Scottish Code for Conservation Translocations – project proposal form

Appendix 1: Trans­lo­ca­tion pro­ject form

Pur­pose of the form

• To provide a check­list of the issues to con­sider and address when plan­ning con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tions in Scotland
• To sum­mar­ise the key inform­a­tion needed to under­pin con­sulta­tion with oth­er people or organ­isa­tions that may be affected by a translocation
• To serve as a form­al Pro­ject Pro­pos­al Form where trans­lo­ca­tions require per­mis­sions from Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age (includ­ing the grant­ing of spe­cies licences)
• To provide a mech­an­ism to doc­u­ment and record trans­lo­ca­tions to help inform future projects

What is in the form?

The form is struc­tured as follows:

Sec­tions 1 – 4 Con­tact details, the spe­cies involved and the pur­pose of the translocation

Sec­tion 5 Details of the donor and release sites

Sec­tion 6 Trans­lo­ca­tion methodology

Sec­tion 7 Sum­mary of the benefits

Sec­tion 8 Per­mits and leg­al issues

Sec­tion 9 Assess­ment of bio­lo­gic­al risks

Sec­tion 10 Assess­ment of socio-eco­nom­ic risks

Sec­tion 11 Details of mon­it­or­ing and ongo­ing man­age­ment plans

Sec­tion 12 Sum­mary of com­mu­nic­a­tion plan

Sec­tions 13 – 14 Data con­fid­en­ti­al­ity state­ment and declaration

Do I have to fill it in?

• Com­ple­tion of this Trans­lo­ca­tion Pro­ject Form is recom­men­ded for all con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tions in Scot­land as part of ​‘best-prac­tice’ planning
• Com­ple­tion is man­dat­ory for all con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tions which require licences from SNH

How to fill it in

This Trans­lo­ca­tion Pro­ject Form is based on the Scot­tish Code for Con­ser­va­tion Trans­lo­ca­tions and asso­ci­ated Best Prac­tice Guidelines for Con­ser­va­tion Trans­lo­ca­tions in Scot­land, and the Code/​Guidelines should be con­sul­ted when com­plet­ing the form. If fur­ther assist­ance is needed, con­tact Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age.

For low risk and uncon­ten­tious trans­lo­ca­tions, filling in the form should be straight­for­ward. For instance, in sec­tions 8 – 10, where your responses fall into the ​‘green light’ cat­egory, just a few words are needed explain­ing that there are no appre­ciable risks or legis­lat­ive issues.

Where risks or legis­lat­ive con­straints are iden­ti­fied, addi­tion­al inform­a­tion should be provided. There is no set word-lim­it to this. The guid­ance is to suc­cinctly express suf­fi­cient detail to enable the issues to be eval­u­ated and under­stood in a clear and trans­par­ent fash­ion. Text boxes in the form can be expan­ded as required. Where trans­lo­ca­tions require a licence, but the trans­lo­ca­tion itself is intrins­ic­ally ​‘low risk’, then the licence applic­a­tion pro­cess can be very straight­for­ward. In the case of unusu­ally com­plex and/​or con­tro­ver­sial trans­lo­ca­tions addi­tion­al sup­port­ing inform­a­tion can be appen­ded to the form.

A ​‘WORD’ ver­sion of the form can be down­loaded at www​.snh​.gov​.uk/​t​r​a​n​s​l​o​c​a​t​i​o​n​-code. An example of a com­pleted copy of the form for a rel­at­ively ​‘straight­for­ward’ trans­lo­ca­tion is avail­able in Appendix 2 of the Best Prac­tice Guidelines for Con­ser­va­tion Trans­lo­ca­tions in Scotland.

What to do with this form

For pro­jects requir­ing a licence from SNH, send the com­pleted form to:

Licens­ing Team Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Great Glen House Leach­kin Road Inverness Email: licensing@​snh.​gov.​uk

The licens­ing team will then respond to the application.

All oth­er com­pleted forms should be sent to: translocations@​snh.​gov.​uk

What hap­pens next?

The form will be added to the Scot­tish Con­ser­va­tion Trans­lo­ca­tion data­base which will be access­ible from 2015 (envir­on­ment­ally sens­it­ive inform­a­tion and per­son­al data will not be made public).

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1. Lead applic­ant details

Name Grant Moir

Address 14 The Square, Grant­own on Spey, Moray, PH26 3HG

Tele­phone number

Email

Organ­isa­tion Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Pos­i­tion Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer

1. Pro­ject part­ners (add more boxes as required)

Name

We are work­ing with a range of deliv­ery part­ners, in the first release phase of Bring­ing Beavers Back to the Cairngorms these are:

* Beaver Trust

** Rothiemurchus

** Wild­land Cairngorms

** RSPB Scotland -

Oth­er deliv­ery part­ners will be iden­ti­fied in due course when suit­able sites and landown­ers come for­ward over the five year licence period.

