River Spey beaver report 2025

River Spey Beaver Sur­vey Report 2025

Jonath­an Wil­let inspect­ing an Aspen, near Inver­ton, Kin­gussie Spir­it of the Spey / Dave Craig

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River Spey Beaver Sur­vey Report 2025

Pre­pared by: Jonath­an Wil­let, Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager 8 Septem­ber 2025

Con­tents

1. Exec­ut­ive summary……………………………………………………………………………3
2. The survey………………………………………………………………………………………..4 2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………4 2.2 Sur­vey methodology………………………………………………………………………4
3. Results……………………………………………………………………………………………9 3.1 Day 1: Loch Mor­lich and Loch Alvie, 30 July…………………………………….9 3.2 Day 2: Kin­gussie to Dal­faber (Aviemore), 26 August………………………….9 3.3 Day 3: Dal­faber to Old Spey Bridge (Grant­own-on-Spey), 28 August..10 3.4 Day 4: Old Spey Bridge (Grant­own-on-Spey) to Advie Bridge, 29 August…11 3.5 Day 5: Eilean Dubh (nr. Spey Dam NN5985293896) to Lochan Uvie, 30 August….11 3.6 Day 6: Lochan Uvie to Kin­gussie, 31 August…………………………………12
4. Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………..13 4.1 Loc­a­tion of the beavers……………………………………………………………….13 4.2 Beaver canoes / wil­low fragments…………………………………………………17 4.3 Tree choice………………………………………………………………………………..18 4.4 Ripari­an and in-river hab­it­at along the Spey……………………………………18 4.5 Tim­ing of the survey……………………………………………………………………18 4.6 Future pop­u­la­tion expansion…………………………………………………………19
5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..21
6. Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………………………..22
7. Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………………..23

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1. Exec­ut­ive summary

The res­ults of the sur­vey are much as we would have expec­ted, with the dis­pers­ing beavers feed­ing in and pos­sibly form­ing new ter­rit­or­ies in the areas of the highest qual­ity beaver habitat.

The River Spey was sur­veyed between Spey Dam and Advie Bridge over five days from 26 to 31 August 2025. Loch Mor­lich was also sur­veyed on 30 July. Dur­ing the sur­vey, four beaver ter­rit­or­ies were iden­ti­fied, with either lodges or bur­rows being found or hav­ing been pre­vi­ously recor­ded. To date, we have iden­ti­fied nine ter­rit­or­ies, all formed by released individuals.

Three loc­a­tions of recent, con­cen­trated feed­ing activ­ity were found: at Lag­gan Bridge, at the con­flu­ence of the Tromie, and between the con­flu­ence of the Spey and Allt na Criche (Lyn­wilg) and Dal­faber. No bur­row or lodges were found there at the time of the sur­vey; how­ever, these could devel­op into ter­rit­or­ies over time. Foot­age from the RSPB trail cam­er­as on the Tromie seem to have iden­ti­fied two indi­vidu­als in that area. In the large area of feed­ing activ­ity between Allt na Criche and Dal­faber, it is likely more than one ter­rit­ory could develop.

In com­par­is­on with the sur­vey in May last year, there was a great deal more activ­ity recor­ded. This was expec­ted, due to both released beavers set­tling on the river and also dis­pers­al of sexu­ally mature beavers from their fam­ily groups.

There are areas of feed­ing signs, of vary­ing dens­it­ies, all the way along the river from Spey Dam to Grant­own-on-Spey. How­ever, there are some long stretches with little or no feed­ing signs due to the lack of woody for­age. These sec­tions are Gaskbeg to Lochan Uvie, the Tru­im to New­ton­more Golf Club and Dal­faber to Advie Bridge. 80% of the feed­ing signs (n=85) recor­ded along the river were on willows.

To determ­ine if new ter­rit­or­ies are being estab­lished, monthly mon­it­or­ing of sites will take place in Lag­gan, Glen Tromie and the Aviemore area.

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2. The survey

2.1 Intro­duc­tion

The sur­vey was under­taken by Park Author­ity staff from the beaver team. Use of canoes provided the best oppor­tun­ity to access the riverb­ank and detect feed­ing signs and beaver activ­ity. Due to the very low water levels on the Spey, the sur­vey was post­poned twice from May 2025. The decision was made to start from Kin­gussie in the hope that more rain would fall and increase the water levels in the shal­low sec­tions of the upper Spey.

