Beavering about..

[Sandison]

What do you think - delightful or disaster?

[burnie]

The environment has had a chance to adjust to them not being around, if you suddenly change things, nature cannot always adapt that quickly. They used to be here but that does not mean that their niche in the balance of nature still exists.

[Bobfly]

Look at a forum topic post from me in 2012 "Beavers Gallery - Busy Fellows". This has a number of photos I took in Tayside where there are now about 142 in place according to SNH survey figures from 2012/13. No point having any consultation to follow on from the Knapdale "trial" when we have that number already on the loose !!

[Sandison]

Burnie,

Yup, you are right. I agree.

I wonder, however, if this same will be said, at some time in the not too distant future - when all our rivers are stocked with artificial/hatchery reared salmon, trout and sea-trout  - about the demise of our wild fish? 

I guess that beavers existed in harmony alongside wild fish in Scotland for thousands of years, from the end of the last Ice Age, until humans, driven by commercial considerations,  drove our native beaver populations to extinction.

Does what comes around really go around?

Bruce

[Wildfisher]

For good or for ill, I think beavers are  here to stay now. There have been so many illegal introductions in Perthshire and Angus. They are in the Dean, it's just a short hop to the Vinny and Lunan. The illegal introductions can be shot by landowners, but I guess many won't bother

[hopper]

It will depend, if they block the burns and flood the crops SHOOT.

[sinbad]

The fishing in North America and Canada is ruined by all the beavers ? Its the bloody beavers not man that's to blame !   However it needs to be slow. Sb

[Bobfly]

Anyone who goes about shooting lovely cuddly beavers will be pilloried by the conservationalists - notwithstanding the many millions of pounds spent each year across Europe on controlling beaver damage and unblocking impounded streams and small rivers.

[sinbad]

Can we then shoot the cuddly netters or the cuddly fish farmers in the estuaries that really damage the fisheries ? If beavers get out of hand then fine cull them but an animal that should be here if it had not been hunted out of existence cant have a small space then lets just get rid of them all ?  Cheers DA.

[Allan Crawford]

It strikes me that one half of the British have an obsession with introducing things, and the other half an obsession with killing things,

There is a wild life centre near me that spends a lot of vet time on crows, magpies, foxes etc, a fair number have been shot, the strange cycle of human cruelty and compassion.

One half of the British have lost touch with reality.