The attached picture shows one of about 50 recently felled deciduous trees at a local loch this afternoon. These are only the ones I saw from the path, there are likely many more out of sight.
If this is typical then it's small wonder landowners are getting pissed off with this - Scotland does not have a large extent of natural deciduous woodlands - certainly not enough spare to cope with this rate of destruction. This is not North America or Scandinavia.
Just a week ago my pal (with me today) was at the same place, he said there were only a few trees down. This is less than a week's work. The felling appears to be totally random. They don't need dams this is a loch.
Is this what happens when one dimensional urban idiots take over government and make decisions over matters on which they are clueless? Bearing in mind the recent expensive, wasteful and disastrous Wild Fisheries Review that certainty that appears to be the case in Scotland.
This is going to end in tears.
[attachimg=1]
Can't walk along any river, burn or Loch without signs of beavers here in east Perthshire. But they've been on the go here for 10 to 15 years since escaping from Bamff, Alyth.
From Mill Dam above Dunkeld, to the burn running through the middle of Coupar Angus. Wee Rae Loch is so high it's often onto the road due to beavers dams. Fruit trees damaged down near Errol.
I wouldn't like to put a number on how many there are now.
It will be quite a good few years ago that I put up similar pictures of the felled trees and dams on Bamff Estate. It is from there that the owner was mysteriously unable to contain the beavers he had on licence with that containment condition. What you have just seen is now commonplace. Near Dunkeld there is someone who keeps a chainsaw in their car in order to keep their access road clear.
Quote from: Bobfly on April 08, 2021, 04:19:02 PM
It will be quite a good few years ago that I put up similar pictures of the felled trees and dams on Bamff Estate. It is from there that the owner was mysteriously unable to contain the beavers he had on licence with that containment condition. What you have just seen is now commonplace. Near Dunkeld there is someone who keeps a chainsaw in their car in order to keep their access road clear.
Bamff are currently doing a crowdfunder to increase their 'environmental restoration'! 🙄
Is that for more widespread beaver habitat ... ? The owner would argue that he is restoring things to what he believes things were like and to what he would certainly like ! I wonder what his neighbours have to say.
Could landowners be able to sue the Scottish Government for causing damage to their property and interests through reckless and irresponsible policy?
Nope ... they had some form of fairly wide consultation and were also advised by their official wildlife and conservation experts in SNH. They were here before and deserve to be back in their homeland, even though is has hugely changed !!
Quote from: admin on April 08, 2021, 06:13:29 PM
Could landowners be able to sue the Scottish Government for causing damage to their property and interests through reckless and irresponsible policy?
This is precisely the problem:
firstly very few people can afford to sue "the government" as the government effectively have infinite cash with which to fight a court case whereas most private individuals don't. In these situations the government simply string the case out until the private individual runs out of cash or requires a judicial review to progress and can't afford that either.
Secondly government money is just that in the sense that it doesn't come out of the pocket of the nutjob that came up with the good idea in the first place.
It is clear to me that what needs to happen is that the risk must be defined and a value needs to be put on each aspect of that risk and then the person with the good idea must put up the cash to the value of the potential risk over, say, a 10 year period. This money must be put up in advance and compensation is paid from this fund. The law needs to be "tilted" towards any claimant - so if the nutter wants to release beavers and someone claims for damage to trees then as "damage to trees" would be been defined in the "risk assessment" and would have been costed so if they nutter doesn't want to pay up then they must prove that the damage couldn't possibly have been caused by the beavers. Under these circumstances the person who wants the change pays for it, and for any damage, and the change presents little time or financial overhead to those who suffer as a result, or to the tax payer.
"
Robert Kellie
Gordon Mackenzie on our river they ( nature Scotland) have been live trapping beavers and sending them south , however we know that some animals have Turned up at a water supply ( lintrathen ).
And the black van they use to transport the beavers has been seen in this area and new tree damage has been found in areas where beavers were not seen before .
Imagine letting them out at a public water supply knowing that they could potentially be carrying two diseases that affect people , Scottish water need to wake up to this"
"Robert Kellie
Adrian Blundell I believe that two of the beavers that were illegally let out have been tested positive for two diseases ( NFU) leptospirosis and Giardia , what have these people done 😞"
"Robert Kellie
Gordon Mackenzie I did put in a freedom of information request too nature Scotland , and the reply was interesting , they ( nature Scotland ) said that the information I requested was and I quote . . WAS TO SENSITIVE TO SHARE AT THIS TIME 😳"
Unreal. But they are getting thinned out on a fairly reglar basis, and I still think Tonk Black was right hen he said two years ago that within 10 years people would be getting employed to shoot beavers.
Just the usual rewilding.....a wonderful idea except for those that have to live with it!
Beavers are a lot farther east than Lintrathen. The mass tree felling I saw today was at Kinnordy and there are beavers in forfar Loch which is directly connected to The Tay via The Dean and Isla.
Have they not made it into the S Esk catchment yet?