Organ­isa­tion See above

Email See above

Role in project

* expert advice and sup­port includ­ing deliv­ery of the beaver translocation.

** release site landown­ers and managers.

1. Pro­ject details

Pro­ject title

Bring­ing beavers back to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

Our over­arch­ing vis­ion is to achieve a healthy pop­u­la­tion of beavers in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, bring­ing max­im­um bene­fits for wild­life and people. This includes sup­port­ing land man­agers and com­munit­ies to live along­side beavers.

Focal spe­cies

Euras­i­an beaver (Castor fiber)

Desired outcome(s)

In col­lab­or­a­tion with a range of deliv­ery part­ners, to suc­cess­fully rein­tro­duce beavers to the upper Spey to estab­lish a self-sus­tain­ing population.

To con­trib­ute towards the aims and object­ives of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 — 27 (https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​p​a​r​t​n​e​r​s​h​i​p​plan/) to restore and con­nect rivers to thriv­ing wet­lands and flood­plains help­ing mit­ig­ate the impacts of cli­mate change, and to facil­it­ate beaver trans­lo­ca­tion to the Nation­al Park by 2027.

To provide suit­able release sites for beavers trans­lo­cated from con­flict sites fol­low­ing Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment pri­or­ity to reduce leth­al con­trol rates of beavers with­in Scot­land and con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the Scotland’s Beaver Strategy 2022 — 2045.

Expec­ted times­cale for outcome(s) to be achieved

Five years: Novem­ber 2023 — Novem­ber 2028

Goals

1 — To bring back beavers as a lost spe­cies to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, by releas­ing a num­ber of beaver fam­il­ies over a five-year peri­od into the upper Spey catch­ment to estab­lish a self-sus­tain­ing population

2 — To facil­it­ate the increase and expan­sion of the beaver pop­u­la­tion through liais­ing closely with com­munit­ies, landown­ers and land man­agers who have beaver ter­rit­or­ies on their land.

3 — Facil­it­at­ing the deliv­ery of mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures to avoid, mit­ig­ate or reverse impacts of beavers, to ensure unac­cept­able impacts are avoided as far as is possible.

4 — To work in col­lab­or­a­tion with a range of pro­ject deliv­ery part­ners and land man­agers to mon­it­or beavers and their impacts.

5 — To sup­port landown­ers and com­munit­ies to live along­side beavers, includ­ing help­ing them access and imple­ment prac­tic­al mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures detailed in NatureScot beaver mit­ig­a­tion scheme.

6 — To encour­age pub­lic engage­ment and edu­ca­tion to raise aware­ness, both with­in the loc­al com­munity and at a nation­al level, of the biod­iversity bene­fits of beavers and eco­sys­tem ser­vices. This would include demon­stra­tion of how beaver activ­it­ies com­ple­ment those of the Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive, who already under­take large-scale fresh­wa­ter hab­it­at restoration.

7 — Build­ing on the know­ledge gained through the ini­tial trans­lo­ca­tion, devel­op a care­fully con­sidered and informed timetable for pro­posed future releases to oth­er catch­ments with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

Pro­posed start date (capture/​collection date(s))

Autumn 2023

Pro­posed release date(s)

Autumn 2023 to Spring 2028

Type of trans­lo­ca­tion (rein­force­ment, rein­tro­duc­tion, assisted col­on­isa­tion, eco­lo­gic­al replacement)

Rein­tro­duc­tion to a cur­rently uncol­on­ised catch­ment, the Spey

Donor source type (wild or ex situ or both)

Wild, Scot­tish born

1. Rationale

Over­view of the project

Sub­ject to a licence being gran­ted by NatureScot the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity will work with landown­ers to release a num­ber of beaver fam­il­ies, over the five year licen­cing peri­od, as a founder pop­u­la­tion into suit­able hab­it­at in the upper Spey. This will act to increase the cur­rent range of beavers in Scot­land as set out as a pri­or­ity in the Scot­tish Beaver Strategy 2022 — 2045. The ini­tial release sites have been selec­ted on the basis of hav­ing enough sum­mer graz­ing and winter brows­ing to give the best chance for the beavers set­tling in close prox­im­ity to were they were released. Over the pro­posed five year peri­od there will be suf­fi­cient fam­il­ies released to estab­lish a self-sus­tain­ing, genet­ic­ally diverse pop­u­la­tion that will col­on­ise the Spey catch­ment over time. The Park Author­ity, work­ing with oth­er part­ners will mon­it­or the released beavers and reg­u­larly report on their activ­ity. The Park Author­ity will be the first point of con­tact for deal­ing with any issues caused by the beavers and will engage with NatureScot and util­ise the Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme if activ­ity impacts become unac­cept­able (defined by NatureScot as those that dam­age prop­erty or infra­struc­ture, or cause sig­ni­fic­ant prob­lems for land management).

