Trees for Life has been campaigning and working to protect and expand beaver populations across Scotland for a decade, collaborating with others who share our belief that this protected native species should be supported to return to suitable habitats. Tom Bowser and his family run Argaty farm, a working upland livestock farm famous for its red kite project. More recently, wild beavers have been reintroduced here. In a special guest article for Caledonia Wild, Tom gives a first-hand account of the impact these incredible animals have had on the farm’s landscape.
This April a family of six beavers was released onto a pond on my Perthshire farm, Argaty. The animals were translocated from areas of Scotland where they had come into conflict with people.
Beavers are hugely important. Their deadwood-filled wetlands provide incredible habitats for all manner of wildlife from invertebrates to birds, bats and fish. Their dams help store water on the land – which is vital in times of flooding and drought. In an environmental crisis, these animals matter a great deal. They are a symbol of hope.
Watching our latest arrivals enjoying their first swim around their new home, I felt a huge sense of satisfaction for as recently as 2020 a relocation like this would not have been possible. Until then, Scottish Government policy forbade beavers from being rehomed to more suitable areas when they came into conflict with people. This left land managers struggling to accommodate them with just two options: accept them or shoot them. Sadly, a lot of people chose the latter, but a great deal of lobbying from the rewilding community led to a shift in government position; translocations were at last permitted. Trees for Life was perhaps the most prominent voice in the campaign for change; I respect them hugely for that.
In November 2021 we at Argaty became the first private landowners in Scotland to rehome beavers. Since then, RSPB Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland and Cairngorms National Park have also completed translocations. The Cairngorms project is the most exciting of them all, for it marks the first time that they have been moved to an entirely new part of the country where other beavers were not already present nearby. In the space of a few short years, so much progress has been made.
I have seen first-hand the amazing things that beavers can do. The farmyard at Argaty has always been prone to flooding. Water comes hammering down off the hills, washes away our tracks, and washes through our sheds. In recent wet winters, the damage done would easily amount to four figures, every single year. When beavers arrived they set to work, damming the outflow stream of their pond. In heavy rain, the water level rose until it overtopped the dam, but these busy animals were not to be defeated; they moved downstream, building more and more dams, holding more and more water in the hills. Our farm seldom floods now. Every winter, we are glad to have beavers here.
We have only had them a short time, but already we are seeing the small explosions of biodiversity that they trigger. Amphibians swim and breed in places where beavers have flooded. Herons and buzzards hunt over the wetlands; goshawks perch on felled trees and pluck their prey.
Beavers have created a landscape of change. Every night they work and rework their surroundings. The job will never be complete. Theirs is a journey without end, the very definition of rewilding.