from captive breeding stock.

The beavers to be released in Scotland came from Norway and are in quarantine in southern England. They consist of four families, one of which has apparently already bred successfully in the quarantine cages.

The initial stocking is on a trial basis and will be assessed after five years.

Farmers and foresters are worried about damage to trees and the possibility that agricultural land may be flooded as a result of the beaver’s love of dam building. Anglers have expressed concern about fish stocks.

But environmentalists have welcomed the news because they believe the beavers will create new habitats for insects like dragonflies and for water birds. And an expert from Norway has said that their introduced beaver population, some of which lives on the country’s top salmon rivers, has done little or no damage. Apparently European beavers, unlike their American cousins, seldom dam streams to create ponds.

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