I remember Tony Andrews saying they were close a couple of years ago.
I haven't heard of any there, but it's only a matter of time surely? The Esks Trust will know.
Their guard hairs make excellent split tails on mayfly patterns.
Quote from: Alastair on April 08, 2021, 07:44:16 PM
Their guard hairs make excellent split tails on mayfly patterns.
Are there any good for Beaver Hair Caddis patterns in Canada? :lol:
They make good hats :shock:
The RSPB has to put wire round the legs of the hides at Kinnordy as the buggers were chewing through them lol
Perhaps landowners can involve the Forestry Commission for illegal fellings across all of Tayside without having the appropriate felling licence approval, and without an agreed replanting programme. :shock: :shock:
Grief, beaver anguish makes me want to weep.
I do not condone the illegal release of beavers, but they really are not a serious problem. Go anywhere in Strathtay (below the Tummel confluence) or Strathisla around Coupar Angus where the beavers thrive and watch silt pour off fields ploughed tight to the margins (loaded with fertilizers, organic soils and a wide range of pesticides), over extraction of water to produce tatties that taste of nothing, river banks poached by grazing, diffuse pollution from livestock, manicured river margins for clients who cannot manage a roll cast, piss poorly designed levees, road drainage not subject to SUDS principals discharging directly (loaded with Sodium Chloride), burns loaded with decades of fallen lumber etc. etc.
The native trees they drop, aren't necessarily dead, it time the remain rootswill naturally rejuvenate ........ I think the old woodman called this pollarding.
Modern agricultural practice, remains the biggest threat to East Coast rivers, beavers are a wee blip by comparison
Aye, right.
http://www.tdsfb.org/Tay%20DSFB%20Annual%20Report%202020%20final.pdf
"Beaver Issues
Beaver impacts continue to require monitoring and management from Board staff. This has now
become a significant part of the Fisheries Officers' work. As described in last year's report, regular
oversight has been required at a fish pass on the Shochie Burn which beavers regularly block. Beavers
were also found to block a fish pass on the mainstem of the upper River Earn.
Because of lockdown, it is not known whether beaver damming may have blocked smolt migration
from some streams during the very dry weather that prevailed in April / May 2020. This was a concern
during that period and will be a key management concern for any river with beavers in future."
What you write is not wrong, but as with most rewilding, it ignores the myriad of problems the reintroduction causes. Which is just wrong in every way.
Does farming cause more damage to rivers than beavers? Absolutely, but is that an argument for the introduction of beavers? Is cannabis less harmful than cocaine; who was worse; Mao, Hitler or Stalin?
For me this is not really about rivers but more about idiot politicians making choices in order to please a tiny, vociferous minority that leads to the destruction of other people's property and not being held to account for it. And lets face it, in Scotland we have idiot politicians by the bucket load.
The last Labour Scottish Executive understood this perfectly and refused to even sanction the trials far less reintroductions.
Scotland's coverage of native broadleaf trees is utterly pathetic, it seems a bit odd to me that people who call for a reduction in deer numbers to protect woodland are very often also cheer leaders for tree felling rodents.
Just reading some posts on the Ericht, Isla and Dean FB page. Not a lot of support for beavers there. It's claimed the beaver felling has killed out a lot of riparian trees and caused serious bank erosion which has led to loss of holding pools and habitat degradation. I can't vouch for this obviously, but t does tie in with what Moray said about beaver damage being common in that area. These guys are just ordinary anglers like us, so I'm not sure why they would make this stuff up. Perhaps wild beavers in areas with few trees is bound to end up with no trees?
Quote from: Laxdale on April 09, 2021, 09:43:38 AM
"Beaver Issues
Beaver impacts continue to require monitoring and management from Board staff. This has now become a significant part of the Fisheries Officers' work. As described in last year's report, regular
oversight has been required at a fish pass on the Shochie Burn which beavers regularly block. Beavers were also found to block a fish pass on the mainstem of the upper River Earn.
Because of lockdown, it is not known whether beaver damming may have blocked smolt migration from some streams during the very dry weather that prevailed in April / May 2020. This was a concern during that period and will be a key management concern for any river with beavers in future."
I really rest my case. I know the Shochie Burn intimately not least from the tight regular scrutiny of SEPA on our construction works around the Burn (and for that pleasure, we have to pay the £94/hr through our CAR construction site licenses, meanwhile in high water, when they are on site the Shochie runs the colour of a white coffee from the barley and tattie crops). Why does the Shochie and the Earn need fish passes which may be blocked by beaver felled lumber or just lumber .......... oh aye a man made weir. The problem here is not beavers, but the requirement for a fish pass in the first place (which from my experience here on the Devon, before our beavers arrived always required management to remove wood debris, which was normally a mixture of wind blow, dead lumber, washed out roots but mostly lumber cut with a chainsaw)
Quote from: Laxdale on April 09, 2021, 09:43:38 AM
What you write is not wrong, but as with most rewilding, it ignores the myriad of problems the reintroduction causes. Which is just wrong in every way.