2.2 Sur­vey methodology

Dur­ing this and pre­vi­ous sur­veys, the pre­dom­in­ant tree spe­cies being fed on by beavers in or beside the river were wil­lows of vari­ous spe­cies. The sur­vey con­sisted of pad­dling down the Spey look­ing at the wil­lows on both sides of the river and identi­fy­ing any vis­ible feed­ing signs (cut trunks, branches or twigs or bark strip­ping) of a vary­ing fresh­ness, or cop­pice regrowth indic­at­ing past feed­ing and so war­rant­ing a closer inspec­tion of that par­tic­u­lar tree or bush. The feed­ing signs were recor­ded using an app on our phones. The point data and asso­ci­ated inform­a­tion was uploaded dir­ectly to our GIS serv­er when we got back to a suit­able Wi-Fi connection.

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The feed­ing signs were aged in the fol­low­ing way:

• From 2024 / winter 2025 – The cut faces of the wood have silvered up along with the bark, long cop­pice regrowth indic­at­ing a full sea­son of growth from this spring (image 1).

Image 1 — Old beaver feed­ing sign and long woody wil­low cop­picing Park Author­ity / Pete Short

• Sum­mer 2025 – The cut faces of the wood are not silvered up but are dulling, the cut bark is brown. The regrowth is short, indic­at­ing that it has only been grow­ing for part of the sum­mer. Mater­i­al from the tree or bush in ques­tion is nearby and has leaves still on it, show­ing it was cut dur­ing this grow­ing sea­son (image 2).

Image 2 — Semi recent (ie last few months) beaver feed­ing sign and short, fresh cop­picing and browned cut wood © Park Author­ity / Pete Short

• In the last week – The cut wood is still bright; the bark is fully or par­tially green, no re-growth below the cut (image 3).

Beaver-cut branches were not recor­ded as feed­ing signs, as they could have been washed down the river from a num­ber of loc­a­tions upstream.

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Image 3 — Very recent (ie last week) beaver bark gnaw­ing, with fleshy white wood and no cop­picing at the base of the tree © Park Author­ity / Pete Short

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Image 4 — Typ­ic­al beaver feed­ing sign on wil­low, grow­ing on the banks of the Spey, often into the water. 80% of all the feed­ing on trees spe­cies in the upper Spey catch­ment has been on wil­lows. Park Author­ity / Jonath­an Willet

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Image 5 — Bark gnaw­ing on a sil­ver birch tree © Park Author­ity / Jonath­an Willet

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3. Res­ults

3.1 Day 1: Loch Mor­lich and Loch Alvie, 30 July from 10am to 5pm

The shoreline of the loch was paddled round, start­ing at the out­flow of the loch into the River Luineag. The first obvi­ous signs was a 20cm dia­met­er row­an tree that was halfway to being felled; this was almost halfway along the far shore of the loch. It was 50m away from some wild campers, who had not heard any­thing of the beaver’s activ­ity. The signs of feed­ing activ­ity increased as we got closer to the release site at Fisherman’s / Beaver Bay.

The inflow to Loch Mor­lich, the Abhainn Ruigh-eun­achan, has been used by the beavers since release, and fresh and older feed­ing signs were found there. It is likely that the beavers have dug a bur­row there. Beaver feed­ing signs have been found as far up as the foot­bridge near Glen­more Lodge, although it is likely the beavers have explored fur­ther upstream than this.

On the shore nearest the road, a great num­ber of freshly felled wil­low branches were seen in shal­low water over a dis­tance of 200m east of the Sail­ing Club. The wil­low had been felled on land and dragged into the water. There were some oth­er old feed­ing signs seen on wil­lows close to the car parks towards the River Luineag.

In the after­noon Loch Alvie was paddled round, with scattered beaver feed­ing activ­ity on wil­lows, row­an and some aspen found. No lodge or bur­row was seen. The area of greatest feed­ing activ­ity was on the Allt Dib­heach, the out­flow of Loch Alvie: this is the main feed­ing area of the beavers on the Kin­rara Estate (Wild­Land Limited).

3.2 Day 2: Kin­gussie to Dal­faber (Aviemore), 26 August from 11am to 8.30pm

Feed­ing signs were found almost as soon as we had put in the water. Abund­ant old feed­ings signs were found by the island at Kin­gussie Graz­ings, but no activ­ity was seen at the water’s edge by the bank of the old tip. No river erosion was seen there either. The site’s own­er sent a photo on 2 Septem­ber of recent beaver feed­ing signs on a small wil­low, close to the A9 bridge.

