Beaver Update

April 2026 Pete Short and Jonath­an Wil­let (30 April 2026)

Beaver Pop­u­la­tion Summary

Year 1 releases – 18. Year 2 releases – 15. Year 3 releases – 7. 2024 wild-born kits – 2 (from 2 fam­il­ies). 2025 wild-born kits – 18 (from 8 fam­il­ies). Total of 60 (includ­ing 1 beaver out­with the Nation­al Park boundary).

Activ­ity

• Rothiemurchus (Lochan Mor/​Lily Loch): Beavers still act­ive on the site.
• Kin­rara 1: Beavers are still act­ive on this site.
• Kin­rara 2: Beavers are reg­u­larly feed­ing on nearby ripari­an woodland.
• Kin­rara 3: Beavers are still act­ive on this site.
• Kin­rara 4: Lim­ited activ­ity on site, but a dense area of scent mound­ing was found upstream on the Spey, close to the down­stream extent of the Inshriach beaver ter­rit­ory, indic­at­ing a ter­rit­ory bound­ary. Fur­ther site invest­ig­a­tion con­duc­ted on the canoe survey.
• Glen Tromie: Beavers are still act­ive on the main site, fresh feed­ing activ­ity recor­ded, along with fresh mater­i­al on the food cache of main lodge and fresh mater­i­al on the sec­ond­ary bur­row. Invest­ig­ated feed­ing sign from nearby River Tromie, lots of winter feed­ing signs found.
• Insh Marshes: Beavers still act­ive on site and have explored nearly all of the reserve.
• Inshriach: Beavers are still act­ive on the site. Vig­or­ous coppicing/​regrowth.
• Loch Mor­lich 1: Beavers are still act­ive on the site, with extens­ive felling of wil­lows and a few birches on the yel­low trail, beside Abhainn Ruighe Eun­achan (inflow to Loch Mor­lich). Some of these beavers are vis­it­ing the car­rot piles at the 2026 release site.
• Loch Mor­lich 2: Two beavers released on the 19 March, both com­ing to the feed­ing piles/​camera.
• Aviemore area: Canoe sur­vey under­taken this month. Bur­row and scent mounds found on an island, likely to be a new territory.
• Kin­gussie Graz­ings: A beaver is still act­ive on this site, fresh feed­ing signs recor­ded. Vig­or­ous wil­low & syca­more coppicing.

Sites out­with Kin­gussie to Aviemore

• Crom­dale beaver: No fresh beaver activ­ity at this site this month. Likely the beaver has headed onto the main stem of the Spey.
• Gar­mouth beaver: No new reports.
• Lag­gan Bridge: New bur­row found due to low water levels. Likely to be inact­ive cur­rently. Not much fresh activity.
• Boat of Garten: A single beaver is occupy­ing a bur­row there. Small amounts of fresh feed­ing signs present. Scattered, fresh feed­ing signs seen on wil­low from Boat to Broom­hill Bridge.
• Grant­own between the A95 bridge and the Cairn Dis­til­lery: Bur­row and fresh scent mounds found on an island dur­ing canoe sur­vey. Fresh feed­ing sign nearby, indic­at­ing a beaver is act­ive in the area.
• Tul­loch: Reports of beaver sign here but con­firmed on a site vis­it this was human activity.

Mon­it­or­ing and Mit­ig­a­tion Plan Actions

• Monthly patrols of release sites undertaken.
• Weekly patrols of high impact areas have been under­taken (not cur­rently active)
• Canoe sur­vey of the Spey around Aviemore, Grant­own and undertaken,
• Beaver dam remov­al site. Sur­veyed area again in April. No activ­ity seen since single beaver seen on cam­era in March

Rais­ing Aware­ness and Understanding

• 24 March. Met­ing and site vis­its with Net­work Rail to start dia­logue about the rail­way and beavers.
• ²⁸⁄₂₉ March. IUCN Con­flict Res­ol­u­tion course for Beaver Team & oth­er partners.
• 30 March. Shef­field Hal­lam Uni­ver­sity Geo­graphy group vis­it to Glen­more beaver site. 53 students.
• 30 March. Grant­own Gram­mar School Juni­or Rangers canoe trip on the Spey. 15 pupils.

N.B. If beavers are found in an area where the landown­er was not pre­vi­ously aware of their pres­ence, the Park Author­ity will con­tact that landown­er. The Park Author­ity does not routinely con­tact landown­ers with gen­er­al updates; this monthly update does that. There are What­s­App Groups for landown­ers around releases sites and also in any high impact areas, which have beavers present e.g. Laggan.