“Look, a beaver stick!” I said to my friend as we wandered around the loch. It was quite arty-looking, with neat stripes where the rodent had gnawed off the nutritious inner bark from the stem with its orange, iron-rich incisors. I picked it up and happily carried around my prize for the rest of our walk in much the same way a three-year old might.
Partly munched. The beaver’s teeth marks are clearly visible and the tree is surrounded by wood chips.
Back in 2008 I visited the Knapdale area in Argyll as a Trees for Life staff member to attend a stakeholder meeting about the forthcoming beaver release. Missing species reintroduction has been a personal passion since childhood and I was excited at the prospect of these fantastic mammals being returned to Scotland after an absence of almost 400 years. Wandering around the proposed site back then I tried imagine what it might look like with the beaver’s return.
Twelve years later I got to see the answer to my question when I returned to the same area. I had visited release sites in other parts of the UK and was lucky to glimpse a truly wild beaver on the Tay catchment several years ago, but this site held special significance to me. The more we looked, the more signs we saw. It was a tracker’s dream, a rewilder’s dream, a beaver-lover’s dream. Here and there we could see trees that had been felled for food and building materials, and some that were just partly chewed, looking like rustic wooden hourglasses. These were surrounded by those chunky flat wood chips that always feel satisfying in hand and pocket.
Wood chips and beaver sticks. Note the distinctive toothmarks on the sticks where the second largest rodent in the world has been gnawing off the nutritious cambium layer.
One area of trees had been completely flooded, and the skeletons of drowned birches stood serenely reflected in the water below. This might all sound a bit destructive but in fact the opposite is true. The standing dead trees provide fantastic habitat for a range of wildlife including woodpeckers, beetles and bats as well as fungus and much more. The wetlands are ideal for amphibians, dragonflies, water voles, water shrews, otters and breeding fish.
Most of the trees the beavers cut down naturally coppice, meaning they sprout new shoots that develop into thickets: perfect for nesting warblers and in the early stages allowing welcome light to the woodland floor and its wildflowers and butterflies. I could go on but in short these industrious herbivores (no, they don’t eat fish) are ecosystem engineers. Their loss was a huge blow for biodiversity in Britain and their return is a huge gain, thanks to the efforts of Scottish Wildlife Trust and many others who worked hard to bring beavers back. (There are now populations in other parts of Scotland as well as England and Wales.)
We stood quietly for a long while not far from their dam and lodge. The soft yellow-orange, beaver tooth-coloured sky reflected in a strip on the dark water, slowly turning to grey dusk. Our senses were primed for a for a glimpse of the beavers as a crisp January breeze blew along the loch.
Wet wonderland. This area was flooded by beavers creating valuable habitat for a host of other wildlife.
No beavers showed but wildlife does its own thing and it didn’t matter. They were there. They are well and truly back and wild Scotland is wilder and richer for it. We strolled back to the car in the fading light, with smiles on our faces and the beaver stick still in my hand.
Discover more about beavers:
Note the change in water level created by the dam.