Appendix 5 – Response to [redacted]’s questions

Appendix 5 Response to the ques­tions from Jonath­an Wil­let, Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager, 18 Septem­ber 2023, amended on 18 Octo­ber 2023

Back­ground The Cairngorms Nature beaver sub-group was estab­lished in 2017, com­pris­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives from Nation­al Farm­ers Uni­on of Scot­land, Scot­tish Land and Estates, Spey Fish­ery Board, Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive, Forest and Land Scot­land, RSPB Scot­land and NatureScot. The group’s remit was to invest­ig­ate the like­li­hood and be pre­pared for the poten­tial arrival of beaver to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park by nat­ur­al means, as per the action in the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan to, ​“Plan pro­act­ively for the poten­tial and man­age­ment implic­a­tions of beaver pop­u­la­tions in the Nation­al Park”. A report pub­lished in April 2022 con­cluded that there were sig­ni­fic­ant bar­ri­ers to arrival by nat­ur­al means.

In the mean­time, the group’s remit evolved fur­ther with the change in gov­ern­ment policy to facil­it­ate beaver trans­lo­ca­tion into new catch­ments, out­with their cur­rent range. This rep­res­en­ted in the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan as an action to ​‘Facil­it­ate beaver trans­lo­ca­tion in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park’.

In June 2022 the Park Author­ity Board dis­cussed a pro­pos­al to facil­it­ate trans­lo­ca­tion in the Nation­al Park. The paper presents the his­tory and back­ground of part­ner­ship work­ing and chan­ging policy con­text and set out three options for the Park Authority’s involve­ment in any pro­pos­als: tak­ing a lead role in mak­ing an applic­a­tion, liais­ing closely with NatureScot on applic­a­tions made by 3^rd parties, or com­ment­ing on applic­a­tions made by 3^rd parties.

The Board agreed the recom­mend­a­tion that the Park Author­ity take a lead role in tak­ing for­ward an applic­a­tion to release beaver into the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Amongst the bene­fits of this approach were felt to be the oppor­tun­ity to build on the exist­ing close rela­tions with land man­agers and part­ners, to take a multi-sec­tor­al, multi-issue approach, to sup­port an applic­a­tion pro­cess with rig­or­ous data col­lec­tion and con­sulta­tion pro­cesses, to con­sider a whole catch­ment approach to identi­fy­ing suit­able sites and pop­u­la­tion dynam­ics, and to be able to provide addi­tion­al sup­port and advice to any mit­ig­a­tion and man­age­ment scheme. Pre­par­at­ory work with the beaver group and stake­hold­ers began immediately.

In Septem­ber 2022, Scotland’s Beaver Strategy 2022 – 2045 was pub­lished set­ting out a route map for beavers in Scot­land over the com­ing dec­ades. The strategy will steer wider efforts to identi­fy and act­ively expand the pop­u­la­tion to new catch­ments, along­side appro­pri­ate man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion, fol­low­ing the Scot­tish Government’s change in policy to encour­age wider beaver restoration.

The Park Author­ity is fol­low­ing the Inter­im guid­ance on NatureScot sup­port for and assess­ment of beaver trans­lo­ca­tion pro­jects and Beavers in Scot­land — Con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tion guid­ance for applic­ants, con­sul­tees and inter­ested parties that has been pro­duced by NatureScot.

NatureScot iden­ti­fied the Spey as hav­ing the greatest area of poten­tial core beaver wood­land of all the catch­ments in Scot­land and pro­duced an Envir­on­ment­al Report on the catch­ment in June 2023 to facil­it­ate any trans­lo­ca­tion licence applic­a­tion there.

The ques­tions These ques­tions were sent in an email on the 25 August 2023.

1. Why 3 sites now/​2024? Why not 1 then 2 at a later stage, pos­sibly staged. Surely this would reduce risk. Learn from any issues with 1^st release.

See the back­ground inform­a­tion above as to why the work for the licence applic­a­tion is being taken for­ward now.

The gen­er­al beha­viour of beavers on a giv­en site is well known from research and the many beaver rein­tro­duc­tions pro­grammes that have taken place in Europe over the last 100 years. How­ever, their activ­ity and impacts at a very loc­al level can only be determ­ined when beavers are on that site. What beavers do on one site will not neces­sar­ily be the same as on another.