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Old feed­ing signs were found on a small num­ber of wil­lows grow­ing on the riverb­ank down to the Tromie. At the con­flu­ence with the Spey fresh feed­ing signs were found.

There was lots of recent activ­ity seen from Lub Mhairi (NH8125103444) down to the con­flu­ence with Loch Insh. This is a known territory.

More activ­ity was found at the south­ern end of Loch Insh and towards the con­flu­ence with River Fesh­ie. This is a known territory.

From the Fesh­ie to Inshriach there were almost no beaver feed­ing signs. The char­ac­ter of the Spey changes, with a huge volume of cobbles and shingle being washed down by the Fesh­ie. This sec­tion is Alder dom­in­ated, the least pal­at­able nat­ive broadleaf for herbivores.

More fre­quent feed­ing signs star­ted to be seen at Inshriach and ended just inside the march with Rothiemurchus at the SEPA gauging sta­tion. This area is a known territory.

The next beaver feed­ing signs were found at Allt na Criche (Lyn­wilg), on a wil­low dom­in­ated island. From here all the way to Dal­faber there were fre­quent feed­ings signs. This area has some of the best ripari­an hab­it­at for beavers in the upper Spey catch­ment and the con­cen­tra­tion of feed­ings signs are a test­a­ment to that. This con­firms the asser­tion on page 51 of the ini­tial assess­ment of the poten­tial for Euras­i­an beavers to nat­ur­ally col­on­ise the Nation­al Park, which states: ​“The River Spey on the whole would offer highly suit­able hab­it­at for beaver release and sup­port­ing mul­tiple fam­il­ies in its cur­rent state… Car­ry­ing capa­city on the River Spey in its cur­rent state is estim­ated to be high.”

A single beaver was briefly seen in the river close to the Boat of Rothiemurchus, upstream of the B970 bridge.

This was the longest day as there were so many beaver feed­ing signs to record (50+).

3.3 Day 3: Dal­faber to Old Spey Bridge (Grant­own-on-Spey), 28 August from 9.30am to 6pm

After Dal­faber there were prac­tic­ally no beaver feed­ing signs, although there was suit­able hab­it­at (not as high qual­ity as around Aviemore). Only three feed­ing signs were

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found between Dal­faber and the Cairn Dis­til­lery. Over­all, this sur­vey area had low qual­ity hab­it­at for beavers, except the area around Boat of Garten bey­ond the Cairn Dis­til­lery, down to the Old Spey Bridge and the Spey’s tributaries.

3.4 Day 4: Old Spey Bridge (Grant­own-on-Spey) to Advie Bridge, 29 August from 9.30am to 3.30pm

No beaver signs were recor­ded. The riverb­anks tend to be dom­in­ated by alder, with few wil­low trees or bushes, and the river drops a great deal more than in pre­vi­ous stretches, mean­ing it has a faster flow. It is of medi­um qual­ity in terms of beaver hab­it­at. The trib­u­tar­ies of the Spey, in this area and in gen­er­al, have the highest qual­ity beaver hab­it­at. A beaver was recor­ded on the Castle Grant Beat No. 3 in June, but it does not appear to have become res­id­ent in the area.

3.5 Day 5: Eilean Dubh (nr. Spey Dam NN5985293896) to Lochan Uvie, 30 August from 10am to 6pm

Close to where the canoes put in, we found some old feed­ing signs, prob­ably from winter this year, when fresh beaver signs were found on a larch just below Spey Dam.

At Lag­gan Bridge, feed­ings signs had pre­vi­ously been recor­ded in April 2024 and winter 2025. The lat­ter vis­it left more feed­ing signs so pre­sum­ably was a longer vis­it, but prob­ably less than a week. Fresh feed­ing signs were vis­ible from the water and trails lead­ing onto land were seen. These feed­ing signs con­tin­ued until the start of the fields at Gaskbeg Farm, where the dense ripari­an wood­land stops.

After the canoe sur­vey had fin­ished, the site around the back­wa­ter between the church and the Spey at Lag­gan Bridge was inspec­ted on foot and a large num­ber of feed­ing signs and trails lead­ing from the water to trees or veget­a­tion were found.

Between Gaskbeg and the con­flu­ence of the Allt Dobhrain at Clunie Castle, only two feed­ing signs were recor­ded. There were sev­er­al wil­lows at the lat­ter site here and they had some fresh feed­ing signs on them.

There were no more feed­ing signs recor­ded until the area between Lochan Uvie and the con­flu­ence with the Truim.

