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Bever are now living in Scotland. Both from official reintroduction and unofficial releases
Yes but it is still very difficult to get government approval for the release of beavers throughout the UK.
For example the Knepp Estate, which is three and a half thousand acres, has been waiting years for department of environment approval for the release of the beavers which they are forced to keep in an enclosed pen.
ernielynch
Full MemberThere’s an interesting programme on North American lynx
Of course in america they're not Lynx, they're Axe, and therefore can be dangerous but are much less likely to escape
supposedly it was william the conqueror (1066?) who claimed england belonged to him, split it between his cronies, . So, his cronies found that deer meat would fetch good money so arranged forests so that they could hunt deer better, and people were no longer allowed to forage in the forests to live, in case it affected the deerhunting. so they had to work for the landowner, or get branded/hung etc, to survive. That was the beginning of the notion of Property
Nah, hunting forests predate the Normans by at least a couple of centuries, if not more. King Alfred the Great had a hunting lodge in Chippenham, his hunting grounds and forests were extensive, there’s a Forest Lane running from Lacock into Melksham, with an area of Melksham called Forest, and Chippenham was a major Saxon administrative centre by 853. There were major skirmishes with Viking invaders in and around Chippenham, until Alfred beat them into submission at Eddington in 878.
There’s a fair bit about the early history of the area here:
https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/chippenham-research/anglo-saxon-settlement
Nah, hunting forests predate the Normans by at least a couple of centuries, if not more.
The Normans use of forests was complicated.
It started with hunting forests with a limited number of areas operating under the special forest laws to protect game (lucky things have changed eh) but over time it changed into a handy tax option. If you wanted to clear some land you just went ahead and did it and then paid the fine. It doesnt seem to have really been considered a crime but just a business transaction in most cases.
It ended up with the entire of Essex being a forest for a time and a major chunk of the overall country. It provided a good source of cash and if a king really needed a chunk of cash fast they could take the short term option of cash for the removal of the law. Under John Cornwall and Devon for example paid to have forest law removed from the majority of their countries.
I watched that Wolf piece on YouTube and that led me on to watch a beaver one as well. I reckon Scotland/UK need to reintroduce Lynx and Beaver and really start to try and get rewilding and renaturalising a fair go.
If only we could convert the grouse moors into a less artificial habitat we'd have plenty of space for lynx, beavers, wolves...
852000 acres in the UK are grouse moor - twice the size of Greater London. 44% of Cairngorms National Park are grouse moor, 28% of the North York Moors, 21% of the Peak District and so on.
As a comparison, National Trust own 620,000 acres.
Interesting that there is an estate up for sale on the edge of the Cairngorms national park, just across the river from the Lynx release advertised with grouse shooting and deer stalking. As a nation would it be better if we managed the land in a better way https://www.onthemarket.com/details/14887971/
Hellooo… Wasps?
Nah ticks. Wasps have a nasty sting and all but they dont specialise in carrying a bunch of nasty diseases which can do anything from make you bedridden through to making you vegetarian.
Looks like hepatic lipidosis might possibly have been the cause of death of the sadly deceased lynx :
Lynx let go in Cairngorms were starving, says zoo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7xl8n0llo
"RZSS said two of the cats had eaten meat left from them in traps set to capture them, but no other food while they had been on the loose"
It is thought that all four were from the same litter and very young. I really hope that they catch the responsible persons. Apparently they are trying to establish the origins of the lynx through DNA although that is likely to be unsuccessful as there is no database for them to refer to.
@aberdeenlune Could be many reasons for them selling up, up to and including they're getting out now before they fall foul of tighter regulation?
Interesting that there is an estate up for sale on the edge of the Cairngorms national park
Let me see what I have down the back of the sofa!
Shooting estates are coming back in public ownership in various forms. Lets hope that one is. Local communities are given the right to make preferential bids iirc
Shooting estates are being bought for peatland restoration and tree planting. Lots of grants in that.
I'm sure they can aqueeze a wind farm in too.
(Balavil did have plans for a "House of Bruar" type retail outlet on the A9 but planning permission was refused.)
Now it's pigs....
I'm guessing this is the same crackpot doing this. Can't be too hard to work out who has this menagerie?
I'm guessing this is the same crackpot doing this. Can't be too hard to work out who has this menagerie?
The other way to look at it is that stopping these animals from being released is the crackpot idea, when all the evidence shows how much good they do for the ecosystems in which they live. But then, we live in a country where foxes are viewed as dangerous animals and treated as vermin, where 'weeds' are sprayed relentlessly, and where almost everyone shrugs and doesn't understand why they haven't seen a butterfly for years.
managed reintroductions are not a crackpot idea at all...
but..abandoning semi-pets into the wilderness is just straight up animal cruely.