As the pro­pos­al is to estab­lish an expand­ing, self-sus­tain­ing pop­u­la­tion it made sense to under­take the SEA and oth­er assess­ments at the upper catch­ment scale, cov­er­ing a num­ber of sites, rather than one site at a time. To cre­ate a viable and sus­tain­able pop­u­la­tion sev­er­al release sites will be required, so the releases will be staged over a num­ber of years. There will be plenty of oppor­tun­ity to learn from the first releases. The whole pro­cess of man­aging the pro­ject will be adaptive.

The Park Author­ity gained agree­ment from three landown­ers to have beavers released on their land, these sites are part of a release pro­gramme that will take place over the peri­od of the trans­lo­ca­tion licence (if we are suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing that) and on a num­ber of sites. We are speak­ing to oth­er landown­ers, but we have no more con­firmed trans­lo­ca­tion sites as yet.

1. Are they expect­ing beavers from the 3 sites to meet up? Timescale?

Yes, the expect­a­tion is that the sexu­al mature juven­iles will leave their par­ents’ ter­rit­ory in their second or third year to explore, set up new ter­rit­or­ies and find a mate. The dis­pers­al of the beavers will depend on the age of the kits in the family.

The estab­lish­ment of a healthy, self-sus­tain­ing pop­u­la­tion depends on dis­pers­ing beavers find­ing unre­lated mates. The lar­ger num­ber of fam­il­ies in the founder pop­u­la­tion, the faster this will happen.

1. It wasn’t clear to us at what point it would be con­sidered the pop­u­la­tion was suc­cess­ful and large enough before it became trouble­some and what would hap­pen to their pro­tec­ted status.

The res­ults of beaver activ­ity can be an issue for land man­agers at any point in pop­u­la­tion expan­sion. There­fore, beaver pop­u­la­tion size and ​‘trouble’ may not be dir­ectly cor­rel­ated. The issue is impacts. Once an unac­cept­able impact is iden­ti­fied, then mit­ig­a­tion escal­a­tion will com­mence, right up to the point of relo­ca­tion and ulti­mately, when all oth­er options have been fully explored, leth­al con­trol. All oth­er mit­ig­a­tion tech­niques will have to have been tried and demon­strated to have failed before trans­lo­ca­tion and leth­al con­trol is con­sidered and poten­tially licenced because of pro­tec­ted spe­cies status and the require­ment for favour­able status.

The three ​‘com­pon­ents’ for con­sid­er­a­tion of favour­able con­ser­va­tion status are defined by a paper from NatureScot;

• Pop­u­la­tion dynamics
• Range
• Avail­ab­il­ity of suit­able habitat

1. We need more clar­ity on the times­cale with regards to how quickly they will spread from their release sites

There is pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling avail­able from NatureScot/​New­castle Uni­ver­sity. It is in the Envir­on­ment­al Report Pub­lished by NatureScot in June 2023 (fig­ure 3b). It pre­dicts that a founder pop­u­la­tion of 10 fam­il­ies will increase to 29 fam­il­ies after 10 years and that dis­pers­al in that time frame is unlikely to be out­with the Kin­gussie –Aviemore areas. It should be recog­nised that it is a mod­el and so only an indic­a­tion of what might happen.

1. Scot­tish Code for Con­ser­va­tion Trans­lo­ca­tions: 6.1 p.8 can we see the plan referred to in bul­let point 3

The plan is effect­ively a com­bin­a­tion of the Scot­tish Beaver Strategy, the leg­al status of beavers and the policy relat­ing to beaver of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. Cer­tain ele­ment referred to, such as the mon­it­or­ing plan, is a dis­cus­sion between part­ners and is depend­ent on the loc­a­tion of the release sites. Any man­age­ment actions will be informed by the mon­it­or­ing under­taken and will fol­low the nation­al beaver mit­ig­a­tion scheme.