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3.6 Day 6: Lochan Uvie to Kin­gussie, 31 August from 10am to 4pm

From the con­flu­ence of the Tru­im down to Inver­ton (oppos­ite Pit­main Farm), there were no beaver signs recor­ded. Bey­ond this point there were more feed­ing signs; this cor­rel­ated with the great­er area of pal­at­able ripari­an wood­land from Inver­ton downstream.

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4. Dis­cus­sion

4.1 Loc­a­tion of the beavers

Identi­fy­ing where beavers are hold­ing ter­rit­or­ies annu­ally is a key part of the report­ing require­ments stip­u­lated in our licence to release beavers in the upper Spey catch­ment. It is also key inform­a­tion to ensure that we can deliv­er the actions in the Mon­it­or­ing and Mit­ig­a­tion Plan, par­tic­u­larly around the high-impact sites iden­ti­fied in that document.

Know­ing where non-ter­rit­ori­al beavers have been also helps us under­stand the spread of the pop­u­la­tion over time. This annu­al sur­vey and all the oth­er more fre­quent land-based mon­it­or­ing the beaver team do, mean we have a good under­stand­ing of where the beavers are act­ive, allow­ing us to keep landown­ers and man­agers up to date with the beaver activ­ity on their land. It also means that our monthly and annu­al reports are as detailed and up to date as possible.

By dis­sem­in­at­ing as much rel­ev­ant inform­a­tion as pos­sible, we hope to encour­age people out­with the beaver team to feed­back beaver activ­ity inform­a­tion on an ongo­ing basis. This will give us as com­plete a pic­ture as pos­sible of what the beavers are up to and where with­in the Nation­al Park.

The dis­tri­bu­tion of the beaver feed­ing activ­ity we found on this sur­vey was dir­ectly cor­rel­ated to the areas of high-qual­ity ripari­an hab­it­at, iden­ti­fied in the Beaver Trust / Exeter Uni­ver­sity ini­tial assess­ment of the poten­tial for Euras­i­an beavers to nat­ur­ally col­on­ise the Nation­al Park.

Beaver activ­ity at Lag­gan does seem like an out­lier, but it is not uncom­mon for a single beaver to travel long dis­tances when seek­ing out a new ter­rit­ory. This long-dis­tance move­ment has also happened from Aviemore to Fochabers / Gar­mouth in March 2025. Beaver(s) have already vis­ited Lag­gan in March / April 2024 and Janu­ary-March 2025. The areas around Lag­gan Bridge and Fochabers/​Gar­mouth do have a large area of high-qual­ity beaver habitat.

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Image 6 — High qual­ity beaver hab­it­at, Loch Alvie © Spir­it of the Spey / Dave Craig

The areas with sig­ni­fic­ant lengths of flood embank­ment have the poorest ripari­an hab­it­at, with few or no trees (see image 7). The rel­at­ive lack of beaver feed­ing signs recor­ded there high­light this.

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Image 7 — Low qual­ity beaver hab­it­at near Clunie Castle © Spir­it of the Spey / Dave Craig

The 2025 sur­vey shows that there are con­cen­tra­tions of feed­ing signs in areas where there are no known ter­rit­or­ies. It is not pos­sible to pre­dict the exact move­ments of an indi­vidu­al anim­al but, of all the sites sur­veyed without estab­lished ter­rit­or­ies, it seems likely that one or more ter­rit­or­ies will form between the Allt na Criche and Dal­faber in the near future. The high impact sites that we have iden­ti­fied in this area are the out­flow to the water treat­ment works, the Butcher’s Burn that it dis­charges into and the fish­ery ponds at Rothiemurchus, beside the con­flu­ence of the Spey and Druie.

These sites will be mon­itored reg­u­larly by the beaver team. The prox­im­ity of these sites to many recre­ation­al users, and / or the fact that they are staffed sites, means that the beaver team are likely be informed if beavers start to have an adverse impact on these sites and any mit­ig­a­tion required can be swiftly imple­men­ted, fol­low­ing the pro­tocol in the Mon­it­or­ing and Mit­ig­a­tion Plan.

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Due to the con­cen­tra­tion of fresh feed­ing signs at Lag­gan Bridge, it seems likely a ter­rit­ory will form there, too. Like­wise at the con­flu­ence of the Tromie. For these sites, fur­ther sur­vey is required to see if ter­rit­or­ies do estab­lish, what activ­ity is tak­ing place on site and where and if there is one or a pair of beavers hold­ing ter­rit­ory in these locations.