These animals seem to be (at least partially) domesticated, so dumping them like this is animal cruelty. The lynx case is already being investigated with this in mind.
These animals seem to be (at least partially) domesticated, so dumping them like this is animal cruelty. The lynx case is already being investigated with this in mind.
This is one of the ones i've been up close to. Stands just short of a metre tall at this angle.
Bever are now living in Scotland
Just in?
Pigs now?
There's heaps of feral/wild pig/boar already
Next it'll be an ark washed up on loch rannoch
managed reintroductions are not a crackpot idea at all...
The problem is that reintroductions are opposed at every turn. Have we had an official reintroduction of pigs/boar or beaver into any unenclosed area in the UK despite the fact that they live wild after accidental releases?
I don't condone releasing semi-domesticated animals but can see why certain groups would lose patience with official process.
Have we had an official reintroduction of pigs/boar or beaver into any unenclosed area in the UK despite the fact that they live wild after accidental releases?
Beavers yes. Boris Johnson was well-known for his fondness of beavers.
Which apparently means that beavers are all Tories, or sumfink.
No 10 blocks beaver release plan as officials view it as ’Tory legacy’
Can’t get the Guardian to load, but wasn’t that reporter about a month ago and denied by DEFRA?
Still need to pull their finger out.
I cannot see any genuine, non-biased reasons why the media have jumped on this story right now, it's an odd one. There have been several wild boar releases in the Highlands over quite a few years, probably around 20 years or so since I first saw a group loose in a Perthshire wood. There's an established population west of Inverness and north of Loch Ness, around Abriachan. I suspect that this group in Rothiemurchus might have been there for quite a while and no-one has had much to say about it. just because they're used to people is pretty meaningless; all the ones I've seen loose are unfazed by people, unless you suddenly appear, rushing straight at them on a bike! Feral populations are normal; look at the number of goat groups there are across the whole of the Highlands, actively being shot for at least 50 years to my personal knowledge and they're just part of the ecosystem. Given time, the baby goats and pigs will help feed the earliest lynx, while they're still new to hunting in the wild.
Isn't this particularly newsworthy as a result of the recent lynx incident? It begins to look less random, might provide a further clue to the identity of the previous owner(s) and makes you wonder what else might be out there.
I suspect that this group in Rothiemurchus might have been there for quite a while and no-one has had much to say about it. just because they're used to people is pretty meaningless; all the ones I've seen loose are unfazed by people, unless you suddenly appear, rushing straight at them on a bike!
The ones in Forest of Dean are so used to people that I've had piglets foraging around my feet after I stopped on one of the waymarked bike loops, the adults only a few feet away.
A lot of the previous "big cat" photos has just been awful considering almost everyone wanders around with megapixel sized cameras in there pockets.
Trouble is, most of those are phones with a camera, and while they do have megapixels, the sensors are pretty small, and the optical output is usually around 5-6x, once you start banging up the digital zoom image quality degrades and there’s a lot of ‘noise’, the ‘big cats’ aren’t that big, so easy to misjudge size comparison with surrounding objects.
Of course, he could just be lying about it but I’m not sure why.
I can certainly think of a reason the owner of a Zoo would say something that would get people interested in the area, who may also be interested in captive examples handily nearby...
There’s been lots of discussion about Puma running wild around the U.K., they’re not classed as a Big Cat, they’re pretty secretive and happy hunting rabbits, god knows there’s plenty of those, along with small deer, and they co-exist with humans around the suburbs of Los Angeles; Dartmoor is vast, a small number of Puma I’m pretty sure could live without being seen often, especially as their colour would blend with the moorland surrounding them.
Have we had an official reintroduction of pigs/boar or beaver into any unenclosed area in the UK despite the fact that they live wild after accidental releases?
There are beaver in the Bybrook at Ford, a couple of miles from Castle Combe, where there was a release of otters a few years ago, and there are otter in the Bybrook as well - I’ve seen video taken by a mate at Slaughterford of an otter in the shallow water close to the road, munching on something. The river is very clean, it’s a trout stream, and there’s loads of signal crayfish, so if the otter start clearing out the signal crayfish it might help the native white-clawed crayfish re-establish.
Here’s the first sign I had of the presence of beavers in the Bybrook…
You can see the chisel-like marks from their teeth where they cut through the branches.
Isn't this particularly newsworthy as a result of the recent lynx incident? It begins to look less random, might provide a further clue to the identity of the previous owner(s) and makes you wonder what else might be out there.
There was the monkey before that, about the time last year, although we know where it came from. There's just something about that area.
The ones in Forest of Dean are so used to people that I've had piglets foraging around my feet after I stopped on one of the waymarked bike loops, the adults only a few feet away.
🤔 Ones round me are feral and raging, have been chased off a few times!