As part­ners in the Scot­tish Beaver Strategy 2022 – 45, we are com­mit­ting to its vis­ion, ​“Through­out Scot­land, com­munit­ies are sup­por­ted in work­ing togeth­er to max­im­ise the eco­sys­tem and wider bene­fits of beavers while min­im­ising neg­at­ive impacts. The beaver pop­u­la­tion is act­ively expan­ded into appro­pri­ate areas; adapt­ive man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion is used to pro­tect assets and interests.”

The move­ment of beavers and the estab­lish­ment of new ter­rit­or­ies will be ascer­tained through weekly mon­it­or­ing under­taken by the Park Author­ity, part­ner agen­cies and organ­isa­tions, and by mem­bers of the pub­lic sub­mit­ting their sight­ings of beavers and their feed­ing and den­ning signs. Rela­tion­ships with landown­ers along the Spey will be strengthened and main­tained to ensure good com­mu­nic­a­tion so that the Park Author­ity is made aware of beaver sight­ings or signs of activ­ity as soon as possible.

We are con­fid­ent this will ensure that any beaver activ­ity that might have unac­cept­able adverse impacts on the riverb­ank or else­where can be iden­ti­fied early on and man­age­ment meas­ures put in place quickly. Should man­age­ment meas­ures not be suf­fi­cient, the remov­al of beavers from the area would be licensed and actioned by NatureScot, after an escal­a­tion of the avail­able mit­ig­a­tion tech­niques had been shown to be not work­ing. The addi­tion­al resource provided by the Park Author­ity will enable this to be done swiftly and simply.

Nation­al and Spey catch­ment Envir­on­ment­al Reports have been pub­lished by NatureScot.

Beavers has been leg­ally clas­si­fied as a ​“former nat­ive” spe­cies and a European Pro­tec­ted Spe­cies and will there­fore remain in Scot­land. As such the strategy is for man­aging and mit­ig­at­ing impacts. Should beavers in the upper Spey cause issues that can­not be resolved through mit­ig­a­tion, they may be re-loc­ated. If there are no oth­er places in the upper Spey catch­ment they may be relo­cated to, they will be relo­cated elsewhere.

6.2 p.9 ref Max­im­ising … oth­er land-users. Can we see the eval­u­ation in bul­let point 3 and con­firm­a­tion ref resources in bul­let point 4

Bul­let point 3. See the nation­al envir­on­ment­al report above.

Bul­let point 4. This is NatureScot’s respons­ib­il­ity as it is deliv­er­ing the nation­al Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme. Your ques­tion needs to be dir­ec­ted to them.

From the Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme’s website

“NatureScot will provide free expert advice to all, with regards liv­ing with beavers and where appro­pri­ate, how to man­age beaver activity.

The fin­an­cial costs of deliv­er­ing mit­ig­a­tion works will be sup­por­ted by NatureScot where they meet scheme aims. This sup­port is avail­able to all landown­ers and man­agers. Use of pub­lic funds will be dir­ec­ted to pro­tect­ing pub­lic and private interests[1] and in addi­tion will need to demon­strate good value for money. Pub­lic bod­ies that have an exist­ing biod­iversity duty under the Nature Con­ser­va­tion (Scot­land) Act 2004 will not be eli­gible for fin­an­cial sup­port under the scheme how­ever can request advice (for free) at any time.

[1] Pub­lic interest mean­ing an issue related to pub­lic health or safety; envir­on­ment­al, eco­nom­ic, or com­munity well-being.

While the detail of what mit­ig­a­tion will be appro­pri­ate on each site will vary, NatureScot and the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are com­mit­ted to expand­ing the scheme into new areas and to provide sup­port to land man­agers exper­i­en­cing neg­at­ive impacts from beavers.”

6.3 p. 16 refers to con­sulta­tion with stake­hold­ers dur­ing detailed plan­ning pre­sum­ably this happened a while ago, were landown­ers and man­agers fur­ther down­stream and upstream from the release sites con­sidered as a stake­hold­er at this stage?

The devel­op­ment of the Scot­tish Beaver Strategy in 2022 involved a nation­al stake­hold­er engage­ment pro­cess. The cur­rent pro­pos­al to trans­lo­cate beavers to the Spey was developed with the mem­bers of the Cairngorms Beaver Group.

