Appendix 2.1 – RSPB Scotland site selection strategy

Appendix 2.1 This doc­u­ment was pro­duced by RSPB Scot­land for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority.

Beaver release strategy RSPB Insh Marshes

Under the con­di­tion that Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity acquires all required licenses, and based on The Beaver Trust’s advice, RSPB Scot­land agrees to facil­it­ate the release of up to three Beaver fam­il­ies on RSPB Scot­land Insh Marshes Nature Reserve in Feb­ru­ary-April 2024. A less pre­ferred win­dow of oppor­tun­ity for beaver releases, due to more likely flood­ing events, is iden­ti­fied in Septem­ber-Octo­ber 2024. This release strategy is sub­ject to changes due to unpre­dict­able weath­er con­di­tions and the avail­ab­il­ity of trapped beavers. The strategy will need a review fol­low­ing any release, informed by the mon­it­or­ing of the released anim­als. Revised strategies may include the release of more beaver fam­il­ies with­in the 5‑year scope of the Park Authority’s anti­cip­ated license to estab­lish a self-sus­tain­ing population.

Site selec­tion

The Beaver Trust iden­ti­fied the most eco­lo­gic­ally suit­able release sites on RSPB Scotland’s Insh Marshes Nature Reserve (Site Selec­tion Report). Fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tions with neigh­bour­ing landown­ers and tak­ing into account any con­cerns raised, RSPB Scot­land agreed on an ini­tial release of beaver fam­il­ies at three of the suit­able release loc­a­tions (See fig­ure 1). These loc­a­tions were selec­ted to encour­age release site fidel­ity as that would sim­pli­fy fol­low up mon­it­or­ing and plan­ning mit­ig­a­tion efforts. RSPB Scot­land only wants to release beaver fam­il­ies on sites most suit­able to sup­port a beaver ter­rit­ory, while it is accep­ted that the released anim­als will explore a large area and may settle any­where, with vary­ing like­li­hood, with­in or even out­with the reserve bound­ary. This was also com­mu­nic­ated to neigh­bour­ing landown­ers dur­ing ini­tial conversations

Fig­ure 1. Map of selec­ted beaver release loc­a­tions [redac­ted]

Table 1. Over­view of release locations

Release loc­a­tion	Name	Grid ref­er­ence	Pre­ferred for fam­il­ies with depend­ent young	Impact by flooding
1	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	Yes	Medi­um
2	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	No	High
3	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	Yes	High

Depend­ent young

[redac­ted] RSPB Scot­land does there­fore not pri­or­it­ise this site for a beaver pair with depend­ent young based on The Beaver Trust’s advice. The oth­er two sites will prefer­ably see the release of pairs with depend­ent young to the bene­fit of the estab­lish­ing a self-sus­tain­ing beaver pop­u­la­tion. This will be sub­ject to the avail­able beaver pairs how­ever, and pairs without depend­ent young can also be con­sidered for these release sites.

Tim­ing of releases

By determ­in­ing the tim­ing of the releases, RSPB Scot­land wants to increase the like­li­hood of suc­cess­ful estab­lish­ment in the sys­tem, prefer­ably on the reserve. RSPB Scot­land wants to avoid releases to occur before a lengthy peri­od of harsh weath­er and a high risk of con­sec­ut­ive flood events. Novem­ber to Janu­ary is often char­ac­ter­ised by con­sec­ut­ive floods and/​or unpre­dict­able weath­er changes. This peri­od has there­fore been excluded from the release peri­od (See table 2). Even if a good spell of weath­er is pre­dicted in this peri­od, RSPB Scot­land determ­ines the risk of a sud­den change of the con­di­tions too high. This is based on an assess­ment of his­tor­ic flood­ing pat­terns. Beaver releases should there­fore ideally hap­pen as late as pos­sible with­in the trap­ping sea­son, with the added bene­fit that young are more developed. Releases out­with the excluded peri­od will still be depend­ent on the fore­cas­ted weath­er con­di­tions and advice from The Beaver Trust. If all three beaver fam­il­ies can­not be caught and released in the short­er win­dow avail­able in spring, then a fur­ther release early in the trap­ping sea­son in Autumn (Septem­ber-Octo­ber) could be con­sidered. The need to eval­u­ate weath­er con­di­tions is high­er in this peri­od, but beavers could have enough time to estab­lish before harsh weath­er con­di­tions and floods become more pre­dict­able. Post­pon­ing releases until early spring also provides the RSPB and their neigh­bour­ing landown­ers with the oppor­tun­ity to pre­pare for the arrival of beavers with the right level of advice and sup­port from the Park Author­ity and NatureScot.

Table 2. Time sched­ule for beaver releases.

Flood risk: red = high, orange = medi­um, yel­low = low, green = unlikely Beaver release peri­od: green = pre­ferred, orange = option­al (weath­er depend­ent), red = excluded

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Trap­ping season	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]
Flood risk	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]
Beaver release period	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]	[redac­ted]

Pri­or­it­isa­tion

RSPB Scot­land would prefer releases on all sites to hap­pen with­in a brief time frame to max­im­ise the chances of ter­rit­ory estab­lish­ment on the reserve. This is espe­cially import­ant for release loc­a­tion 2 and 3 because both release sites are likely be included in a ter­rit­ory estab­lished at either loc­a­tion. If this is not pos­sible due to the avail­ab­il­ity of anim­als, release site 1 should be pri­or­it­ised, increas­ing the like­li­hood for the oth­er two release sites to stay avail­able for a later release. Release site 2 should be pri­or­it­ised if a pair without depend­ent young is avail­able for release. RSPB Scot­land is aware that the time con­straints will mean logist­ic­al chal­lenges for the trans­lo­ca­tions. In any case, RSPB would prefer to reduce the ini­tial num­ber of beaver pairs released to increase the chance of a suc­cess­ful translocation.

Plan­ning

RSPB Scot­land needs to be informed about a release promptly to accom­mod­ate the pre­par­a­tion of release sites, in par­tic­u­lar when a tem­por­ary shel­ter and addi­tion­al food sup­ply are needed on advice from The Beaver Trust.

[redac­ted]

A form­al pre-release site vis­it will have to be made to eval­u­ate the release includ­ing the exact location.

*Depend­ent young: Less than a year old.