In one corner swims the salmon, in the other the beaver. The salmon eats smaller fish, the beaver is a veggie. Compatible creatures, you�d have thought.

ROSEMARY GORING

In one corner swims the salmon, in the other the beaver. The salmon eats smaller fish, the beaver is a veggie. Compatible creatures, you'd have thought. Yet in recent days this pair have become deadly enemies as a countryside battle has erupted which promises to be every bit as bloody, political and intractable as that which plagued fox hunting.

Ranged on one side are the champions of the salmon, that most gymnastic and delicious of fish. On the other are the beaver huggers, those who have either paved the way for its trial reintroduction in Argyll next spring, or who are eager to see it going about its business once it has rejoined Scotland's indigenous flora and fauna.

Given the furore, you'd think the beaver was an illegal immigrant rather than an invited guest of the government. Disagreement is not so much a way of life in rural Scotland as a birthright, but in this instance personal preference and scientific fact are being pitted against each other rather more vigorously than the usual gantry wrangle or letters-page fusillade.

The River Tweed Commission is threatening to take legal action to prohibit the government's plans for the beaver's reintroduction, and its argument is bolstered by a growing band of celebrities vocal in defence of the salmon, among them Sir Ian Botham and broadcasters Fiona Armstrong and Jeremy Paxman, keen anglers all.

Your average townie must find it hard to understand how people who share a passion for wildlife can be so savagely at each other's throats that they more resemble stoats than human beings. Surely nature lovers should be among the most peaceable folk on the planet? Well, yes and no. In their own way, each party is hell-bent on protecting the environment, and believes it's doing so in the best interests of all concerned. The problem is, they want to do it their way. And when they don't get that, one learns that nature is truly red in tooth and claw.

The beaver lobby argues that this industrious little gnasher, which was hunted to extinction in the sixteenth century, deserves to be reinstated, and after examining research in Europe, believes it will have a beneficial effect on the countryside. Meanwhile, landowners and anglers are outraged because they are convinced the rodent's dam-building proclivities will pose a threat to salmon by hampering their passage upriver to spawn.

It would take Kofi Annan to bring this conflict of interests to a happy conclusion. Annan not being available, the next best recourse is to facts. These would seem overwhelmingly to favour the beaver, showing that salmon spawn in fast-flowing rivers, where beavers tend not to dam; and that in any case their dams are so constructed that salmon can pass through or over them. According to the Scottish Beavers Network, Sweden's leading beaver expert who is himself a salmon fisherman stated that the reason for the lack of studies on this matter is quite simply because "there is not a problem to study".

The brutal fact is that this debate is less about ecological truth and more about who controls the countryside. For centuries, the landed classes have been able to determine what was done to the countryside without fear of interference. Whether it was the nadir of landowner sensitivity, when people were cleared off their crofts to make way for sheep, or the Victorian habit of turning rivers into an expensive day out and moorland and mountainsides into shooting ranges for grouse and game hunters - trends that persist - rural Scotland has been not just a rich man's purse but a playground.

For many land-owners and their nouveau riche chums, Scotland is little more than a mobile larder, a hunting, shooting and fishing paradise only bearable with gun or rod in hand. Even for those who are country-folk to the marrow, their interest in wildlife is inextricably bound up with its killing, be it deer, pheasants or fish. This is not to say landowners are not passionate or responsible caretakers of their land. With the exception of those estates where raptors come to suspicious ends, the opposite is usually the case. The problem, however, is that many estates are more concerned with the economic advantages brought by sport than with the longer-term benefits of wildlife protection which, in a case such as the beaver, cuts across their sense of entitlement. And no matter what they say, such sports are expensive, class-ridden and riven with snobbery.

If the anglers adding their voices to the River Tweed Commission's grievances were hoodies from Castle-milk, would their endorsement be reported? I think not. So let's make no mistake. The anger roused by the government's proposed reintroduction of beavers may be partly and understandably based on anxiety about an unknown element being introduced into the wild.

At heart, however, it is a struggle between a new power-monger in the countryside and those who until now have been used not just to pulling the trigger but calling all the shots.