Appendix 13 – Online engagement survey comments

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Appendix 13 All com­ments received through the online form­al engage­ment survey

Do you have any­thing else to say about our plans to bring beavers back to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park? Please detail any pos­it­ives, con­cerns or quer­ies. (250 words max) I think this is a good idea, that should be done sens­it­ively with the involve­ment with as many stakeholders/​organisations/​communities as pos­sible that are rel­ev­ant. Con­flict man­age­ment approaches should be planned and taken if neces­sary to ensure rein­tro­duc­tions can go ahead fairly. Small com­prom­ises may help the pro­ject in the long- run. How­ever, cull­ing of unwanted beavers should not be in the man­age­ment plan. Please send me an email con­tact. I have been doing some work on beavers for a rewild­ing exhib­i­tion at the Land­mark Park and need to send you an attach­ment to cla­ri­fy my con­cerns This spe­cies has every right to be here, and des­pite the chal­lenges presen­ted to farm­ers, hope­fully with time and guid­ance, farm­er, loc­als, and wild­life will prosper from their pres­ence. This is for Me as a nature lov­er and also a loc­al Busi­ness own­er and also Someone inter­ested in eco­lo­gic­al stud­ies a no brain­i­er. These anim­als will bring much needed and wel­come vis­it­ors and resources with that to the area all year round and they’re nat­ur­al beha­viour will pro­tect wet­land areas from flood­ing and droughts. It’s a win win for the anim­als them­selves and the areas in which that are intro­duced. I con­sider it to be a very pos­it­ive and con­sidered plan and fully endorse it. It makes abso­lute sense to bring beavers back to the Nation­al Park. The Cairngorms host a vari­ety of life, and intro­du­cing a key­stone spe­cies could help knit togeth­er dis­par­ate man­age­ment tech­niques. Polit­ic­ally beavers would help demon­strate that nature has its own laws and through we try to main­tain our will upon the earth, nat­ur­al pro­cesses are the most suc­cess­ful at cre­at­ing a diverse hab­it­at. Eco engin­eers! The best Nature Based Solu­tion to issues of flood­ing, biod­iversity loss and car­bon stor­age. I’m behind this pro­ject Beavers over­whelm­ingly enhance the envir­on­ment they inhab­it to the bene­fit of a mul­ti­tude of oth­er spe­cies, includ­ing our own. The enrich­ment of nation­al parks and the

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return of nat­ur­al pro­cesses should be a primary driver. The bene­fits to a nation­al park far far out­weigh min­im­al impacts to landown­ers Please bring beavers whereever posdible, we love them and know they are eco­lo­gists Just do it — beavers will revital­ize the coun­tryside for free giv­en the chance. Be tol­er­ant and see what hap­pens. I think they will bene­fit the area, and assist in increas­ing biod­iversity. I hope I live long enough to see them. Could the Beavers be con­sidered for release across the River Dee catch­ment too It is time to re-address the fail­ures of our ancest­ors to bring back the wild­life we have lost to its right­ful place. Look at the dam­age caused to trees where they have been re intro­duced along the Garry and Tay Beavers are the best eco­sys­tem engin­eers we have. This would not only be great for beavers, but also a mul­ti­tude of oth­er spe­cies and the over­all envir­on­ment. As a reg­u­lar vis­it­or to Scot­land with my fam­ily beavers in the cairngorms would be a major factor in my hol­i­day des­tin­a­tion decisions on the future. I am thrilled about the plans to rein­tro­duce beavers to my loc­al area, and very sup­port­ive. This is such a pos­it­ive move for wild­life, biod­iversity and land­scape res­tor­a­tion. We are con­cerned that if beavers end up in par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive sites for aspen, hazel, wil­low etc that the trees can be pro­tec­ted or the beavers moved else­where. This doesn’t seem to be in the plans cur­rently. As well as felling trees such as aspen, beavers also strip the bark, so the bene­fits for aspen hov­er­fly are lost. Two examples of our con­cerns are: Kin­rara is the best site loc­ally for rare lichens and mosses on aspens, so we have con­cerns about this as a release site; and the water course between the Bogach and Loch Alvie would be a likely place for dams with an import­ant aspen stand near the road. The loc­a­tions of the import­ant woods are known, with NatureScot’s Aspen Vul­ner­ab­il­ity Maps show­ing the loc­a­tions of poten­tially vul­ner­able wood­lands. As a vis­it­or to the park to see wild­life, beavers would be a fur­ther reas­on for me to come and stay, to try and see them. Con­cerned about the long term impact of arti­fi­cially expand­ing the ter­rit­ory of a pro­tec­ted re pop­u­lated spe­cies that is quite invas­ive, espe­cially in a small coun­try with var­ied degrees of intens­ity and expect­a­tions of land man­age­ment in close prox­im­ity This is long over­due and an essen­tial part of restor­ing the nat­ur­al func­tion of the area. There will undoubtedly be some issues along the way but the long-term bene­fits of these plans far out­weigh any of these dif­fi­culties. Look­ing at the dam­age beavers have caused on the Tay catch­ment any new intro­duc­tion is utter mad­ness. I can see no bene­fits what so ever.