In Lag­gan there is an area of flood embank­ment close to the bridge where the beaver(s) are act­ive. If beaver(s) remain in the area, we will intensi­fy our mon­it­or­ing efforts to find out where their bur­row or lodge is. Down­stream of the high-qual­ity hab­it­at at Lag­gan Bridge there is riverb­ank for a few kilo­metres until flood­banks are encountered.

Between the Allt na Criche and Dal­faber in the main stem of the river, there appear to be few areas of impact. The Aviemore Hol­i­day Park by the B970 has a flood embank­ment but this appears to have some rock armour­ing at its base, which would dis­cour­age beaver bur­row­ing. The fish farm close to the con­flu­ence of the Druie could poten­tially be col­on­ised and a lodge built there.

If the beavers bur­rowed and cre­ated a new out­flow this would affect the water levels and allow the fish to escape from the ponds. How­ever, if that happened the beavers would react and block the tun­nel up, since they would have chosen the site for its deep­er water. As with Lag­gan, if the beaver(s) remain in the area we will intensi­fy our mon­it­or­ing efforts to find out where the ter­rit­or­ies and bur­rows or lodges are.

The sur­vey has been lim­ited to the main stem of the Spey due to the time it takes to under­take a detailed sur­vey, so the trib­u­tary burns and rivers have not been sur­veyed. In the areas of poor beaver hab­it­at – such as Gaskbeg to Lochan Uvie, the Tru­im to New­ton­more Golf Club and Dal­faber Boat of Garten, Boat of Garten to the Cairn Dis­til­lery — there are trib­u­tar­ies with high qual­ity beaver hab­it­at and a low gradi­ent, which we would expect to be col­on­ised as the beaver pop­u­la­tion expands.

The speed of col­on­isa­tion is very hard to pre­dict, but con­sid­er­ing the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion of beavers is increas­ing at 30% per annum, large-scale col­on­isa­tion of these areas is likely in five to 10 years, with some isol­ated ter­rit­or­ies form­ing in these areas sooner.

Up to 30% of a beaver pop­u­la­tion can char­ac­ter­ised as non-ter­rit­ori­al, ​‘float­ing’ anim­als that move over a wide area. This means, with an increas­ing pop­u­la­tion in the area, a single beaver hold­ing a ter­rit­ory in suit­able hab­it­at will likely not stay single very long.

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4.2 Beaver canoes / wil­low fragments

The feed­ing beha­viour of beavers is often haphaz­ard. On the sur­vey we found whole pieces of unstripped wil­low branch in the water, the very large branches often being called ​‘beaver canoes’ as they float in the water. The sec­tions that were a few months old had sprouted roots and were wash­ing up on the riverbanks.

This ​‘beach­ing’ of wil­low frag­ments will start to increase the num­ber of wil­lows estab­lish­ing down­stream of the feed­ing areas. In time this could have a dra­mat­ic effect on areas that are almost tree­less and have a low graz­ing pres­sure. By hav­ing a head start in terms of size, they may be able to estab­lish more suc­cess­ful than by seed.

Some wil­low spe­cies, par­tic­u­larly crack wil­low, spread by frag­ments of the tree nat­ur­ally break­ing off and estab­lish­ing fur­ther down­stream. Beavers are accel­er­at­ing this pro­cess for all the wil­low spe­cies in the area.

Image 8 — Sprout­ing (left of image) and root­ing (right of image) beaver-chewed wil­low branch in the River Spey Park Author­ity / Pete Short

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4.3 Tree choice

Wil­lows are by far and away the most fed-on tree that we found on this sur­vey: wil­low 80%, birch 9.4%, aspen 4.7%, row­an 3.5%, and alder and Scots pine 1% (n=85). Alder is the least pal­at­able broadleaf (see appendix 1) and we did not see any feed­ing signs on these trees.

On loch and wet­land releases sites away from the Spey, we do see a pref­er­ence for wil­low, but also aspen, birch and row­an as the main spe­cies being felled and fed on, depend­ing on their rel­at­ive abundance.

4.4 Ripari­an and in-river hab­it­at along the Spey

Alder wood­land dom­in­ates down­stream from the con­flu­ence of the Tru­im, Calder and Fesh­ie. This is pos­sibly due to the massive amount of river shingle / cobbles washed down these rivers into the Spey, con­stantly cre­at­ing new hab­it­at for trees to col­on­ise. When only alder estab­lishes it shows the graz­ing pres­sure is fairly high, allow­ing some broadleaved tree regen­er­a­tion but inhib­it­ing the estab­lish­ment of more pal­at­able broadleaved spe­cies. Alder scores the low­est of all broadleaved trees for palat­ab­il­ity to herb­i­vores (see appendix 1).