Inform­al engage­ment events ran dur­ing March 2023 at the early stage of detailed plan­ning, the events were focussed on the likely release area. Their aim was to;

1) to raise aware­ness and under­stand­ing of issues and oppor­tun­it­ies in order to allow people to make informed com­ments dur­ing form­al engage­ment and,

2) to listen to feed­back and feed into the pro­pos­al out for form­al pub­lic engage­ment now.

80 people atten­ded four events dur­ing this stage

The form­al engage­ment and con­sulta­tion on the pro­pos­al to release beaver into the upper Spey Catch­ment began on the 14^th of August and will end on the 25^th of Septem­ber. We are hold­ing six pub­lic events, five with­in the Park and one in Aber­lour. We have pub­li­cised the pub­lic engage­ment events and period.

When all three pro­posed releases sites were con­firmed in April 2023 the Park Author­ity and the RSPB focussed our efforts to speak to or con­tact all the landowners/​man­agers with­in the ini­tial release area (between Kin­gussie and Aviemore) and did that before the pub­lic engage­ment star­ted. Dur­ing the pub­lic engage­ment peri­od we have met with farm­er and crofters up and down­stream of this area.

The report on the engage­ment is a key part of determ­in­ing the suc­cess or fail­ure of the licence application.

6.4 P 17 box on left – con­firm this is or not a ​“fast-track”

This is not on a ​“fast-track”. The applic­a­tion for a licence to release Beaver into the Nation­al Park is fol­low­ing exactly the same pro­cess and pro­to­cols as any oth­er applic­a­tion. A licence applic­a­tion is required due to beaver’s leg­al status. How­ever, the issues raised in the text you men­tioned have been answered in the nation­al and Spey catch­ment envir­on­ment­al reports.

6.5 Please con­firm this is a ​“non-nat­ive” translocation.

Yes. For the pur­poses of a beaver trans­lo­ca­tion licence applic­a­tion, a non-nat­ive spe­cies licence needs to be obtained for the upper Spey Catch­ment. The law that requires the licence is under sec­tion 14 of the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1981 (as amended). It is illeg­al to release, allow to escape from cap­tiv­ity or cause to be at a place out­side the con­trol of any per­son any anim­al spe­cies out­side its nat­ive range (as defined in the Act) without a licence. ​“Former nat­ive” spe­cies are con­sidered to be ​“non-nat­ive spe­cies” for the pur­poses of the Act. Beavers are con­sidered a ​“former nat­ive” spe­cies in Scot­land. There­fore, any release of beaver into the wild in Scot­land requires a non-nat­ive spe­cies licence under Sec­tion 16(4)© of the Act to ensure that they are leg­al acts.

The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment decision in 2016 allowed beavers to remain in Scot­land and they were gran­ted European Pro­tec­ted Spe­cies status in 2019. Even with these decisions they will be con­sidered a ​“former nat­ive” spe­cies until the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1981 (as amended) is fur­ther amended.

How­ever, out­with of any trans­lo­ca­tions, beavers are a defacto nat­ive species.

6.6 P21 degree of con­straints – has this been assessed as low/​medium/​high

• Trans­lo­cated Spe­cies – High. Licence required.
• Release Sites – Medium/​High. Mon­it­or­ing Plan and Oper­a­tions Requir­ing Con­sent required from NatureScot.
• Release Site (post release) – Low. Beaver may be added to the exist­ing des­ig­na­tions. That is a mat­ter for NatureScot.
• Source Pop­u­la­tion. High. Licence required for trans­lo­ca­tion. NatureScot’s responsibility.
• Anim­al Wel­fare. High. Agreed nation­ally, part of the licence requirements.
• Quarantine/​Bio­se­c­ur­ity. Low. Nation­al reviews in 2015 and 2019.
• Dan­ger­ous spe­cies. Low/​Medi­um? High. Licence required for trans­lo­ca­tion. NatureScot’s responsibility.