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Please be aware there is a sig­ni­fic­ant cost to liv­ing with beavers. We have beavers on the river Tay & Lyon: Last winter they ate an acre of for­age kale grown to feed live­stock. The dam­age was over a great­er area but equated to a full acre removed. There is no cur­rent way of com­pens­at­ing for this loss. An acknow­ledge­ment of the con­tri­bu­tion of farm­ers in stand­ing this loss would be appre­ci­ated. Don’t do it, after see­ing the dam­age and prob­lems caused by the beavers in Angus and on the Tay sys­tem I can see NO pos­it­ive out­comes. Truly fant­ast­ic to see real rewild­ing and pub­lic engage­ment, well done Would love to see beavers back here I will answer later. Beavers could have a hugely pos­it­ive impact on the loc­al area lead­ing to great­er biod­iversity and redu­cing loc­al flood­ing. I think that the bene­fits will be fant­ast­ic for the eco­sys­tem and land­scape. Really excited. Great idea. Well, the Wild­cat plan hasn’t giv­en me much faith in the ​‘experts’ The CNPA has done little to main­tain the integ­rity of the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment So little faith in you to get this right But no doubt it’s jobs for middle-class eco­lo­gists My house is adja­cent to the Insh Marshes and I believe it is an ideal site for beavers. I am how­ever aware that loc­al farm­ers are con­cerned of the impact on their land. Hence a lot of close work­ing, con­sulta­tion and sup­port will be needed for this to really work with the loc­al com­munity. I think this is an incred­ibly import­ant and pos­it­ive step in the Cairngorms for improv­ing biod­iversity and nat­ur­al eco­sys­tems, and as many oth­er cases of beaver rein­tro­duc­tion have shown, beavers can offer many many bene­fits to the Spey and sur­round­ing area. After driv­ing them to extinc­tion in this coun­try we have a duty to bring them back, this is where they should be liv­ing. They help to pre­vent flood­ing and droughts but mostly they turbo charge wild­life recov­ery. I think it is really excit­ing that this is being explored. We need to re-intro­duce key spe­cies like the beaver to cre­ate nat­ur­al hab­it­ats that will favour many oth­er spe­cies and increase biod­iversity. I am quite sure this will attract vis­it­ors to the area; bene­fit­ting the loc­al eco­nomy. Large, remote areas are per­fect for re-intro­duc­tions and the fact that beavers can be re-loc­ated means that any prob­lems for landown­ers can be man­aged. This pro­ject will be key in prov­ing the viab­il­ity of rein­tro­duc­tions into oth­er catch­ments across Scot­land. It is there­fore key that the frame­work that NatureScot has put in place does work for bothe the beavers and the com­munit­ies amongst which they live. Beavers are a key­stone spe­cies and should be right across Scot­land. I’m very sup­port­ive of the Nation­al park bring­ing them back

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I would love to see them back in the Strath. We need to be able to con­trol them when prob­lems arise. My farm is on the Spey flood plain at New­ton­more and I am wor­ried about my fen­cing being washed away in floods by debris from Beaver Dams. I have been told this will not hap­pen but I am told alot of things by people who have very little prac­tic­al know­ledge of land man­age­ment and do not suf­fer the con­sequences when things do go wrong. I have seen the dam­age done to old river­side trees and te dam­age done to agri­cul­tur­al fields. Scot­land is not the Yukon, it is a mod­ern work­ing envir­on­ment. Farm­ing and beavers find it dif­fi­cult to coex­ist. Fish­ing on the Spey is deteri­or­at­ing and any­thing new such as beavers may impact upon this fur­ther. I am against re intro­duc­tions in prin­cip­al but sup­por­ted Caper­cail­lie and note it has been utterly mis­man­aged by RSPB. Fur­ther pro­tec­tion of spe­cies, par­tic­u­larly pred­at­ors has severely affected my bird life pop­u­la­tions. Beavers dis­ap­peared for a reas­on. I think this is extremely help­ful for cli­mate adapt­a­tion. I think it is a very good plan and that it will bene­fit the sur­round­ing area and nature. Well proven eco­sys­tem engin­eers with pos­it­ive effect on biod­iversity In regard to angling con­cerns we should remem­ber that beavers suc­cess­fully coex­ist with sal­mon and trout through most of their nat­ur­al range and used to do so in Scot­land too and sal­mon were plen­ti­ful then. Any return to a more nat­ur­al bal­ance has to be bene­fi­cial. Hav­ing recently atten­ded an event dis­cuss­ing how to rewiggle river chan­nels through human inter­ven­tion, and the pos­it­ives of doing this, it will be inter­est­ing to see the impact of beavers on our water­ways, lochs and land­scapes. In gen­er­al, I am sup­port­ive of the pro­pos­al. The full scale of the impacts can­not be known but, for the bene­fit of cre­at­ing diverse hab­it­ats which will sup­port a range of spe­cies, I think that