Later this year, the Scottish Government will make its decision on whether beavers have a future in Scotland.
Since 2008, a community of the animals has been living in Knapdale in Argyll after being reintroduced there and the experts who have been monitoring them, led by Scottish Natural Heritage, are due to report to the Government by the end of next month.
The Scottish Natural Heritage report will be a thorough examination of the five-year experiment, but that does not mean the government has an easy decision to make, as there has been opposition from some land-owners and farmers who have raised concerns about the potential damage to trees and rivers. On the other hand, there is also widespread backing for the idea, and now The John Muir Trust, the conservation charity, has added its voice to the support. Beavers, it says, should have a permanent home in Scotland.
The trust bases its position on the fact that beavers perform some key functions in our ecosystems. We already know their presence encourages other species and plantlife, but the trust says reintroducing the beaver, and other species like it, will ultimately allow nature to take its course and be more resilient in the face of climate change. "We would like to see large parts of Britain set aside for rewilding," its chief executive Stuart Brooks said. "Which means repairing damaged ecosystems, restoring natural processes and reintroducing lose species including the beaver to create a richer, wilder environment."
It is an attractive argument, but the trust itself knows that any advance has to be cautious and suggests the Knapdale trial should be followed by further licensed introductions of the animals across the UK. That is the right approach as we have to thoroughly understand what the impact of beavers is, and can be, before they are permitted to spread more widely. We also know from the example of American mink, which bred widely in Scotland after escaping from farms, how quickly a species can spread.
The same cautious approach should apply to other species which have been singled out as potential candidates for reintroduction to Scotland. The Scottish Wildlife Trust has made a strong case for the lynx, for example, not least because the big cat is a predator of roe deer, a species that has multiplied in recent years in Scotland and has been blamed for holding back the regeneration of some trees. The lynx could also help attract more tourists in the way that the wolves reintroduced in Yellowstone Park have in Wyoming, although in a small country there will always be a limit to how far you can go.
The only way to resolve the arguments around reintroduction is carry out controlled trials and, properly monitored and controlled, there is no reason why such a trial involving lynx should not go ahead. The case for permanently reintroducing the beaver is also becoming increasingly hard to resist. No one is suggesting that the floodgates should be suddenly opened, but the Scottish Government should seriously consider other schemes like Kanpdale and whether they could help restore some natural balance to an ecosystem that has often suffered at the hands of one species in particular: man.
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