6.7 P.23 Risk attrib­utes assessed as No/​Low / Medi­um / High

• Like­li­hood of strong social res­ist­ance by some to the trans­lo­ca­tion. To be determ­ined by the engage­ment pro­cess and survey.
• Harm to Human Health and well-being. Low (using the cri­ter­ia in the table).
• Harm to human live­li­hoods. Low (using the cri­ter­ia in the table).
• Insuf­fi­cient resources may pre­vent suc­cess­ful imple­ment­a­tion of the trans­lo­ca­tion plan. Low. CNPA is provid­ing addi­tion­al resource to sup­port land man­agers and remove bar­ri­ers to access­ing the NS mit­ig­a­tion scheme swiftly and effi­ciently. Beaver officer, con­ser­va­tion team, ranger and vol ranger sup­port NatureScot is fund­ing the trans­lo­ca­tion of beavers.
• Major fin­an­cial costs once the trans­lo­ca­tion has been com­pleted. Medi­um, see NatureScot’s Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme.

6.8 P.24 can we see the goal set­ting? Bul­let point 3 refers to car­ry­ing capa­city. Has this been assessed and what is it in your consideration?

We are fol­low­ing the vis­ion of the Scot­tish Beaver strategy, ​“The beaver pop­u­la­tion is act­ively expan­ded into appro­pri­ate areas; adapt­ive man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion is used to pro­tect assets and interests

The range and max­im­um pop­u­la­tion size in a catch­ment is for NatureScot to determ­ine. See Favour­able Con­ser­va­tion Status and cur­rent activ­it­ies allowed under licence e.g., leth­al control.

6.9 P.25 refers to SSSIs – what effect does the Spey catch­ment being a SSSI have on this reintroduction?

Any impact is for NatureScot to determ­ine and they are doing so at the moment, this determ­in­a­tion is required for the licence applic­a­tion. The Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Assess­ment (for Spe­cial Areas of Con­ser­va­tion) will also require a mon­it­or­ing scheme to be agreed between NatureScot, the Park Author­ity and oth­er partners.

6.10 P.26 have ORCs been obtained by the land managers?

A determ­in­a­tion on any OCRs for all the SSSI’s in and adja­cent to the pro­posed trans­lo­ca­tion sites is being pre­pared by NatureScot. This is part of the licence applic­a­tion pro­cess. NatureScot has asked that the Park Author­ity applies on behalf of the landown­ers to min­im­ise the duplic­a­tion of paper­work. All the doc­u­ment­a­tion required for the licence applic­a­tion will be made pub­lic in due course.

6.11 P.27 have non-nat­ive spe­cies licences been obtained for the 3 sites?

Not yet. This is part of the spe­cies trans­lo­ca­tion licence applic­a­tion that is being draf­ted and will be sub­mit­ted to NatureScot by the end of October.

6.12 P.29 cov­ers pests and dis­ease – have the risks asso­ci­ated with Giar­dia been assessed? Scot­tish Water have raised this as an issue else­where in the coun­try. There have been recent cases of Avi­an Influ­enza trans­fer­ring to mam­mals – has this haz­ard been assessed with regards to beavers?

From Girl­ing (2019). ​“The risk of intro­du­cing sig­ni­fic­ant dis­ease to humans, domest­ic anim­als, or wild­life by releas­ing into the wild in Bri­tain a beaver that was cap­tive-bred in Bri­tain or a wild beaver from Scot­land, based on the cur­rent evid­ence of dis­ease incid­ence, and assum­ing the use of robust, peer reviewed, pre-release health screen­ing tech­niques, can be viewed as low.”

Regard­ing Avi­an Influ­enza, the Park Author­ity not aware of any research spe­cific­ally on beavers. You would need to con­tact NatureScot. [email protected]

6.13 P.34 last bul­let point refers to pop­u­la­tion viab­il­ity mod­el­ling – has this been done and may be use­ful for con­sid­er­a­tion ref point 4 above.

Pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling is avail­able from NatureScot/​New­castle Uni­ver­sity. It is in the Envir­on­ment­al Report Pub­lished by NatureScot in June 2023 (fig­ure 3b). It pre­dicts that a founder pop­u­la­tion of 10 fam­il­ies will increase to 29 fam­il­ies after 10 years and that it is very unlikely there is dis­pers­al in this time frame bey­ond the Kin­gussie to Aviemore area. It should be recog­nised that it is a mod­el and so only an indic­a­tion of what might happen.