the risks of loc­al adverse effects are accept­able. A neg­at­ive move for the area I would wel­come the return of this nat­ive mam­mal and the res­ult­ing increas­ing biod­iversity asso­ci­ated with beaver activ­it­ies. Also flood mit­ig­a­tion may be achieved. Whole­heartedly sup­port the pro­pos­al. Great idea, fully sup­port the pro­ject Bril­liant idea to have beavers back! About time. Beavers will restore, main­tain and cre­ate hab­it­ats des­per­ately needed in Scot­land. How will the dam­ming of water­courses impact on the sal­mon return­ing to breed. Beavers will enhance the eco­logy of the NP and provide count­less bene­fits for people too. I think it is fant­ast­ic that you are act­ively work­ing to address the biod­iversity crisis, improve Scotland’s poor Biod­iversity Intact­ness Index, and use nature solu­tions to address

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the cli­mate crisis. It is great to see attempts to improve our nat­ur­al hab­it­ats and sup­port spe­cies that share our liv­ing spaces. Beavers are great. Scot­land has a drastic­ally fail­ing Atlantic sal­mon pop­u­la­tion and all should be fine to pro­tect them not hinder and restrict their access to the spawn­ing grounds for a spe­cies that have been absent for so long. Really pleased to hear about plans at aber­lour event tonight. Friendly inform­at­ive event present­ing well con­sidered plans. I look for­ward to beavers becom­ing rees­tab­lished on the Spey. Glad to see Nature Scot provid­ing mit­ig­a­tion for when impacts arise, expect these will not be seen for sev­er­al years. We farm and man­age a small wood close to the Spey and don’t see beavers caus­ing any sig­ni­fic­ant issues for us. We graze the land close to the river which often flood in win­ters. We may plant more suit­able trees ready for their arrival. Great for the eco­sys­tem and envir­on­ment. Will be a real bene­fit to the area. I fully sup­port the pro­ject. A great ini­ti­at­ive to bring back a key stone spe­cies that will help cre­ate and restore wet­lands. This is long over­due I believe that the re-intro­duc­tion would greatly increase biod­iversity and bene­fit loc­al wild­life and poten­tially help alle­vi­ate flood risks in loc­al­ized areas. With all the rare insect spe­cies recor­ded with­in the area such as North­ern Dam­sel­fly, I believe that the wet­lands cre­ated by Beavers would greatly bene­fit many spe­cies which are cur­rently under threat. I think that the fish­er­men in the area are the biggest obstacle to a re-intro­duc­tion due to a lack of know­ledge. If a cam­paign were to be ran dur­ing which the bene­fits of Beavers and false­hood of their neg­at­ive impact on fish spe­cies were explained then this prob­lem could be greatly reduced. I fish on both the Tay and Spey catch­ment areas and hav­ing seen the dam­age caused already on the Tay by beavers I am not sup­port­ive of them being released on the Spey. I am not con­vinced that the sal­mon pop­u­la­tion has not already been adversely affected by beavers released on the Tay and fear a sim­il­ar occur­rence on the Spey. cant stop them com­ing I think that bring­ing beavers back to the CNP makes per­fect sense — the eco­lo­gic­al con­di­tions are right and beavers will help enhance the already import­ant hab­it­at fur­ther. There is also likely to be sig­ni­fic­ant sup­port and under­stand­ing from res­id­ents and landown­ers and the rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers sits well along­side oth­er ongo­ing pro­jects e.g. wild­cats and gives a power­ful mes­sage re multi-spe­cies, land­scape scale part­ner­ship work­ing for eco­lo­gic­al res­tor­a­tion Don’t want them at all

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It would be a very pos­it­ive step to improve hab­it­at, biod­iversity and water qual­ity. Will also help reduce flood­ing. My first High­land encounter was in Dunkeld and I was thrilled to this these indus­tri­ous creatures on the river, and shap­ing the river Bank…Such a treat to strengthen our eco­sys­tems with miss­ing spe­cies We can show you the destruc­tion they have caused 1^st hand in the Tay­side area! I fear the decision has already been made, and that the con­sulta­tion is only a box tick­ing exer­cise Beavers are cri­tit­cal for effect­ive water man­age­ment through slow­ing the flow — this is a great ini­ti­at­ive! NatureScot seem to have an abund­ance of ££££££ to waste on many pro­jects and intro­du­cing beavers is one. When we are in a cash crisis — potholes galore/​libraries being closed and NHS on their knees / schools crum­bling — short­ages of ££££ in coun­cils and Nature Scot are con­cerned about BEAVERS !!!!! There have been too many argu­ments put for­wards about the bene­fits of beavers but pre­cious little about the harm they do to the aquat­ic envir­on­ment. The ripari­an own­ers of the Tay and Isla are only too aware of the destruc­tion caused by beavers to riverb­anks, flood defences, drain­age chan­nels and