Beavers - Rewilding
- Thread starter Foxyboy43
- Start date
StephenToast
Well-Known Member
Of course.
I agree with your point.
None of the released beavers are sterilised as far as I am aware though.
Hayduke
Well-Known Member
It is highly likely that industrial salmon cage ‘farming’, and burgeoning and uncontrolled populations of piscivorous birds, seal, otter and mink are having a far greater impacts on declining salmon populations than beaver reintroductions will. Sadly I don’t see us addressing these problems soon.
Scandially
Well-Known Member
Pink salmon are now present in most East coast rivers and do breed with Altlantics.
Scandially
Well-Known Member
Beavers do no harm... ask this 150 year old Oak tree?
I don’t think any rational person claims they do no harm.
Instead, there are people who have decided the benefits they perceive them to provide outweigh the harm.
Now you may weigh the costs and benefits differently, but for either side to claim the other doesn’t understand the tradeoffs insults the intelligence and integrity of both sides.
And to claim the other side has no integrity is to make exactly the mistake they make when they claim the same of field sports.
PM me an email address and I’ll send you the PDFs. They’re mainly behind pay walls in academic journals, sadly.Is there anyway you could point me to that evidence.
Tell me if I am wrong, I don't think there's ever been a none native introduction that hasn't had a negative effect of some sort from minor to major (signal crayfish, mink, grey tree rat, Indian bolsom, ragwort, knot weed, muntjac, rabbits, zander, anyhow iam off to watch my smart arse meter
The problem with this is if we grant them integrity, which is often not the case we know many anti fieldsports activists and the truth are total strangers, we give them added impetus as they will never do the same for us!
David.
No.
One of the biggest, most common and most damaging mistakes made in any ideological disagreement is to assume that your side has a monopoly on honesty and the other side lack any integrity.
When far and away the most likely situation is that both sides contain more or less normal people who happen to differ over one or a few major issues, but otherwise are just that - normal people. If you want to know how honest and intelligent your opponents are, take a close look at your own side.
I have large groups of friends, colleagues and acquaintances on both sides of all the major country side conflicts - from re wilding to driven shoots. It is extremely common for either side to go on at great length about how dishonest the other side are. How they can’t be trusted. How they bend the truth and cut every corner. How they’ll stop at nothing to get what they want and to discredit the opposition.
When actually, most people on both sides are perfectly sensible, decent, passionate people who simply have a different vision of how the country side should be managed.
But that doesn’t suit anyone’s sense of identity and doesn’t get you nice pats on the back when you have a good rant on social media…
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I very much doubt you’re wrong at all. History is littered with non-native introductions that have had monumental detrimental effects on local flora and fauna, and very few that have delivered net benefits.Tell me if I am wrong, I don't think there's ever been a none native introduction that hasn't had a negative effect of some sort from minor to major (signal crayfish, mink, grey tree rat, Indian bolsom, ragwort, knot weed, muntjac, rabbits, zander, anyhow iam off to watch my smart arse meter
The argument now is whether we should continue to try to eradicate non-native species or instead assume they are now more or less native themselves. The reality is that eradication is, in and of itself, a strategy that is highly unlikely ever to ever successful.
That said, releasing artificially high numbers of native species purely for our enjoyment is also a somewhat dubious approach. With brown trout I’m sure we all love the thought of the greater chances of catching them resulting from stocking, but I doubt few consider the impact of those same trout on other parts of the ecosystem.
I wish we would.
I do know that the major salmon farming companies are investing huge amounts of money in developing deep-water salmon cages. Of course these won’t fix all of the problems associated with salmon farming, but it may alleviate some of those that result from the problems of lice, faeces, etc.
I would like to think that both the regulators and consumers recognise they are making a trade-off between the availability of cheap salmon and the detrimental effect salmon farming has on the environment, but I doubt that’s the case. Because salmon are farmed underwater the impacts are generally hidden. Consumers don’t seem to get worked up about the way salmon are treated like they do with livestock, poultry, etc.
Personally I am fed up with seeing politicians posing at salmon farms and extolling the employment they create one day, and shouting out about climate change and the environment the next! For me the rot set in when the Soil Association decided to recognise some farmed salmon as “organic”.
However, bad as salmon farming may be it is very big business and feeds a lot of people. Unless ways can be found to reduce the environmental impact without affecting productivity I don’t see it coming to a halt any time soon.
