Salmon board damns plan to introduce beavers to Scotland

Published on Thursday 5 February 2009 21:59

ONE of Scotland's leading salmon fishery boards yesterday launched a fresh assault on proposals to reintroduce beavers into Britain, warning the initiative could severely damage fish stocks and threaten a leisure industry worth £100 million a year to the Scottish economy.

At the moment 17 beavers, captured in Norway, are in quarantine before being released in Knapdale Forest in Argyll this spring, in a trial project spearheaded by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

The leaders of the Scottish beaver trial project have insisted that a wealth of research, experience and knowledge gathered over the past 50 years suggests the reintroduction of the mammals will not have a detrimental impact on salmon stocks and migration.

But the Tweed Commission, which is responsible for angling on one of Scotland's foremost salmon rivers, hit back yesterday by publishing a detailed report challenging the project's claims.

The commission said the findings of its report "entirely demolished" assertions made by the pro-beaver lobby that the mammals posed no threat whatsoever to salmon and sea trout populations.

Andrew Douglas-Home, the chairman of the commission, said: "The beaver protagonists have consistently maintained that beavers and beaver dams are entirely beneficial to fish populations. However, this is simply not borne out by the available scientific evidence, which the Tweed Foundation has now published.

"The literature shows conclusively that beavers can have a severe negative impact on migratory fish – particularly their ability to access spawning tributaries – with inevitable consequences for future fish numbers and thus employment levels on Scotland's rivers."

He added: "In light of the uncertainties and the dangers to fish, we believe that the government should give an assurance now that all the animals will be removed at the end to the trial – regardless of what limited conclusions may be drawn.

"Any unrestrained release of the trial beavers may well act as a catalyst for further releases and the released beavers will spread, breed and eventually beavers will reach the whole of Great Britain."

But Simon Jones, project manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, defended the scheme. He said: "There are no migratory fish in the trial site, and the project partners have no plans to reintroduce beavers in other sites across Scotland."