forestry. Put simply, beavers are very destruct­ive rodents. Most river bank own­ers and land man­agers do not under­stand why the CNPA wishes to pol­lute the head­wa­ters of 7 of Scotland’s major river catch­ments (Dee, Don, Dever­on, Los­sie, Spey, Find­horn and Nairn) with this anim­al and what they fear is that once beavers have been released, it will be impossible to close Pandora’s Box or put the genie back in the bottle. In these days of severe cli­mate change, it makes abso­lutely no sense to arti­fi­cially intro­duce yet anoth­er vari­able into the land man­age­ment equa­tion for what appears to be super­fi­cial reas­ons. The pro­posed mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures do not appear to have been con­sidered prop­erly and nor do they provide the very neces­sary com­pens­a­tion on an ongo­ing basis. I will wait and fol­low the out­come of this sur­vey and fur­ther devel­op­ments. We des­per­ately need to rebuild key­stone & apex pred­at­or spe­cies includ­ing the beaver but also lynx to help con­trol roe deer num­bers which are out of con­trol in our area. Anoth­er idea pro­posed by those who do not require to make a liv­ing from the coun­tryside. Like sea eagles, badgers and pine mar­tins this will be a dis­aster. Beavers will dam­age farm land, will block cul­verts which will have to be cleared at tax pay­ers expense. There will be no effect con­trol just plat­it­udes and no effect­ive mit­ig­a­tion. All for some airey fairy plan to return the High­lands to a dis­tant past without thought to the dam­age caused. I think this is a fant­ast­ic idea and one that is long over­due. The fact that beavers bring so many eco­lo­gic­al, eco­nom­ic, social bene­fits and more maybe believe that is is essen­tial we bring back beavers as soon as possible,

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I would like to see beavers returned to the park and their long term expan­sion as a net­work of pop­u­la­tions secured. Inter­ven­tion should be min­im­ised at all costs to allow beavers the oppor­tun­ity to deliv­er max­im­um eco­lo­gic­al bene­fits. This would include their estab­lish­ment at a catch­ment scale. Land­scape change can have a tend­ency to shock some people used to the land­scape look­ing a cer­tain way. These people should be reas­sured that a trans­ition­al peri­od of their activ­ity in reshap­ing the land­scape is neces­sary before the full trans­form­a­tion that beavers will bring to the Cairngorms can be real­ised. I wel­come all part­ners work­ing with land own­ers to see the return of beavers to these land­scapes in the very near future. I under­stand the decision has already been made no mat­ter what this con­sulta­tion brings up We are dis­ap­poin­ted that this space does not allow for our full response. A paper copy of our full response will be handed in to the Office in Grant­own-on-Spey. Amaz­ing — the quick­er the bet­ter — we have no time to waste — although we don’t live in the park we live 6 miles from the edge of it and so are closely affected. Sev­er­al issues. Firstly, trees are under threat from deer and rab­bits. Intro­du­cing the beaver as anoth­er threat to trees, which are cent­ral in terms of flood pre­ven­tion and soil sta­bil­iz­a­tion, is prob­lem­at­ic. Without a pred­at­or, pop­u­la­tions will likely rap­idly increase, as happened in Chile. Also, free­dom to migrate, essen­tial for beavers, is unlikely. Most import­antly, water­log­ging around beaver dams will lead to a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in meth­ane, a very sig­ni­fic­ant green­house gas. While this wasn’t a prob­lem 400 years ago when beavers were last here, it is a very dif­fer­ent situ­ation cur­rently. It there­fore does not seem eco­lo­gic­ally respons­ible to be doing this re-intro­duc­tion cur­rently. The Bio­sphere Research insti­tute would be delighted to work with you on these issues if you are inter­ested. Please feel free to con­tact us. Cant see any neg­at­ives to bring­ing back an extirp­ated spe­cies to its nat­ive hab­it­at in such low num­bers com­pared with oth­er coun­tries (cf. France for example). Bene­fits to hab­it­at diversity and biod­iversity. Will they threaten what little Aspen we have how­ever? Only pos­it­ive feed­back from me. It strikes me as unusu­al that this is a bone of con­ten­tion for a nat­ive spe­cies when mil­lions of non-nat­ive ​“game” birds are released every year without issue and land is still allowed to be man­aged for unnat­ur­al levels of red grouse for people to kill for amuse­ment As someone who grew up in Canada I’m pro-beaver but aware that there have been incid­ents & they are large rodents in real­ity. Beavers seem like one of the bet­ter options for re-wild­ing in Scot­land. Mostly the impact that beavers will have on what is cur­rently a fairly frag­men­ted eco­sys­tem with spe­cies that should be more wide­spread now at risk of loc­al­ised extinc­tion due to their unnat­ur­ally frag­men­ted occur­rence in the park.

