Bringing beavers back to Scotland 'could devastate country's salmon and sea trout populations'

Published on Thursday 25 September 2008 21:52

CONTROVERSIAL plans to reintroduce beavers to Scotland should be abandoned before the animals devastate the country's salmon and sea trout populations and threaten a £70 million industry.

That was the warning issued yesterday by the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards (ASFB) after the Scottish Government's decision to allow a trial reintroduction of up to 20 beavers in Knapdale Forest in Argyll.

The pilot scheme is due to get under way next spring and will allow beavers to roam free in Scotland for the first time since they were hunted to extinction four centuries ago.

A conditional licence has been granted to the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Royal Zoological Society of Scotland as part of a six-year trial. But the ASFB has written to Mike Russell, the environment minister, claiming that the go-ahead for the "recklessly irresponsible" reintroduction has been given without an objective appraisal of the impact of beavers on salmon and sea trout.

Hugh Campbell Adamson, the ASFB chairman, said: "Beavers are designed to dam streams. If their dams impede fish migration and thus access to the maximum amount of spawning habitat, then surely it is recklessly irresponsible to release them into the Scottish countryside."

And Nick Yonge, the director of the Tweed Foundation, said: "It would be absolutely monstrous if Scotland was to be set up as a mass experiment, putting in jeopardy the substantial value of these fisheries in Scotland on which hundreds of jobs depend."

But Simon Jones, the project manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, said: "The project is a time-limited trial reintroduction of the European beaver to Knapdale. There are no salmon in the Knapdale trial area.

"It is important to note that beavers and other native species have co-existed naturally for many years."