news/editorial

4 May 2014 News/Editorial

Beavers are, it seems, most likely to be formally approved for re-introduction by Scottish Ministers sometime next year following the end of the Knapdale trial.

Magnus Linklater has written a superb commentary in last Wednesday’s Times (30^th April); despite the inevitable dangers and obvious long term damage that will be done, his conclusion is that those who live and work on the land, farmers, fishery owners, anglers, who will have to deal with the consequences, will be ignored and re-introductions will go ahead.

If so, let me give you a glimpse of the future.

The Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), together with a land mass slightly smaller than Great Britain, now have an unimaginable number, over 250,000 beavers, from a standing (nil population) start 60 years ago.

The population is out of control; to attempt to contain, they cull/kill/hunt over 35,000 beavers every year, and still the population increases.

All this to control beaver damage in 3 countries whose total human population is around 7 million; in a similar land mass, Great Britain has 60 million people.

It does not take a genius to work out what beaver/human conflicts will happen here in 60 years time, when the human population will be over 70 million and God only knows how many beavers.

Unlike the Baltic states, our rivers are havens for migratory fish (salmon, sea trout, brown trout, grayling) all of which depend on being able to move freely upstream to spawn; beavers build massive dams on spawning tributaries, it is what they do and in anything other than huge floods, those dams will stop our fish getting to where they want to spawn; the dams will have to be removed and, because the beavers will simply build the dams again, the beavers will have to be taken away/culled.

And I have not mentioned the damage to trees, to flood banks, to canals, to road culverts etc etc.

Who is going to pay for all this?

Will the Great British public ever countenance controlling by culling those sweet, whiskery, furry, cuddly beavery-things?

Can you imagine the outcry here at killing over 35,000 beavers every year, as they do now in the Baltic States, just to keep the population under control?

Formally authorising re-introductions will be one of the stupidest, most misguided and idiotic things any Government here could ever do. SNH is supposed to be independent in assessing the wisdom of all this, but are they really independent of Ministers and the “environmentalist” obsession with “rewilding” and getting Scotland back to how it used to be 400 years ago (not that there is any real evidence that there ever were many beavers here then)?

No, and I suspect the public will not be told what has happened in the Baltic States or, if they are told, the line will be that it will be different here.

No, it won’t.

The only pity is that neither I nor the Minister will be around in 60 years time for me to say to him “I told you so”.

--ooOoo--

As expected, the reported 2013 salmon catch by rod and line (figures released last week by the Government’s Chief Statistician) was very poor at 66,387. By way of stark contrast, the net catch was 24,311, the highest for some years. As the multitude of rods who fish Scottish rivers killed about 20% of their catch, it means that the (very few) nets killed almost double what the rods killed. Those nets also make minimal monetary contributions to river Boards and the upkeep of the rivers from which the fish they kill come.

But it was not really that, for the nets catching/killing too many in 2013 is old news, which concerned me.

Marine Scotland Science’s (MSS) “Report on the Status of Scottish Salmon and Sea Trout stocks 2013” (you can read it online http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0044/00448588.pdf) is disconcertingly complacent, for example:

“The recent assessment of the status of Scottish salmon stocks by MSS suggests that the overall number of salmon returning to Scottish rivers has increased over recent years.”

Now of course it was a dry year last year, never good for rod catches, but you try convincing those who fish on the Spey that “the number of salmon returning to Scottish rivers has increased….”.

They will laugh at you, and with this spring proving very poor everywhere, we might all join in the general hilarity.

The 2013 figure of 66,387 is 25% down on the average post 2003 (when the North East (Northumbrian) drift nets were radically reduced) and 40% down on the recent peak catch of 2010.

It takes some convenient lapses of memory and careful selection of data to put a positive spin on that, as MSS appear to have done.

But then you can prove anything with statistics.

My mother used to say to me, “You would argue black is white if it suited you.”

It would seem to suit MSS.