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I am enthu­si­ast­ic­ally sup­port­ive. I think it would be a great draw for vis­it­ors to the park and align with the vis­ion for the CNPA mov­ing for­ward. It would be import­ant to have very simple and access­ible inform­a­tion about beavers and their impacts for laypeople (the web­site page you dir­ec­ted us to was fairly wordy, I struggled to read it all). Com­munity engage­ment is dif­fi­cult on such a divis­ive top­ic, but fam­ily days or school engage­ment would be cool. I grew up in the Park and most of my fam­ily still live there — we would love to see beavers back. I expect that some landown­ers and res­id­ents will res­ist these pro­pos­als, but hope that edu­ca­tion about mit­ig­at­ing any neg­at­ive impacts of beavers (and even their basic eco­logy) will per­suade them that beavers belong in the Cairngorms as much as people do. Hav­ing beavers in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park would encour­age me to vis­it the area more often on day trips dur­ing holidays/​weekends — there would be more wild­life to see where beavers have been intro­duced, with more nat­ur­al eco­sys­tems and inter­est­ing hab­it­ats. My only con­cern is the wor­ries of those who live closer to the pro­ject area. It is import­ant that the con­cerns of loc­al farmers/​fishermen etc. are sens­it­ively addressed, and that these stake­hold­ers are cooper­ated with in order for the pro­ject to be a suc­cess and con­flicts to be avoided. I think that this is an excel­lent ini­ti­at­ive and the pos­it­ives of bring­ing back beavers to the area will have a great effect on the eco­sys­tem Return­ing beavers to the upper Spey catch­ment will have huge bene­fits for down­stream com­munit­ies in terms of mit­ig­at­ing cli­mate change related flood risk. Beavers will also help to restore the area’s biod­iversity cre­at­ing new areas of interest for people who live in or vis­it the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. I believe this to be a cru­cial pro­ject. The pres­ence of beavers in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park will be of huge bene­fit to the area. It would be won­der­ful! I believe this would be a fant­ast­ic asset to the park and attract vis­it­ors to exper­i­ence these creatures in the wild. Apart from that, their role as eco­sys­tem engin­eers has been absent for too long and in the cur­rent cli­mate and biod­iversity emer­gency, this is the right step. The plans are robust and well-thought through. It is great to see the CNPA pre­pared to bring beavers back, but par­tic­u­larly to do so with real care for the poten­tial effects they might have. Really excit­ing. Lots of water sports users will be very inter­ested and come to the area to spot beavers or evid­ence of them Abso­lutely superb plan. Great for nature wild life and people. Return­ing a miss­ing spe­cies that is key to a more healthy eco­sys­tem. Excellent

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No con­cerns or quer­ies but would like to see more info around their nat­ur­al place in the food chain and how that may be addressed i.e. what are their nat­ur­al threats else­where from pred­a­tion. Beaver are a key­stone spe­cies and will bene­fit the whole eco­sys­tem by their return. I am con­cerned that beavers will be sub­ject to per­se­cu­tion in the same way rap­tors are. There seems to be two polar­ised mind­sets in the Cairngorms between some great areas/​organisations involved in very good nature recov­ery and driv­en grouse shoot­ing intent on destruc­tion and profit. I tend to avoid vis­it­ing most of the Cairngorm area because of con­cerns over my dog poten­tially com­ing into con­tact with poisoned bait. I would not put it past those in DGS areas to try to kill any beavers they find Start young, keep engage­ment with the schools and com­munity. Cost bene­fit of eco­nom­ic argu­ments import­ant, as well as eco­lo­gic­al and philo­soph­ic­al. Also region­al and nation­al iden­tity. I no more wish to see beavers intro­duced to this coun­try than I would wish to see Bengal tigers, or any oth­er wild­life without which our farm­ers and res­id­ents are man­aging quite hap­pily. Go for it! It is long over­due. Very happy to hear that beavers are com­ing back. They are so import­ant to our river sys­tems and to oth­er spe­cies. Any­thing to restore the nat­ur­al wild­life is a job well done! Fab­ulous idea, the land is man­aged for the bene­fit of too few people cur­rently. Beavers are a nat­ive spe­cies and part of cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy bal­anced eco­sys­tem. With the UK being one of the most nature depleted coun­tries in the world and in the midst of both cli­mate and biod­iversity crisis, these vital