Beaver Hunters

Beavers have been reintroduced in Scotland (near Dundee), so naturally we went to see what they'd been up to and what effect they'd had on the land! The European Beavers were introduced at the Bamff estate in 2002, around 450 years after they had become extinct in Scotland. They inhabit a 32 acre semi-natural area of woodland and wetland.

Early morning mist outside the hostel

So what did we do?

Site 1 near the trees

The main aim of the trip was to collect data from a variety of sites to whether the Beaver introduction had been a success in the eyes of wetlanders. Luckily we managed to study 4 different areas (we only hoped for 3 beforehand). At each site we tested the pH, conductivity, soil temperature, gas emissions from the soil and the redox readings of the soil, as well as taking water samples (where possible) and also soil samples. Each was repeated a further 4 times, by 3 groups, an upland group, water level group and lowland group.

The 4 sites were all slightly different; Site 1 was close to the Beaver lodge near the open pool of water, Site 2 was close to a beaver dam down stream, Site 3 was next to an artificial drainage pool and Site 4 was upstream. The data should help us get an insight into what affect the Beavers have on the land.

A paper from 2008 was written about the implications of regrowth of trees after felling by the beavers and can be found here.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the wonderful creatures (we probably scared them away) but it could be clearly seen that they inhabited the area!

Hopefully one day in the near future we could be seeing a reintroduction of Beavers into Wales, now wouldn't that be great?