news/editorial

24 March 2019 News/Editorial

59 salmon and 8 sea trout was the Tweed’s improved catch last week, bringing the season’s totals to 180 salmon and 20 sea trout to 23rd March 2019.

After two weeks of flooding, it was still on the big side for most beats. With a cool and settled forecast for next week, conditions should be perfect as river heights drop. We are getting more into the business end of spring, and catches are already well spread out over the main stem of the river, thanks to the extra water. Fishing should improve from now on.

But will it?

The sand martins have arrived bang on cue, those harbingers of spring, hatches of olives and march browns, have been seen. There are even some salmon.

All is well.

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I read that beavers are to be given legal protection in Scotland, despite the very obvious problems they will cause as their numbers grow.

As the Government has promoted their re-introduction and has now given even those beavers introduced illegally (on Tayside) legal protection, is the Government going to pick up all the bills that beavers will cause in protecting trees with wire, in clearing dams and blocked culverts, in repairing drainage ditches and flood banks? And what about all those trees planted along salmon spawning tributaries to improve the habitat and keep the water shaded in this ever warming world, who will pay for protecting or replacing them?

There will be a licencing procedure via SNH for removing dams and controlling numbers; excuse my scepticism, but just one picture in the Press of a beaver being shot or a dam being removed, and will politicians and SNH be running scared of granting any licence for anything much?

Last time we had beavers there were maybe 5 million people in the UK, now there are 66 million. The human/beaver impacts will be huge and eventually most people will say “why did we allow this to happen?” and beavers will be treated as unwelcome pests by those who live in the countryside.

So, will the Government pay for the immense and continuing damage that will be caused by beavers as their numbers increase and as years go by? On that subject Ms Cunningham, the Minister, was remarkably silent. We the public, especially farmers, land and fishery owners, will have to pick up the pieces and the costs. Ms Cunningham will be long gone when the damage, and the bills/costs, peak as beaver numbers mushroom at 16% compound every year, as they have elsewhere post re-introduction.

At that rate, assuming we have about 500 beavers now in and around Tayside, we will have 20,000 in Scotland after 20 years, and 90,000 after 30 years, slightly lower than the numbers which both Latvia and Lithuania (over 100,000) have now after very small beaver re-introductions 60 years ago. The Government and SNH know perfectly well this is going to happen here as well, but say nothing about the huge problems such vast numbers will bring, simplistically saying only that beavers will be “good for biodiversity”.

My Sunday Times this morning says that SNH are providing training for gamekeepers, and others who get a licence, on how to exercise that licence. In other words, SNH are expecting immediate and significant problems with controlling beaver damage, and a number of early licence applications from those affected. I wonder why?

Amusingly, this news has been greeted, of course, by howls of righteous fury and indignation from those ubiquitous legions of bunny huggers who never want anybody to control anything. Beavers look cute and cuddly, consequently the great British public go “ooh” and “aah” when they see them on TV, and so think they want to have them back.

Well, they are certainly going to get them.

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For those interested in the debate as to whether spinning causes more mortality than fly, my kind correspondent has sent me a fascinating study from Ireland.

It is interesting for all sorts of reasons, not least the very high overall survival rate of salmon subject to catch and release.

In case I am accused of bias, you will have to read it to find out whether it finds that spinning is more damaging than fly.

Here is the link https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265513323_Survival_of_wild_Atlantic_salmon_Salmo_salar_after_catch_and_release_angling_in_three_Irish_rivers