eco­sys­tem engin­eers and key­stone spe­cies are cru­cial in boost­ing biod­iversity and redu­cing effects of cli­mate change. They will bene­fit anglers / fish­ers by cre­at­ing optim­al con­di­tions for fish to lay their eggs, cre­ate neces­sary ripari­an hab­it­ats, cre­at­ing shade, shel­ter and food sources for fish and ant poten­tial dams will not impede on fish migra­tion. As a Nation­al Park there are too many sport­ing estates which impact on the health of the envir­on­ment and biod­iversity includ­ing driv­en grouse shoot­ing and deer shoot­ing which is essen­tially intens­ive farm­ing prac­tises that are det­ri­ment­al to the land­scape. Beavers will cre­ate a more sus­tain­able, healthy and biod­iversity rich hab­it­at which is how our Nation­al Parks should be. Any land which is impacted by Beavers can be very simply mit­ig­ated against such as Beaver deceiv­ers, tree wrap­ping and open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions and sup­port to land own­ers. Hav­ing a ded­ic­ated beaver officer is a strong move. For landown­ers to have a known, trus­ted and eas­ily access­ible per­son to help and quickly respond to any poten­tial issues as

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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they are arise, or even help­ing to plan for and mit­ig­ate before they arise, will help people to coex­ist with beavers. Beaver activ­it­ies can present chal­lenges and those are likely to impact on a small num­ber of people, and it is import­ant to sup­port them. As a vis­it­or to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park over many years I value and love the land­scape, people and wild­life of the area. I believe beavers will have a long term bene­fi­cial effect on the land­scape and eco­logy with bene­fits for those that live, work and vis­it the area. The long term com­mon good should be what determ­ines this decision, along­side the abil­ity to help and sup­port those that are or feel they are adversely effected in the short term. Over­time we will learn to live with beavers and be thank­ful for what they do for us and the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment. We have atten­ded 2 of the pub­lic meet­ings and have found them most inform­at­ive. Part­ner agen­cies are well informed with well presen­ted doc­u­ment­a­tion. Thank you. As a farm­er, very con­cern­ing if they are rein­tro­duced, we have enough prob­lem try­ing to keep our land drained in winter nev­er­mind if rivers/​ditches are damned. With not being able to dredge the rivers any­more, many riverb­anks around the park have become very eroded past few years and beavers bur­row­ing into them will only make this worse. Also all we hear now is plant trees, thou­sands of deer have been shot for this, so why intro­duce a anim­al that des­troys them I have a con­cern over migrat­ory fish access to spawn­ing streams past beaver dams. I have had a meet­ing with Andy Ford and Jonath­an Wil­lett on 23/8/23 and there is email cor­res­pond­ence with them high­light­ing my and oth­ers con­cerns. I fear they will come any­way. This pro­ject will only accel­er­ate the arrival. It will all get out of hand as usu­al. In a world of ever increas­ing prob­lems food short­ages are one of them. How will you deal with the dam­age to the fields? The beavers will even­tu­ally dam­age river banks etc and flood fields most fields along the Spey are highly pro­duct­ive agri­cul­tur­al land. The beavers will also over time head down­stream where the land is some of the best bar­ley grow­ing areas in Scot­land. How can you con­sider that beavers come ahead of feed­ing the nation? Who is going to com­pensate the farm­ers for the loss of graz­ing or the loss of valu­able crops? Return­ing beavers feels very much like an eco­lo­gic­al oblig­a­tion. Why would you not do it? Beavers (and lynx for that mat­ter) should be rein­tro­duced as a mat­ter of course. Any­body eco­nom­ic affected by their rein­tro­duc­tion should be com­pensated in the short term until they trans­ition to liv­ing with these anim­als. You can release beavers where you want them to be but you can’t con­trol where they spread to Con­cern about damage/​flooding in farm­land Please do not be so stu­pid, this will irre­triev­ably ruin our beau­ti­ful countryside.