The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: harmony on August 18, 2020, 12:21:12 pm
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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/protect-beavers-in-law-and-let-them-populate-england-s-rivers-experts-tell-ministers/ar-BB183UWj?ocid=msedgdhp (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/protect-beavers-in-law-and-let-them-populate-england-s-rivers-experts-tell-ministers/ar-BB183UWj?ocid=msedgdhp)
Interesting topic.
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Yes, a very interesting topic! I assume you are wanting opinions. As a generalisation, conservationists are all for beavers repopulating Britain's rivers, many land owners are against it.
Britain has huge problems with flooding - beavers can't cure all those problems, but given time and support they can help solve many. Beavers adjust the landscape in such a way that they slow down the water flow of rivers and streams, because they prefer slow water to live in. To the casual observer, this seems to cause flooding, but only in areas where agriculture has taken over from old water meadows, or removed trees from watercourse edges. Beavers make their dams and food stores by coppicing trees such as willow and alder; the result may look chaotic at first but the trees soon regrow and form an even denser area, which slows water and allows it to be absorbed into the ground, or join a watercourse but slowly.
Some farmers want to cultivate every square inch of their land, right down to the water's edge, and right up to their fences. This encourages flooding as water is made to flow fast over the land surface, carrying away soil and not allowing plants and trees to take root. By giving up a small area for remodelling by beavers, the results in flood prevention, both on the farmer's own land and for people living in towns and villages downstream, are surely worth the investment?
Add to that the fact that by returning small areas to wetlands, which is effectively what the beavers are doing, native trees and flowers along with their insect, amphibian and bird populations will return to areas which are currently wildlife deserts.
I think beavers are wonderful creatures - if only we had a stream on our land :thinking: :sunshine:
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Fine, if landowners are properly compensated.
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Fine, if landowners are properly compensated.
Why? If our intensive agriculture is contributing to ever more flooding and we have some natural ways of reducing it, then that should take precedence. Just looking at the colour of the water of our river when it is in spate makes me despair about all the soil erosion further upstream...
We have to come to terms with not being able to "rule" over nature as we have done in the last 50 or so years, and regarding wildlife the last 500 or so years....
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Fine, if landowners are properly compensated.
It's really the other way round - as intensive farming methods and deforestation are causing so many flooding problems then the compensation and payment for anti-flood measures and damage to property should be coming from the guilty landowners.
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Not all farming is intensive but land loss to imported wildlife can still impact the viability of farming an in an area. Reduce the value of land and the poor farmer is in the position of not being able to afford to live where they are and not being able to afford to move.
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Not about beavers, but saw an article yesterday about potential reintroduction of Lynx to Scotland:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-tayside-central-53801923 (https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-tayside-central-53801923)
What do you think of that? ;)
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beaver release. why not, crack on. i mean its not like we can think of any other non native species introduced to the uk that have had a negative effect on other native species. well exept grey squirrels. oh and bracken. oh and rhodedendrum. not to mention sea eagles who apparently love fulmers as a protein filled snack. (really must learn to proof read before posting hellish spelling mistakes) :innocent:
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Not all farming is intensive but land loss to imported wildlife can still impact the viability of farming an in an area. Reduce the value of land and the poor farmer is in the position of not being able to afford to live where they are and not being able to afford to move.
Surely beavers are not imported wildlife.... they are native to the British Isles but were hunted to extinction?
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Not all farming is intensive but land loss to imported wildlife can still impact the viability of farming an in an area. Reduce the value of land and the poor farmer is in the position of not being able to afford to live where they are and not being able to afford to move.
Surely beavers are not imported wildlife.... they are native to the British Isles but were hunted to extinction?
Correct - beavers are a species native to Britain. They became extinct here about 400 years ago as a result of overhunting and persecution. Where man has caused an extinction like that then reintroduction of the species seems perfectly justifiable, especially where they can do good.
I know there is a keen group wanting to reintroduce lynx to the Scottish Highlands and to Derwent Water. My own feeling on that is that we don't have large enough areas of really wild land to support a viable population which would not be inbred and could be self sustaining. Sadly I think the same applies to wolves. Experience in Europe shows that many of the conditions which caused the demise of these species still apply - hunting by the local human population being the main one. Unfortunately the natural numbers of wild prey species are no longer around so any reintroduced predators would starve or resort to taking domestic livestock and pets, which in turn would lead to persecution again. This is very different to beavers which are wholely vegetarian, and cultivate their own coppiced food and building materials.
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We once had dinosaurs but any reintroduction would not be natural. 400 years is a long time for other wildlife to expand to fill a niche.
You may guess that I am against reintroductions of most things on priciple.
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Worth a try I reckon BUT NOT TOO FAST ! But seems that remark is too late: there is, I understand, not-contained beaver populations already. How did that happen then ?!
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beaver release. why not, crack on. i mean its not like we can think of any other non native species introduced to the uk that have had a negative effect on other fnative species. well exept grey squirrels. oh and bracken. oh and rhodedendrum. nit to mention sea eagles who aooarently love fulmers as a protein filled snack
Calling sea eagles non-native is pushing it a bit.
The last one was shot in 1918, they were re-introduced in 1975 so we're only absent for 52 years, that's just 2 generations (of eagles)
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Heard the were reintroduced up in Alyth Perthshire.
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So [member=24672]harmony[/member] having introduced the topic, what are your opinions and thoughts?
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[member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] yes, I'm aware of that but I have tweaked my back and sitting typing isn't the best at the moment.
In a nutshell I'm not against the idea. I would like to see the current projects expand but with clear plans in place to deal with the problems that will arise. It is foolish to think there wont be any but I think we can learn a lot from other countries on how to mitigate the issues.
