England's first wild beavers for 400 years allowed to live on River Otter
- Thread starter GeorgeC1
- Start date
A Island with a healthy eco-system is a return all on it's own imo.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
That's a bit of a strawman, I never said displace all agriculture.
If you aren't going to control numbers by culling, just create 'more wildlife reserves', then you will need to take more and more land up. Taking that ag land will displace farmers and food production.
I ask again, where do you draw the line? Surely these scenarios have all been fully thought out by the rewilding zealots?
Define "expert".
Swarfmonkey
Member
- Location
- Hampshire
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see statements like that.
They haven’t done the nature any good in the 15 years I’ve had them.
All the riverbank trees been felled and banks now eroded with nothing to bind or protect them when river in spate. Banks collapsing due to them burrowing into them to create lodges.
All leads to more sediment in the river, filling in pools that would previously hold fish.
That’s experts for you
All the riverbank trees been felled and banks now eroded with nothing to bind or protect them when river in spate. Banks collapsing due to them burrowing into them to create lodges.
All leads to more sediment in the river, filling in pools that would previously hold fish.
That’s experts for you
- Location
- DD9.
But can that be achieved without introducing something that hasn’t been part of the ecosystem for centuries?
There’s Beavers near here on a nature reserve round a loch. Council now spent thousands on fences and grids across the streams to prevent them getting blocked by beaver detritus and flooding the reserve.
has society as a whole benefitted from this, or could that money, especially given current circumstances, have been spent somewhere more worthy?
Who in society do you think loses because the pressure group won? It ain’t the well off.
- Location
- Carmarthenshire, West Wales
I can think of a lot of 2 acre green areas in every town and city in the UK, that have not been used for most of lockdown, we can start then by making them the nature reserves, but maybe the supporters of association football might have other ideas!
I think that is the same way I feel about people wanting to create more nature reserves.
ollie989898
Member
Mankind needs to stop pishing around trying to introduce or reintroduce species into habitats. We don't understand ecosystems anything like well enough to meddle in this way and our ability to control species, once released is very limited. There is no way of determining the long term consequences. If Beavers dam enough watercourses, what will the effect on other aquatic life be? Will Salmon or trout or eels be able to extend their reach along waterways, what will be the effect on wildfowl or freshwater crayfish or the like?
It's experimenting on a grand scale and it needs to be stopped completely. You cannot recreate something that doesn't exist any longer. Natural food chains were obliterated long ago and the apex predators are all long gone.
It's experimenting on a grand scale and it needs to be stopped completely. You cannot recreate something that doesn't exist any longer. Natural food chains were obliterated long ago and the apex predators are all long gone.
Danllan
Member
- Location
- Sir Gar / Carms
See below...
I'm as pro re-wilding as any farmer you'll find, but @neilo's question is fair, and your answer is a cop-out.
Whether the beavers' reintroduction and expansion is controlled / carried out with culling, is limited to land owned by HMG, is catered for by decent compensatory packages or even via compulsory purchase - all of which are rational, if not necessarily popular - the 'plan' should be made clear. Then people will understand what's going on, and things can be challenged where appropriate.
Yes, but... you're looking at what things are like post local extinction; the natural, in fact the default situation was what was there before we killed them off.They haven’t done the nature any good in the 15 years I’ve had them.
All the riverbank trees been felled and banks now eroded with nothing to bind or protect them when river in spate. Banks collapsing due to them burrowing into them to create lodges.
All leads to more sediment in the river, filling in pools that would previously hold fish.
That’s experts for you
No, poor argument. If beavers were so detrimental to fisheries there wouldn't be any fish in most of Canada, Russia etc. which clearly isn't the case; we need to look closer to home as to why our rivers' wildlife has been denuded...
- Location
- North of Perth
@happy is right.there's no end of trees around us that have died.all the young saplings around the loch where I live have gone.See below...
I'm as pro re-wilding as any farmer you'll find, but @neilo's question is fair, and your answer is a cop-out.