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Beavers will dam up all nat­ur­al rivers I believe that the issues that will arise from this have been under­es­tim­ated I’m not against the rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers, I just think you need to engage more with loc­al farm­ers and land man­agers. You have failed to do this else­where, can’t see you will do this here. Hav­ing exper­i­enced there dam­age and prob­lems this would be a dis­aster to the area The dam­age beavers can cause hugely over­rides any pos­sible bene­fit eg the flood­ing of Alyth Town Centre. I have seen the destruc­tion they have caused to my loc­al area and the con­flict that has aris­en between people who pre­vi­ously lived in rel­at­ive har­mony. I can see no pos­it­ives. My con­cern is that in my area they have dev­ast­ated the tree pop­u­la­tion, blocked water courses and caused farm­land to flood ruin­ing crops Con­cerns due to the dam­age that can be caused we have had this hap­pen­ing to us recently. I think tak­ing sig­ni­fic­ant, tan­gible steps towards eco­lo­gic­al res­tor­a­tion like this is hugely import­ant. I’m so pleased that a nat­ive spe­cies is being rein­tro­duced and would like to see more of this. It seems clear that there will be issues to mit­ig­ate, but under­stand­ing that beavers are nat­ur­al to this area, and have a right to be here is the most import­ant factor to me. Lack of suit­able mit­ig­a­tion, lack of pro­tec­tion for land class 3.2 or high­er, lack of under­stand­ing by author­it­ies on how drain­age of land works, beavers move large dis­tances so will clearly work their way down the spey. Once there the people releas­ing them will take little or no respons­ib­il­ity for ongo­ing costs and prob­lems Those who think they will bene­fit are usu­ally not the same as those who will end up pay­ing the bills for them. As you release more and they breed quickly they will spread down the whole Spey val­ley and be out of con­trol very quickly caus­ing hav­oc to farm drains and dam­age to all sorts of hab­it­ate I would be in sup­port of this ins­at­ive if I could see the end game but as it stands there is no plan for man­aging the beavers when they inev­it­ably end up it dis­tributive loc­a­tion like with the sea eagle not enough though as gone in to the long term impact and man­age­ment of their rein­tro­duc­tion Hugely sup­port­ive of ini­tial release areas and of the release of beavers in gen­er­al. How­ever greatly con­cerned that farm­ers and land man­agers fur­ther down­stream in the catch­ments area and into its trib­u­tar­ies are mar­gin­al­ised and where there are ser­i­ous con­sequences, their situ­ation is not taken ser­i­ously. There does need to be a mech­an­ism to com­pensate in the event of dam­age to com­mer­cial forestry or inter­rup­tion to hydro schemes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Any pro­cess of re-wild­ing is essen­tial if we are to sup­port /​bring back wild­life to all areas in UK. Much dam­age has been inflic­ted on our nat­ur­al envir­on­ment in the UK. The intro­duc­tion of beaver com­munit­ies is a major part of re-wild­ing which is bene­fi­cial to both wild­life and people com­munit­ies. There are far bet­ter ways of help­ing nature than bring­ing back beavers. You’re going to cre­ate a far big­ger mon­ster fur­ther down the line if you do this. We should be doing this every­where It would be excel­lent The beavers will cause untold dam­age to the fish pop­u­la­tion and trees along large sec­tions of the river. Most of the trees in ques­tion have been around longer than the folk mak­ing this out­land­ish decision. Beavers are des­troy­ing lots of old hard­wood trees in Perth­shire and land own­ers show have more say on how to man­age them on their land. ridicu­lous idea bring­ing back beavers, as proved down here in Sus­sex, they dont stay where they are put, cause untold dam­age to lots of oth­er areas, they became extinct for a reas­on and should remain that way. If beavers become a prob­lem there are no plans to solve the prob­lems caused by beavers. I am very much in sup­port of the rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers to the cairngorms. I am in favour of spe­cies intro­duc­tion that is appro­pri­ate to the hab­it­at and will enrich and diver­si­fy the envir­on­ment. I believe we need to remedi­ate the lack of wet­lands we have and beavers seem a good way to medi­ate this Hav­ing seen the dam­age done by beavers in North Amer­ica I think the idea needs more thought Beavers help to improve fish and sal­mon hab­it­at and assist with sal­mon­oid recov­ery which I am very much in sup­port of. How to tip the bal­ance yet again, beavers do untold dam­age to trees and water­ways I per­son­ally don’t know much about them oth­er than watch­ing the usu­al hunt­ing pro­grammes and from what I’ve seen they are a pain in the ass and offer noth­ing but hassle for land own­ers and wood­lands? They are hunted over­seas and still their num­bers explod so what’s the plan for con­trolling num­bers in the future and are any rights put in place to pro­tect your land’s and prop­erty from them? We’ve been giv­en the kites and buz­zards over the past few years and they are cur­rently more com­mon than spar­rows in some places now and still num­bers grow ໖ this will even­tu­ally have an impact on our wild­life and the spe­cies them self. They can’t just keep intro­du­cing anim­als with no actu­al plan for the future of our own wild­life and coun­tryside Prob­lems for fish migra­tion, dams in wrong places can cause flood dam­age. Inev­it­ab­il­ity of need for pop­u­la­tion con­trol / cull­ing in future years. Bene­fits overhyped.