On the shingle islands that are rel­at­ively inac­cess­ible to graz­ing anim­als, we found a huge amount of wil­low growth, dom­in­at­ing the tree spe­cies com­pos­i­tion. There are a few large islands in the Spey, par­tic­u­larly down­stream from Aviemore. These islands are above all but the highest floods and it is likely that beavers will build bur­rows or lodges there. We have already seen this hap­pen on one small island.

4.5 Tim­ing of the survey

Last year the sur­vey took place in May. This year’s sur­vey was also planned to take place in that month; how­ever, the water levels were too low to allow a com­pre­hens­ive canoe sur­vey. The sur­vey finally took place in August after anoth­er postponement.

As the day length shortens in late August, beavers have an urge to start cre­at­ing a food cache (see the areas of twigs pok­ing out of the water at the top of image 9). This urge to hoard food leads to an increased felling of woody for­age. The food cache in image 9 is around three meters square and one metre deep and dates from late winter. It would

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have been lar­ger earli­er in the winter, but now only the twigs of the branches are vis­ible above the water. The cache is cre­ated close to the entrance to the lodge or bur­row. The branches are left under­wa­ter until required, with the cold water keep­ing the bark on the branches fresh.

As the feed­ings signs are most fre­quent and obvi­ous at this time of year, we will under­take the 2026 beaver sur­vey in Septem­ber to see if signs of beaver activ­ity are more fre­quent and / or obvi­ous. Look­ing at the activ­ity, we have recor­ded over the whole of this sur­vey we have a high level of con­fid­ence that we have not missed any sites where beavers have been feed­ing for a peri­od of weeks. This means the change in tim­ing of the sur­vey is unlikely to make a dif­fer­ence to the num­ber of ter­rit­or­ies (or poten­tial ter­rit­or­ies) recor­ded. As ter­rit­or­ies start to be held in autumn, we are more likely to find the new lodges and bur­rows in these ter­rit­or­ies whilst under construction.

Image 9 — Food cache at Lochan Mor, Rothiemurchus, 27 March 2025 © Park Author­ity / Jonath­an Willet

4.6 Future pop­u­la­tion expansion

Over the next five years, we would expect to see a steady con­tinu­ation of ter­rit­ory form­a­tion in the best qual­ity hab­it­at, with per­haps some of the trib­u­tar­ies of the Spey

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being col­on­ised. This col­on­isa­tion will likely be at a high dens­ity in the core Kin­gussie to Aviemore area (due to the abund­ance of high qual­ity hab­it­at and sexu­ally mature, non-ter­rit­ori­al beavers) and at lower dens­it­ies in the areas up and down­stream of this area where there is less high qual­ity habitat.

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5. Con­clu­sion

The res­ults of the sur­vey are much as we would have expec­ted, with the dis­pers­ing beavers feed­ing in and pos­sibly form­ing new ter­rit­or­ies in the areas of the highest qual­ity beaver habitat.

Wil­low was by far and away the main tree spe­cies being fed on and its abund­ance in ripari­an wood­land is a very good indic­at­or of high-qual­ity beaver habitat.

Two or more addi­tion­al ter­rit­or­ies could be formed this autumn. This is what we would expect to see hap­pen­ing when there are dis­pers­ing beavers of both sexes, in areas of high qual­ity hab­it­at (without exist­ing beavers in those locations).

The sur­vey will be repeated in Septem­ber next year to max­im­ise the vis­ib­il­ity of feed­ing signs on woody forage.

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6. Appendix 1

Rel­at­ive palat­ab­il­ity of nat­ive tree spe­cies to brows­ing. Palat­ab­il­ity is the innate attract­ive­ness of the spe­cies to being browsed and is likely to be a func­tion of digest­ib­il­ity and toxicity.

Palat­ab­il­ity	Tree spe­cies
1	Aspen, ash, eld­er, willow
2	Elm, hazel, holly, oak, rowan
3	Black­thorn, Douglas fir, gean, hawthorn, larches, sycamore
4	Birch, beech, lodge­pole pine, Scots pine
5	Bird cherry, juni­per, Nor­way spruce, west­ern hemlock
6	Alder, rhodo­den­dron, Sitka spruce

Source: Scot­tish Forestry

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7. Appendix 2

Legend: *