6.14 P.35 have these assess­ments been done and can one view them?

We have received expert advice from the Beaver Trust. Their views on the tim­ing and loc­a­tion of the pro­posed releases are in a Site Selec­tion Report that is cur­rently in draft. When it is final­ised, we will pub­lish it on our website.

The best-case scen­ario for the beavers would for a large num­ber of fam­il­ies released into the best avail­able hab­it­at as close to each oth­er as their ter­rit­ori­al­ity allows. The avail­ab­il­ity of hab­it­at and landown­er approv­al for a release on their land and the avail­ab­il­ity of beavers will determ­ine when, how many and where the beaver fam­il­ies are released.

In terms of post-release assess­ment, we would be seek­ing to ensure that the pop­u­la­tion is expand­ing and breed­ing suc­cess­fully. This forms part of the mon­it­or­ing plan that we are dis­cuss­ing with NatureScot at the moment.

6.15 P.40 chapter 8 cov­ers socioeco­nom­ics. We can see the poten­tial pos­it­ives. The 2^nd bul­let point in column 2 is a val­id one ​“Any fin­an­cial …. Incur­ring costs” with regards to eco-tour­ism oper­a­tions and landown­ers. And the bul­let points at the bot­tom of that column are rel­ev­ant too to the landowner/​farming com­munity. Your com­ment on these points would be appreciated.

Eco-tour­ism

This mat­ter is one for a landown­er and the eco­tour­ism busi­ness to dis­cuss between them­selves. We hope that busi­ness in the Nation­al Park can make fin­an­cial gains from the rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers. Our approach of identi­fy­ing high risk sites, mon­it­or­ing them fre­quently and ini­ti­at­ing mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures as soon as pos­sible is con­sidered robust enough to mit­ig­ate and man­age any poten­tial impacts on rur­al businesses.

Min­im­ising harm bul­let point

The move­ment of beavers and the estab­lish­ment of new ter­rit­or­ies will be ascer­tained through weekly mon­it­or­ing under­taken by the Park Author­ity, part­ner agen­cies and organ­isa­tions, and by mem­bers of the pub­lic sub­mit­ting their sight­ings of beavers and their feed­ing and den­ning signs. Rela­tion­ships with landown­ers along the Spey will be strengthened and main­tained to ensure good com­mu­nic­a­tion so that the Park Author­ity is made aware of beaver sight­ings or signs of activ­ity as soon as possible.

We are con­fid­ent this will ensure that any beaver activ­ity that might have unac­cept­able adverse impacts on the riverb­ank can be iden­ti­fied early on and man­age­ment meas­ures put in place quickly. Should man­age­ment meas­ures not be suf­fi­cient, the remov­al of beavers from the area would be licensed and actioned by NatureScot, after an escal­a­tion of the avail­able mit­ig­a­tion tech­niques had been shown to be not work­ing. The addi­tion­al resource provided by the Park Author­ity will enable this to be done swiftly and simply.

6.16 P.41-important para in Column 1 ​“Where there is poten­tial for such harm, trans­lo­ca­tions should not pro­ceed unless accept­able solu­tions can be developed.” 2 fol­low­ing bul­let points import­ant too: ​“Man­age­ment actions/​mitigation includ­ing containment/​control, dam­age pre­ven­tion, and cull­ing to min­im­ise impacts” and ​“Long- term com­pens­a­tion agree­ments to off­set losses.” The way this sec­tion reads these should be in place pri­or to any trans­lo­ca­tion as it is in the ​“detailed plan­ning” stage. This page then goes on to describe in detail the ​“stake­hold­er engage­ment” pro­cess and in my mind to date this has been inad­equate, and I don’t con­sider the envis­aged times­cale is reas­on­able. What are your inten­tions with regards to these points?

The para­graph you men­tion is dealt with by the change in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Policy allow­ing trans­lo­ca­tion of beavers out­with their cur­rent range, Beavers in Scot­land (2015), the Scot­tish Beaver Strategy and the Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme.