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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We seem to be haphaz­ardly releas­ing beavers across the coun­try without really under­stand­ing our effects on the wider eco sys­tem, this will have massive implic­a­tions across the uk Why. In a time when we con­tin­ue to battle cli­mate change through the plant­ing of trees and heav­ily rely­ing on the mature trees in the catch­ment as car­bon sinks, we are pro­pos­ing to release a spe­cies that is of a det­ri­ment to all of this? I’ve seen first hand the dam­age these anim­als do to mature trees, some of over 200 years old, in places along the river Tay and through­out Canada. The beauty of Spey­side includes flour­ish­ing trees and the latest frame­work provided by the Spey fish­ery board who are try­ing to pre­vent the Atlantic Sal­mon spe­cies from extinc­tion in our river, who many rely on for jobs and income show sup­port now more than ever with the increase in Tem­per­at­ures and dir­ect sun­light on our river spawn­ing grounds we need the shade of the trees to stop the juven­iles from being wiped out to rising water tem­per­at­ures. Intro­du­cing beavers into the Spey­side region would be a dis­aster. Once it’s been done, you then see the dev­ast­at­ing effects they will have on the area that so many people travel to vis­it. No point in say­ing what I think as the Park nev­er listens to pub­lic opin­ions Vari­ous spe­cies die off for a reas­on. We really don’t want some of them back. I’ve seen first hand the destruc­tion caused by beavers in and around Loch Tay and along the river itself, the land has been doing quite well without beavers we do not need them. Please stop play­ing games with our envir­on­ment Fool­ish plan, which flies in the face of all the advances made in forest and land man­age­ment and good drain­age prac­tices. A lot of which have been dimin­ished since the adop­tion of the water­ways frame­work. Com­plete back­wards steps, and green wash­ing for super­fi­cial pur­poses. This is a good idea to bring beavers back as hav­ing seen the beavers at Argaty, I believe that the beavers will greatly enhance the area. It will hap­pen regard­less of what I say. Beaver became extinct due to humans but it doesn’t mean our eco­sys­tem which has also evolved can cope with them. Hav­ing seen res­ults and issues else­where, I believe it’s the wrong thing to do. Why try to re intro­duce a spe­cies that is det­ri­ment­al to this envir­on­ment, you can­not and have a proven record of not being able to look after capercaillie/​black cock ’ / pred­at­or con­trol in your parks . What on earth are you guys going to des­troy next with beavers ! You are idi­ots. Look at Amer­ica where they cause hec­tares of dam­age and have thou­sands of hec­tares of human free land to relo­cate them to. They became extinct in the uk for a reas­on, humans, and our num­bers are 10 x that now so com­pletely In compatible

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Good luck. This is a small step in the right dir­ec­tion for hol­ist­ic integ­rated land man­age­ment in Scot­land. Equi­lib­ri­um restored It’s long over­due and very wel­come. Natures engin­eers have proven to restore hab­it­ats to how they should be and it bene­fits all kinds of plants and oth­er anim­als Just do it I’m eager for beavers Why intro­duce an anim­al that even­tu­ally will need culled in the future.. We live close to the ori­gin­al illeg­al release of beavers who’s actions have caused major prob­lems on the Ericht and Tay through bank erosion It’ll be a total dis­aster for the area, the farm­ers and landown­ers in the area and for vis­it­ing anglers and vis­it­ors to the area who enjoy walk­ing along the banks etc. long over­due, they’ll cre­ate a bet­ter hab­it­at for many oth­er spe­cies includ­ing sal­mon, they cre­ate dead wood which is vital eco­lo­gic­ally and their dams will cre­ate firebreaks and alle­vi­ate both flood­ing and drought. Their activ­it­ies could very well help breed­ing waders at Insh Marshes. Whilst it is a rein­tro­duc­tion, they are a nat­ive spe­cies that should be in our land­scapes but for past human inter­ven­tion. Of course it is right to reset this. I’ve wit­nessed firsthand the dev­ast­a­tion beavers have caused on the Tay and don’t want