The Eurasian Beaver Handbook

‘The church … the mill, bridge, salmon leap, an orchard with a delightful garden, all stand together on a small plot of ground. The Teivi has another singular particularity, being the only river in Wales, or even in England, which has beavers. In Scotland they are said to be found in one river, but are very scarce.’ Giraldus Cambrensis (1180)

The above quotation describes a British landscape, moulded by people to suit their needs, which was also occupied by Eurasian beavers. The salmon (Salmo salar) leap, where fish could be harvested for consumption during their annual migration, offers a tantalising clue as to why the Eurasian beaver may have survived on the River Teivi at a time when it had otherwise become such an unfamiliar species in a British landscape. In 10th-century Wales, a beaver pelt was worth 120d (pence), and a pine marten (Martes martes) pelt 24d, while Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra), Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus) and red fox (Vulpes vulpes) pelts were worth 8d each (Rodgers 1947–48). Did this community, which successfully managed its fish, also tolerate beavers for the prospect of a similar and profitable annual harvest?

The Eurasian beaver is a native species which was once widespread in freshwater habitats throughout Britain. Fossil records indicate that beavers were present in Britain 2 million years ago – and archaeological evidence, including gnawed timber, dams, lodges, burrows and bones, has been recorded from a number of sites (Macdonald et al. 1995; Coles 2006). Various place names, illustrations and other references bear testament to the former presence of this animal (Coles 2006). In 1837, the nearly complete skeleton of a beaver was found in a hole in the bank of the River Stour, near Keynston Mill in Dorset.

Eurasian beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain for their castoreum (a secretion from their castor glands with supposed medicinal properties, used by beavers in chemical communication), meat, fur and other body parts such as jaw bones. By the 15th century, the trade in their fur was no longer economically viable due to overexploitation, and their presence began to fade from folk memory. Oral traditions of their presence on Loch Ness and in Lochaber in Scotland, and in the Ogwen Valley in Wales, lingered on until the end of the 18th century (Coles 2006). Some of the latest physical evidence of beaver presence in Britain is a beaver-chewed stick carbon dated to 1269–1396, which was found in the upper Tyne catchment (Manning et al. 2014). While we will never know when the last British beaver was killed, a church ledger record from the village of Bolton Percy near York in 1780 records the payment of a bounty of tuppence for the head of a beaver (Coles 2006). No other references to the species’ survival beyond this date are currently known.

Figure 2.1 Beaver-related place names exist throughout Britain. (D. Gow)

The concept of reintroducing beavers to mainland Britain (they are not known to have ever been native to Ireland or any of the outer isles) is not new. Their restoration has been widely discussed in both the general media and academic literature. Despite recommendations for a more comprehensive process of restoration (Gurnell et al. 2009), the return of the beaver has been a haphazard affair. At the time of writing, two officially licensed trial beaver releases into the wild exist: the Scottish Beaver Trial in Mid-Argyll, and the Devon Beaver Trial on the River Otter, Devon. The Scottish Government is due to consider the results of the trial and make a final decision on the future of beavers in Scotland (expected some time in 2016). Additionally, in the mid-2000s it became apparent that a sizeable population of unlicensed wild beavers were distributed throughout the catchment of the Rivers Tay and Earn in Perthshire, Scotland (Campbell et al. 2012a). In England and Wales, there is scattered evidence from field signs and photographs of the existence of small numbers of free-living wild beavers. Wild beavers are therefore already present in Britain. There are also a growing number of enclosed populations, and there are proposals for further trial releases in England and Wales (e.g. Welsh Beaver Project). Unless British governments decide to remove these beavers their populations will increase and their distribution expand. An understanding of their management requirements will therefore become a necessity.

Lord Onslow, writing in the Countryman magazine in 1939, suggested that as the ‘beaver have become extinct in England only within the last few centuries … there seems no reason at all why they should not be reintroduced’ (Onslow 1939). In 1994, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), Natural England (then English Nature) and Natural Resources Wales (then Countryside Council for Wales) began to consider the potential for restoring beavers in Britain. To date, this process has progressed furthest in Scotland, with an official trial reintroduction and the scientific study of the larger unlicensed population in Tayside, though the Devon Beaver Project was given a licence for a five-year scientifically monitored trial release on the River Otter in 2015.

In 1998, SNH launched a public consultation to ascertain wider attitudes to beaver reintroduction in Scotland (SNH 1998). While the majority of respondents favoured reintroduction, there were concerns and opposition expressed by others who feared that beaver activity would have detrimental impacts on farming, fisheries and forestry. In response to these findings, SNH took the decision to develop a time-limited, trial reintroduction in the Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS)-managed Knapdale Forest in Mid-Argyll, to explore the feasibility of releasing beavers and to study their impacts. Although an initial SNH licence application (2002) was turned down in 2005 by the then Scottish Executive, a joint licence application submitted in 2007 by the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) was successful. This led to the development of the Scottish Beaver Trial, the first licensed and unfenced reintroduction of Eurasian beavers (and in addition the first official mammal reintroduction) in Britain.

Figure 2.2 Beaver pair released as part of the Scottish Beaver Trial. (Scottish Beaver)

Figure 2.3 Camera-trap image of wild beaver on the River Otter, England. (T. Buckley)

Although to date the reintroduction process has progressed furthest in Scotland, feasibility studies on beaver reintroduction to Wales (Halley et al. 2009) and England (Gurnell et al. 2009) have been published. Since the first release at Ham Fen in Kent in 2002 (Campbell and Tattersall 2003), breeding populations of beavers have been established in large enclosures at several locations in England, Scotland and Wales. One example of a well-studied project of this type is the demonstration site established in 2011 in the upper watershed of the River Wolf which has been developed by the Devon Wildlife Trust (DWT 2013). These controlled projects can provide useful information when employed specifically to assess the role of beavers as habitat-modifiers and as tools for landscape management or stakeholder engagement.

Key concepts

•The Eurasian beaver is a native mammal to Britain, and was once widespread.

•Beavers were hunted to extinction for their meat and fur, and were largely extirpated by the 16th century.

•Beaver reintroduction has a long history in Britain. Currently, there are two licensed trial releases (Mid-Argyll and Devon), with free-living beavers present in Perthshire and parts of England.