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Beavers I can deal with lynx and wolves are NO from me.
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A question: anyone know what the effect of beavers is on the migration/population of fish on a beaver "managed" river way ?
It occurs to me that a beaver dam (or dams) along a river way will affect trout (and other fish, crustaceans etc) movements and habitation of a river way.
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Arobwk, this is something I’m interested in. We have some lovely burns and one in particular. I’d like to create naturalised, partial damns along it, with a central channel to hold back more water at all times and slow the flow when it’s in spate. However we’d have to jump through many hoops and would be worried about getting something wrong or even inviting the people in to ask what we could do in case they’d find fault with something.
Doing this might make sense to me but everything is more complicated than it seems.
For one thing, creating dams and blockages slow water and can create habitat and reduce soil erosion. However these things can also increase erosion as anyone who’s seen a watercourse changing its path due to an obstruction will know.
Leaky dams which are sometimes popular for slowing force of water don’t always provide good access for fish (too big to access the gaps in silted up branches unless there is a good flow over the top). I’m also interested in the long term effects of these; do they eventually silt up completely?
The beaver dams that I’ve seen near Kirriemuir have largely been removed periodically requiring diggers to be brought into the sites and now large metal cages built around culverts under bridges. Otherwise the nature reserves paths and probably hides would be underwater. The beavers have felled a fair amount of trees and the reserve’s staff have put chicken wire around remaining trees so that they aren’t damaged.
They seem to be less of an issue on larger waterways like the Tay.
I feel we live in such a managed landscape that I don’t look forward to the day when I have to start wrapping trees in chicken wire, hiring diggers in to keep our access bridges open, having metal cages built to stop them damming under bridges. I’ll be very please to watch them with the children.
And it still feels hypocritical that beavers can ringbark and kill the riparian trees (which taxpayers paid to have planted because they are ‘needed to stabilise the banks and create beneficial waterside habitat’) and build their dams and obstruct waterways for fish, but I would have to get licences to do either of these things and spend time and money replanting the trees! (Lol! Rant, But it’s been a long day!) :roflanim:
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beaver release. why not, crack on. i mean its not like we can think of any other non native species introduced to the uk that have had a negative effect on other fnative species. well exept grey squirrels. oh and bracken. oh and rhodedendrum. nit to mention sea eagles who aooarently love fulmers as a protein filled snack
Calling sea eagles non-native is pushing it a bit.
The last one was shot in 1918, they were re-introduced in 1975 so we're only absent for 52 years, that's just 2 generations (of eagles)
aye. sorry thats my bad writting im aware sea eagles were fairly recently hunted out of the uk. although how one teaches a partially hand reared bird that it only eats fish is certainly beyond me.
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A question: anyone know what the effect of beavers is on the migration/population of fish on a beaver "managed" river way ?
It occurs to me that a beaver dam (or dams) along a river way will affect trout (and other fish, crustaceans etc) movements and habitation of a river way.
It seems on the whole beavers are good for fish. There's loads of info on the net. There are beavers on many European rivers that have migrating salmon.
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beaver release. why not, crack on. i mean its not like we can think of any other non native species introduced to the uk that have had a negative effect on other fnative species. well exept grey squirrels. oh and bracken. oh and rhodedendrum. nit to mention sea eagles who aooarently love fulmers as a protein filled snack
Calling sea eagles non-native is pushing it a bit.
The last one was shot in 1918, they were re-introduced in 1975 so we're only absent for 52 years, that's just 2 generations (of eagles)
aye. sorry thats my bad writting im aware sea eagles were fairly recently hunted out of the uk. although how one teaches a partially hand reared bird that it only eats fish is certainly beyond me.
Sea Eagles don't only eat fish - that's Ospreys. Sea Eagles eat more general prey like other raptors do, as well as fish.
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And it still feels hypocritical that beavers can ringbark and kill the riparian trees (which taxpayers paid to have planted because they are ‘needed to stabilise the banks and create beneficial waterside habitat’) and build their dams and obstruct waterways for fish, but I would have to get licences to do either of these things and spend time and money replanting the trees! (Lol! Rant, But it’s been a long day!) :roflanim:
Hi Steph Hen, most trees at water courses are the types which easily regrow when coppiced, such as alder, sallow, poplar and willow. The beavers cut them off a foot or more above ground level and given a year or two the trees will be regrowing well, with more stems than before. So if you selectively coppice your trees in rotation you will certainly not need to replant. Each time a tree is coppiced, it develops an ever stronger root system which can only be good for holding back the banks.
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[member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] yes, I'm aware of that but I have tweaked my back and sitting typing isn't the best at the moment.
In a nutshell I'm not against the idea. I would like to see the current projects expand but with clear plans in place to deal with the problems that will arise. It is foolish to think there wont be any but I think we can learn a lot from other countries on how to mitigate the issues.
A good point. Both landowners and conservationists can shut their minds to the needs of the other, when it's conversations and education of both which is important. It is as necessary for conservationists to understand the farmers needs and point of view, as it is for farmers to understand the inportance and relevance of this type of conservation project. I agree with you that before progress can be made there need to be measures in place to deal with any problems which arise, but those measures need to be decided on with input from all sides or they are worthless.
I hope your back improves soon - no fun having a sore back !
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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/why-the-lives-of-britains-fish-could-be-about-to-get-better/ar-BB1dgzhn (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/why-the-lives-of-britains-fish-could-be-about-to-get-better/ar-BB1dgzhn)
So panels, your Starter for 10 is (no conferring) - What differentiates a beaver dam from a weir ???