We are fol­low­ing the engage­ment pro­cess as out­lined in Beavers in Scot­land — Con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tion guid­ance for applic­ants, con­sul­tees and inter­ested parties

6.17 P.44 refers to mon­it­or­ing post trans­lo­ca­tion. Please cla­ri­fy your mon­it­or­ing programme.

The primary mon­it­or­ing will be under­taken by the Park Author­ity, part­ner agen­cies and organ­isa­tions, and by mem­bers of the pub­lic sub­mit­ting their sight­ings of beavers and their feed­ing and den­ning signs. Cam­era traps will be set up in and around the beaver lodges or bur­rows. This data gath­er­ing will determ­ine breed­ing suc­cess and the devel­op­ment of new territories.

Through mod­el­ling and dis­cus­sions with landown­ers and man­agers we are also identi­fy­ing high-risk sites that need reg­u­lar mon­it­or­ing. Ini­tially this is focussed around the release sites and will adapt to any spread of beaver range. Reg­u­lar com­mu­nic­a­tion with the own­ers and man­agers of these high-risk sites will be the key to early inter­ven­tion to avoid or min­im­ise any beaver-related impacts.

Work­ing with the Spey Fish­er­ies Board we have iden­ti­fied poten­tially high-risk sites to Atlantic Sal­mon migra­tion and spawn­ing by over­lay­ing redd data with Beaver Dam­ming Capa­city mod­el­ling. After the ini­tial trans­lo­ca­tion, any dam­ming of spawn­ing burns will be closely mon­itored in part­ner­ship with the Spey Fish­ery Board to identi­fy if there are any impacts on the redds and adult fish migra­tion. We will encour­age research on beavers to be under­taken with­in the Nation­al Park.

1. Cos­ted mit­ig­a­tions should include at least, in writ­ing and reviewed annually:

7.1 Dam­age to exist­ing trees

7.2 Dam­age to new plant­a­tions post translocation

7.3 Dam removal

7.4 Trans­lo­ca­tions

7.5 Loss of land value

7.6 Loss of land use

7.7 Land owner/​manager man­age­ment time

7.8 Respons­ib­il­ity for mon­it­or­ing beaver activ­ity and damage

7.9 Sup­port and use of flow devices/​monitoring

7.10 Exclu­sion fen­cing where necessary

The mit­ig­a­tion scheme that NatureScot are respons­ible for deliv­er­ing nation­ally is detailed here. In part­ner­ship with NatureScot and oth­ers, The Park Author­ity will be ded­ic­at­ing staff resource to facil­it­at­ing the suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of the mit­ig­a­tion scheme with­in the Park.

The Park Author­ity would like to reit­er­ate that we will be focus­ing staff resource to make this mit­ig­a­tion scheme work as smoothly as pos­sible, through reg­u­lar mon­it­or­ing, good com­mu­nic­a­tion, timely site vis­its and under­tak­ing licence applic­a­tions for activ­it­ies requir­ing them. Through the deliv­ery of these actions, we aim to avoid or mit­ig­ate any unac­cept­able impacts that beavers have on landholdings.

1. We should invest­ig­ate fur­ther Ali’s points with ref­er­ence to what has been put in place in Devon and paid bene­fits to landowners/​managers as a res­ult of accept­ing beavers.

The Park Author­ity high­lighted the oppor­tun­ity for sup­port in achiev­ing Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan out­comes in the recent Agri­cul­ture Bill consultation.

Ques­tion from 26 August.

One thing I meant to ask was if the beavers will be elec­tron­ic­ally tagged so you can mon­it­or their movements?

This may be use­ful to gain know­ledge as to how quickly they move from one place to anoth­er or if they do at all.

Answer.

There are no plans to tag or mon­it­or beavers individually.

The mon­it­or­ing will focus on where beaver activ­ity is hap­pen­ing, with­in or out with the release areas and where new ter­rit­or­ies are being set up (evid­ence of new lodges or bur­rows). This will fol­low the pro­tocol that NatureScot has used for assess­ing the pop­u­la­tion size of beavers in the rest of Scotland.

Sight­ings of beaver signs and impacts will be mon­itored by beaver officer, con­ser­va­tion team, gen­er­al pub­lic, land man­agers, rangers and volun­teer rangers. The main thing is to mon­it­or impacts, not just where they go. As already men­tioned, the num­ber of beavers in an area is a much less import­ant a met­ric than the impacts that one or more beaver have.