We perhaps should agree to disagree, but I note that many of those that promote the current status quo (unrestricted Red Deer numbers, extermination of beavers and the extermination of any mammal/bird that threaten Red Grouse) are quite content to flood the UK with imported pheasants and red-legged partridges regardless of their impact on the native fauna?
There will be fairly ready coppicing stump regrowth with willow, alders, hazel and younger rowans. Birch would be an unlikely coppice from trees maybe 15+ years so there would not be obliteration but maybe a species shift. Older beech, oak, sycamore would go but often it is the flooding on gentle ground that kills off trees previously alongside ditches and drains. On Banff there is a lot of drowned big stuff but that is the flooding of parkland.
We tend ro think of riparian to mean riverbank. Try q00 plus yards in places on the Isla catchment
Quote from: Laxdale on April 09, 2021, 11:38:10 PM
We tend ro think of riparian to mean riverbank. Try q00 plus yards in places on the Isla catchment
The Ericht, Isla and Dean guys are saying the beavers have killed the trees and as a result the root systems that hold the banks together have deteriorated and the result is major erosion. No way to verify this but why would ordinary anglers lie?
My own view on beavers has always been pretty ambivalent, it's never been mush of an issue to me either way. That said I would not have believed the damage I saw the other day unless I'd seen it with my own eyes.
A few things need to be addressed in my opinion. Firstly there should be no introductions of ANYTHING unless there is extensive suitable habitat - clearly this has not been met for beavers. There should be a fair compensation scheme in place to cover damage and losses. The people who make these decisions should have a duty of care and should be held to account if it all goes belly up.
The beavers burrow into the river banks on the larger rivers, which is causing no end of erosion problems. I have seen probably 100s of pictures of the damage beavers do. The tree felling is a very visible part of the issue, but not the major problem.
It is important not to turn the beaver debate into the usual landowner/farmer bad crap. It is the general public (well, the tax paying part) that foots the bill for the damage. Councils that are short of money for essential services now have additional costs put onto them. I believe the repairs to an undermined road in Blairgowrie are costing 100s of thousands to repair.
As with other introductions of vermin, we keep getting told by the beaver lovers they have a list of landowners keen to help relocate problem beavers. Ask if the neighbouring riparian owners have been consulted, or who pays them compensation for damage, and you get abuse.
Which reminds me...the crofters/farmers up my way are kicking off again about the killing eagles are doing. That is no going to end well for the eagles if Naturescot do not grow a pair.
Much of the "rewilding" has been hijacked to be another front in the wider culture wars being waged by the hard left. I used to use some of the wildlife groups on FB for photography purposes but they ended up being taken over and used as propaganda for the SNP, lunatic Greens and woke climate change fanatics. Just like everything these morons touch they became pointless and counter productive.
Make no mistake if you fish or shoot these fanatics are coming for you.
Yesterday evening I read a very interesting account of an interview with Ben Ross, the heid beaver bummer from the Scottish Beaver Project.
I won't bore you with the details but two things stood out. The problems in the prime agricultural areas are recognised and very many culling licenses have already been issued. The second point was The Green Loonies, as you might expect, are up in arms about the culling and want the beavers trapped and relocated – with no consultation or agreement with the landowners and communities who will receive this wonderful gift, naturally. Apparently that has been dismissed and the culls are going ahead as we type.
It was said the raising of water levels by beaver dams by only a few inches can lead to extensive flooding in the prime agricultural flatlands of Angus and Perthshire and that came from the beaver bunch, not the farmers. I was very surprised at how balanced these views were.
Beavers now to be given protected staus in England and Wales, so can now be released outwith containment fencing. Ready made receivers for unwanted Scottish exports.
I wrote off to NatureScot to ask what the position is regarding reports of beavers with disease in the Lintrathen water supply. They have written back to say that wild and domestic stock carry these same diseases and the risk levels are low. They have been capturing and sampling Tayside beavers for several years finding only low disease levels and that there are beaver activity reports at Lintrathen from 2012 onwards.
Would not be the first time the SNH beaver team has lied.
We're off to the upper Tay on Saturday, really looking forward to it but fearful of what we'll find after seeing the amount of damage to the banks last year
Hoolet
How did Scotland ever survive when beavers were much more common than they are now? :roll:
Quote from: Alastair on April 15, 2021, 08:59:19 PM
How did Scotland ever survive when beavers were much more common than they are now? :roll:
We Scots are a canny bunch. Don't like change, it unsettles our world view. :lol:
Likely answer ... much, much smaller population back over 400 years ago, still managed to kill the beavers off, so must have surviving with a fair bit of beaver in the diet !
Beavers had to be exterminated in Scotland. It was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they gnawed the legs off small children who had been left unattended or dropped near water by rampaging sea eagles. No responsible landowner or game keeping organisation could ignore this.