Beavers reintroduction

[deepcarr]

Can any of you good people out there tell me anything about the reintroduction of the euro beaver back to the UK, i have only seen a rubbish debate between a very passionate wildlife trust employee, and a not very well prepared man fom the countryside alliance. Any information would be gratefully recieved

[Dogghound]

What sort of infomation do you want?

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by deepcarr

Can any of you good people out there tell me anything about the reintroduction of the euro beaver back to the UK, i have only seen a rubbish debate between a very passionate wildlife trust employee, and a not very well prepared man fom the countryside alliance. Any information would be gratefully recieved

I guess the Countryside Alliance would be most interested in whether a 0.223 Winchester be the most suitable calibre rifle to use when hunting them!

Jim

[Dogghound]

I personally feel they would be a good, there has been several introductions but once they become established they will provide a habitat for a massive number of species. Particularly our amphibians which are affected by habitat loss at the moment.

[deepcarr]

Information that iam looking for is the benifits to wet woodland and associated fauna and flora, the management of beavers and the sort of numbers that would be benificial to say a three mile strip of woodland and if there are any cons, excluding upsetting the local landowners.

And any detremental effects on ancient woodlands.

Thanks

[Dogghound]

Armstrong, H. M., Poulsom, L., Simson, P., Wilson, J and Tracy D. (2003). Testing methods for monitoring beaver impacts on terrestrial vegetation in Knapdale Is a good paper to read.

Obviously these are going to cause quite large habitat changes, wet woodland will be at less risk due to the species present there. However it will change, these changes are likley to have both positive and negative affects on other biota depending on how it is adapted for living in a aqutic or semi-aquatic habitat. Most species will just be pushed further out from the flooding, other benifit from it. A draw back is they have preferences for species such as aspen, willow and poplar which can cause declines in certain tree types. The habitat that you describe sounds perfect for them as most of there dams will be in valleys, they wont flood massive sections of land. There is a threat to ancient woodland, a group of beavers can take 300 trees down in 1 winter. They are not as damaging as the north american species.

The numbers for that sort of area would be two groups of two to reproduce and create two different family groups, which in time will grow to around 5-6 individuals. Again this depends on the habitat, in optimum habitat about 5-600m of river are needed, in a poor habitat it can be up to 5km, to support a group.There are no cons as such but if you are planning this be prepared for alot of habitat change.

[deepcarr]

Thanks for that, some thing to be going on with.

[aeshna5]

There was an article several pages long in a recent issue of British Wildlife magazine (it's bi-monthly + a brilliant mag, for an in depth look at UK wildlife + conservation) on this exact topic.

It may be worth your time ringing their subscriptions department + getting a back-copy of this issue.

[blueboar]

Has'nt the forestry Commossion done a beaver re-introduction in one of thier big forests in the last couple of years?


bb

[gillwrig]

There are two at Martin Mere ( in North West ) but they weren't out last week.

Didn't realise how big they were - you could see where they had felled the trees to make a damm, they were pretty big trees as well.