Whether the beavers' reintroduction and expansion is controlled / carried out with culling, is limited to land owned by HMG, is catered for by decent compensatory packages or even via compulsory purchase - all of which are rational, if not necessarily popular - the 'plan' should be made clear. Then people will understand what's going on, and things can be challenged where appropriate.
Yes, but... you're looking at what things are like post local extinction; the natural, in fact the default situation was what was there before we killed them off.
No, poor argument. If beavers were so detrimental to fisheries there wouldn't be any fish in most of Canada, Russia etc. which clearly isn't the case; we need to look closer to home as to why our rivers' wildlife has been denuded...
I was bailing a field last year.couldn't understand why it was so wet. Further along the endrig realised the beavers had built a dam an the water was backing up.
- Location
- Somerset
matthew
Member
- Location
- Cornwall, SW England
No they don't.
Beavers have no natural predators. and they will breed and spread.
I don't think you'd be happy until England was one big one.
That's a bit of a strawman, I never said displace all agriculture.
Beavers can't read the Keep Out signs.
From behind a desk, and with their collective eyes on votes, maybe.
Now see below, where beavers have had free access for several years.
They haven’t done the nature any good in the 15 years I’ve had them.
All the riverbank trees been felled and banks now eroded with nothing to bind or protect them when river in spate. Banks collapsing due to them burrowing into them to create lodges.
All leads to more sediment in the river, filling in pools that would previously hold fish.
That’s experts for you
Now a tale from Germany, where the rewilded beavers have had the good life for several years.
The river banks, once maintained with a generous deciduous tree line edging arable and grassland - gone. All gone.
The beavers burrowed into the banks, either side of the river to make their dens, and not having the hundreds of years of ecology that the Everglade trees have, our native variety simply drowned. Died. The beavers felled them and the result was not a berluddy Nature Reserve, but a swamp almost a mile wide in places, where NOTHING grows. A stagnant berluddy swamp.
These are actual results, consequences if you like, experienced by residents and farmers living with these 'bright ideas' of desk jockey 'experts'..
oh f**k we are doomed doomed I tell you
- Location
- East yorks
I seriously want to reintroduce velociraptor they were here well before the beavers and a humans and all the other stuff so what is there to loose?
- Location
- East yorks
Experts and gov bodies in my experience can spend money faster than Corona and achieve absolutely zero meaning full output in a lot of cases. Give them long enough, enough money to waste and enough experts and they could say the Earth is flat
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ollie989898
Member
See below...
I'm as pro re-wilding as any farmer you'll find, but @neilo's question is fair, and your answer is a cop-out.
Whether the beavers' reintroduction and expansion is controlled / carried out with culling, is limited to land owned by HMG, is catered for by decent compensatory packages or even via compulsory purchase - all of which are rational, if not necessarily popular - the 'plan' should be made clear. Then people will understand what's going on, and things can be challenged where appropriate.
Yes, but... you're looking at what things are like post local extinction; the natural, in fact the default situation was what was there before we killed them off.
No, poor argument. If beavers were so detrimental to fisheries there wouldn't be any fish in most of Canada, Russia etc. which clearly isn't the case; we need to look closer to home as to why our rivers' wildlife has been denuded...
Canada and Russia are simply vast places where huge areas never see the hand of man, much less any of the environmentally deleterious things we get up to. It's not a comparison to the bulk of the landscape in the UK really.
Danllan
Member
- Location
- Sir Gar / Carms
Just as they did before we wiped them out. I'm not arguing that they don't make things to suit themselves, of course they do, just as all living things do, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. My point is that we have destroyed so much that is about time we a) stopped doing so, and b) make what amends we can.
As I stated in an earlier post, the beavers can't be allowed a free rein, but there's no reason why they can't be reintroduce, controlled, and landowners compensated as and where necessary.
See below for another point...
No, they 'really' are good comparisons, because they give us a datum from which the damage we have done can be measured.
Now, if you are against such re-introductions on 'principle', because it's 'wrong', that's just irrational dogma, and can't be argued with, it's nothing but time-wasting. But, if you aren't against them completely and wouldn't, for example, object to a large landowner having them - contained and controlled - on his own patch, then we have something to work from.