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    The Eurasian Beaver
    The Eurasian Beaver
    The Eurasian Beaver
    Ebook119 pages41 minutes

    The Eurasian Beaver

    By Roisin Campbell-Palmer, Derek Gow, Robert Needham and

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    About this ebook

    The Eurasian beaver was near extinction at the start of the twentieth century, hunted across Europe for its fur, meat and castoreum. But now the beaver is on the brink of a comeback, with wild beaver populations, licensed and unlicensed, emerging all over Britain.

    As a keystone species, the beaver plays a vital role in the creation of sustainable wetland habitats through its damming activities, providing living opportunities for a broad spectrum of wildlife. Yet as proposals for reintroducing beavers are underway, re-establishing the beaver in Britain is still a controversial issue.

    This book presents a case for our future coexistence with beavers by providing factual information on this species that has now passed from national memory, covering the biology, behaviour and ecology of the Eurasian beaver in a British context, from their early history in archaeology and folklore to their contemporary field signs in the wild. This book familiarises readers once again, after almost 400 years of its absence, with the Eurasian beaver, providing essential information on its requirements in our human dominated landscape.

    This book is for those with a specific interest in beavers and their reintroduction, and for anyone with a general curiosity in natural history, ecology or animal behaviour. It can be used as a field guide to identify beaver field signs and observe beavers in the wild by wildlife surveyors or general land users, or as an introductory guide for anyone with an interest in beavers and how to recognise them.

    The authors have been actively involved in the study of beaver ecology, behaviour and reintroduction for many years. They have a first-hand knowledge of beavers in captivity and in the wild in both Britain and a range of other European countries.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPelagic Publishing
    Release dateJan 19, 2015
    ISBN9781784270353
    The Eurasian Beaver
    Author

    Roisin Campbell-Palmer

    Róisín Campbell-Palmer is Conservation Projects Manager for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, where she has worked for 12 years. She is Field Operations Manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial and is currently undertaking her PhD in beaver health and welfare.

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      Book preview

      The Eurasian Beaver - Roisin Campbell-Palmer

      CHAPTER 1

      Introduction

      Amongst conservation bodies, various land-use organisations and the wider public there is a growing interest in the reintroduction of the formerly native Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) to Britain. The pros and cons of restoring this species have been well aired in the popular media for well over ten years. A five year long trial reintroduction project – the Scottish Beaver Trial – was granted a licence by the Scottish Government in 2008. Discussions on licensed beaver reintroductions in England and Wales also gathered pace during this period and feasibility studies by Natural England and the Countryside Council for Wales were completed to advise this process. Despite no widespread formal reintroduction programmes taking place in Britain to date, field sign evidence exists, suggesting the presence of un-licensed free-living beavers in various parts of mainland Britain.

      The aim of this booklet is to raise awareness of the Eurasian beaver as a former British native mammal and to provide factual information regarding its biology, behaviour and ecology. It can be used as a guide to enable the identification of field signs and to provide information on the design of beaver monitoring programmes or survey work. Although beavers are not currently extensively found in Britain the increased likelihood of future reintroductions suggests that an understanding of their ecology and management will be an essential long term component of their successful coexistence in human dominated landscapes.

      Beaver folklore and history in Britain

      Archaeological evidence of beavers, such as preserved gnawed timber and bones, has been found in a number of sites throughout England, Wales and Scotland. Along with related place names such as Beverley, Beverstone and Bevercots, carvings and historical references testify to their former abundance throughout Britain (Coles 2006).

      In 1188 the travelling monk, Giraldus Cambrensis, provided one of the earliest and most fanciful descriptions of British beavers: ‘The beavers, in order to construct their castles in the middle of rivers, make use of the animals of their own species instead of carts, who, by a wonderful mode of carriage, convey the timber from the woods to the rivers. Some of them, obeying the dictates of nature, receive on their bellies the logs of wood cut off by their associates, which they hold tight with their feet, and thus with transverse pieces placed in their mouths, are drawn along backwards, with their cargo, by other beavers, who fasten themselves with their teeth to the raft’ (Cambrensis 1188). In 1526 Hector Boece recorded beavers as being abundant around Loch Ness. By 1577 William Harrison, the Canon of Windsor, describes the beaver in shape ‘… as the bodie vnto a monsterous rat: the beast also it selfe is of such force in the teeth, that it will gnaw an hole through a thicke planke, or shere thorough a dubble billet in a night; it loueth also the stillest riuers’ (Coles

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