Scandially
Well-Known Member
To be fair and balanced if it had not been for farmed salmon starting in Norway there would be no salmon left in Britain.
Salmon in 1974 was £4+ per pound at the hotel back door no questions asked. Excuse the bad picture but i got 12X my apprentice weekly wage for this low water salmon.
Poaching was rife and selling of rod caught lucrative.
Me in 1973.
Salmon in 1974 was £4+ per pound at the hotel back door no questions asked. Excuse the bad picture but i got 12X my apprentice weekly wage for this low water salmon.
Poaching was rife and selling of rod caught lucrative.
Me in 1973.
Freeforester
Well-Known Member
Both sides can reasonably claim that at any given point in time the glass is half full. Both sides agree it is in our gift and should be our responsibility to try to conserve, improve and pass on such biodiversity as we have to those who come next. The arguments begin about how best to do this, but with scant evidence from some quarters as to the societal and sustainable, let alone harvestable benefits of their preferred management prescriptions. Politicos are disinclined (through vigourous lobbying) to give each side a chance to demonstrate the benefits of their management styles, though the evidence is clear enough that societal benefits come from interventional management in a sustaining manner, whereas there are more often than not costs associated with the other.
Until such time as the question of the practical benefits of both systems of mangement can be put to the test there will be plenty of heat, but alas little by way of light, and always at the expense of the rare stuff in the debating time. Thus the things we have yet to lose but are increasingly endangered, get lost in the chatter and argument, and the glass empties a little more.
Talk is cheap, producing results that can be measured and quantified, less so. Societies fed on farmed fish are generally troubled little by the plight of the real thing, until it is too late. The same goes for most foodstuffs, and those who nurture (as opposed to squander) same, and the ancillary yet important benefits to many other species.
Scandially
Well-Known Member
As the Red Squirrel about the introduction of non native species?
Nope. That comparison falls completely flat.
Grey and red squirrels evolved separately in different ecosystems, and had no pre existing adaptations to deal with each other.
Every native fresh water associated species in the UK evolved in the presence of beavers, and have life cycles and ecologies adapted to their presence.
Tellingly, the one species none of them evolved to deal with is the large arrogant naked ape chattering away on the river bank…
Yes, that's a point, who introduced smart meters?Tell me if I am wrong, I don't think there's ever been a none native introduction that hasn't had a negative effect of some sort from minor to major (signal crayfish, mink, grey tree rat, Indian bolsom, ragwort, knot weed, muntjac, rabbits, zander, anyhow iam off to watch my smart arse meter
Skogsmannen
Well-Known Member
Sure it's an Oak? Looks like a scabby goat willow from here.
Reloader708
Well-Known Member
To be fair I'd rather have a few bevers chucked out than the relentless urban development you see everywhere 
all this lot was picked up along a few hundred yards of Riverside after a sunny weekend.....bevers didn't do it!
all this lot was picked up along a few hundred yards of Riverside after a sunny weekend.....bevers didn't do it!
Cootmeurer
Well-Known Member
With considerable experience dealing with beavers, removing beavers, and education about beavers I can think of few species more destructive and damaging than they. Essentially the macro sized version of a Norway rat, yet somehow worse.
At first they stay in the rivers, until they reach a high enough density, then they spread out to any and all bodies of water, damming and cutting live wood wherever they go. Due to the size they attain they have few predators short of wolves and gators, which you seem to have a complete lack of in the UK.
Their construction will clog culverts and drainage ditches, resulting in washed out roads, embankments and other areas. They will also cause water to back up resulting in slow moving and/or stagnant water for breeding disease vectors like mosquitoes. When preferred softwood runs low, they cut/girdle more valuable hardwood and when that gets sparse they will hit the conifers.
Don’t misunderstand, I respect them and am amazed at times, but more often than not their negatives strongly outweigh any positives.
At first they stay in the rivers, until they reach a high enough density, then they spread out to any and all bodies of water, damming and cutting live wood wherever they go. Due to the size they attain they have few predators short of wolves and gators, which you seem to have a complete lack of in the UK.
Their construction will clog culverts and drainage ditches, resulting in washed out roads, embankments and other areas. They will also cause water to back up resulting in slow moving and/or stagnant water for breeding disease vectors like mosquitoes. When preferred softwood runs low, they cut/girdle more valuable hardwood and when that gets sparse they will hit the conifers.
Don’t misunderstand, I respect them and am amazed at times, but more often than not their negatives strongly outweigh any positives.
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