We've got beavers in the river at the end of my road too. A neighbour spots them fairly often when she's out walking the dog, and we've just had a warning on the local FB page about wild boar on the main road from the village. Someone hit one on tuesday morning, and my partners sister hit an adult male in the autumn, unfortunately killed it and wrote the car off.
It's nice living in the wild 😉
especially as their colour would blend with the moorland surrounding them.
Avoid being seen yes but less likely to avoid a skilled tracker/wildlife photographer and there have been several who have gone looking and come back empty handed.
There is the claim that some got released when the laws got tightened and established a breeding group but this seems somewhat unlikely since, as the subject of this thread shows, tame/zoo animals dont tend to do well in the wild. Its why when captive bred animals are released into the wild they spend months carefully preparing them.
Avoid being seen yes but less likely to avoid a skilled tracker/wildlife photographer and there have been several who have gone looking and come back empty handed.
There is the claim that some got released when the laws got tightened and established a breeding group but this seems somewhat unlikely since, as the subject of this thread shows, tame/zoo animals dont tend to do well in the wild. Its why when captive bred animals are released into the wild they spend months carefully preparing them.
One was shot up the valley from where I lived on Dartmoor - a long time ago. It made local news but not national news. The sensible suggestion really is that the animals that got released back in the 80s didn't establish a breeding group as there weren't enough of them and have almost certainly died out since. However, there are still plenty of people owning 'dangerous wild animals' in private. I'm wondering how often those animals escape - I'm sure there's an official way of reconciling these animals to ensure that they aren't just released when owners get bored, too poor, etc, but this is Britain in 2025. And, of course, plenty of skilled trackers went looking for those big cats in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and failed to find them, despite the fact that they were there.
We were talking about this in work a few months, probably after a similar post on STW. One of my colleagues went to school in the Neath valley, right next to Penscynor Wildlife Park. There were several occasions when they weren't allowed out to break outside the buildings because animals had escaped from the wildlife park. I have two reliable friends who claimed to see lynx on separate occasions in the forests in the Neath valley. I wonder where they came from? 😀
The authorities report that the eight feral pigs were rounded up and killed today.
The photo published a couple of days ago showed nine pigs.
And there's still confusion over whether they were boar or feral pigs.
Update on the lynx from the RZSS today:
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Update on the lynx from the RZSS today:
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It's a shame they haven't released the postmortem findings, at least I haven't been able to find them.
The authorities report that the eight feral pigs were rounded up and killed today.
Well, that'll keep a few people happy. Can't have damage to fences, or trees, and crops. Can't have dogwalkers scared by wild beasts.
Could these not have spread from elsewhere rather than being 'guerilla' reintroductions, though?
Guerilla rewinding is just crazy. They've never been native in Britain.
Suspect they'd be livid if they were released here as well...
Suspect they'd be livid if they were released here as well...
Have we had an official reintroduction of pigs/boar or beaver into any unenclosed area in the UK despite the fact that they live wild after accidental releases?
I believe the Scottish ones are unfenced, Scorrish Parliament changed the law before release to make them a protected species. England & Wales all formal releases are fenced.
There are beaver in the Bybrook at Ford, a couple of miles from Castle Combe, where there was a release of otters a few years ago, and there are otter in the Bybrook as well ...
The By Brook, Avon and Frome beavers are from a number of illegal releases, but they are established now. Interesting reading https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4887590239731712
I believe the Scottish ones are unfenced,
Correct. The Rangers are currently monitoring their movements and will destroy any lodges in areas deemed inappropriate or damaging (while they are empty, so that the beavers move on). I guess that'll stop after a while as the beavers naturally expand their territory and there are simply too many to.be monitored.
Ironically, we have a quite different "wild animal" problem just a few km away.
A rogue male capercaillie has been threatening and attacking passers-by on one of the major through-routes for walkers and cyclists. As a result there are new warning signs near Forest Lodge in Abernethy Forest.
The last paragraph makes for some interesting reading.
If you go along this path and don't see the caper, all is well. If you do see it, then you may be committing an offence.
Does this make it Schrödingers Capercaillie?
What should I do if I see him?
Turn your back and keep moving. I'm channelling John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever here - turn your back and keep moving in a shake your ass at the camera type way. That should confuse the lekker!
And eventually... Defra have agreed policy to enable wild beavers in England, yay.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wild-release-and-management-of-beavers-in-england
Another sighting but in southern Scotland this time - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07zddpd2x1o
What should I do if I see him?
Three of us out riding on Sunday and we were lucky enough to be heading downhill when we passed him. He followed us (at speed) for 200 metres or so. He is now well outwith the area signposted so I've reported it to the park authorities and them to the RSPB. They've tried relocating him a couple of times, but obviously not far enough. My next visit to the area might involve a golf club.