Why is a trans­lo­ca­tion necessary?

We are in the midst of a cli­mate and nature emer­gency; the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has set ambi­tious and impress­ive tar­gets to address both these emer­gen­cies. Beavers have a sci­en­tific­ally recog­nised role as a key­stone spe­cies and eco­lo­gic­al engin­eer, with the poten­tial to play a vital role in address­ing the twin crises through hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion and improved eco­lo­gic­al func­tion­al­ity, as such expan­sion in their num­bers and range should be facil­it­ated through­out Scot­land. A robust sur­vey and assess­ment of the like­li­hood of beavers nat­ur­ally col­on­ising river catch­ments with­in the

Cairngorms Nation­al Park has been under­taken and demon­strated that giv­en cur­rent pop­u­la­tion num­bers and dis­tri­bu­tion of beavers from the nearest known pop­u­la­tions catch­ments, it is highly unlikely without assist­ance via pro­act­ive trans­lo­ca­tions (Appendix 1). Such trans­lo­ca­tions are now Scot­Gov policy as of Novem­ber 2021. Beavers were afforded European Pro­tec­ted Spe­cies status in Scot­land in 2019, but under cer­tain cir­cum­stances landown­ers can apply to NatureScot for a leth­al con­trol license if beavers are caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age, par­tic­u­larly to agri­cul­ture on prime agri­cul­tur­al land and in which no altern­at­ive mit­ig­a­tion is cur­rently pos­sible. To help resolve both dif­fi­culties facing some landown­ers and allow the Scot­tish beaver pop­u­la­tion to retain favour­able con­ser­va­tion status and appro­pri­ate genet­ic diversity, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has cla­ri­fied its strong determ­in­a­tion to see more beavers trans­lo­cated with­in Scot­land to dir­ectly reduce cur­rent cull fig­ures. The use of leth­al con­trol is of sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic con­cern and altern­at­ive solu­tions, such as trans­lo­ca­tions, should be sought to ensure healthy beaver populations.

What oth­er options have been con­sidered, and why have they been dis­coun­ted (see Chapter 3)?

Nat­ur­al col­on­isa­tion into the Cairngorms Nation­al Park would be very chal­len­ging from the Tay catch­ment giv­en numer­ous arti­fi­cial struc­tures restrict­ing con­nectiv­ity and the large areas of unsuit­able hab­it­at between catch­ments. Col­on­isa­tion from the east by beavers dis­pers­ing into new catch­ments via the sea or over low lying water­sheds would be in the medi­um term in the east of the Nation­al Park but in the long term for the Spey. If beavers did find their way the res­ult­ing founder pop­u­la­tions would be very small and vul­ner­able, trans­lo­ca­tion could facil­it­ate a more genet­ic­ally diverse and a great­er like­li­hood of a self-sus­tain­ing population.

The level of detail provided should be pro­por­tion­ate to the poten­tial impacts of the translocation

Please expand text boxes or provide addi­tion­al inform­a­tion as required, to enable a thor­ough and bal­anced eval­u­ation of the translocation

1. Pop­u­la­tion information

5.1. Donor pop­u­la­tion details (add addi­tion­al pages for each donor population)

Donor Pop­u­la­tion 1

Pop­u­la­tion name

Tay­side

Pop­u­la­tion loc­a­tion (region, country)

River Tay catch­ment, Perth­shire, Scotland

Grid ref­er­ence / coordin­ates (includ­ing details of coordin­ate sys­tem, datum etc)

Landown­er loc­a­tions are sens­it­ive, any trap and remov­al would only take place under licence issued to Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer, Beaver Trust, work­ing with per­mis­sion from landown­ers which may have been issued leth­al con­trol licences by NatureScot and there­fore treated in the strict­est confidence

Date(s) of removal

From Autumn 2023 to Spring 2028. Trap­ping peri­od runs annu­ally from mid August to mid March. The aim would be to release beavers soon after a suit­able pair / small fam­ily unit is iden­ti­fied, been health screened and con­firm­a­tion that no fur­ther related anim­als are left at the trap­ping site.

If sampled from the wild

Landown­er name

Con­fid­en­tial. Beavers would be sourced across sev­er­al sites via live trap­ping with landown­er per­mis­sion. Of those enga­ging with the NatureScot’s Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme where typ­ic­ally leth­al con­trol licences have been issued and landown­ers wish to engage with trap and remov­al as altern­at­ive mit­ig­a­tion. The actu­al trap site details for each pro­posed will not be known at time of applic­a­tion and / or until suit­able beaver can­did­ates have been trapped and deemed suit­able for release.

Land own­er con­tact details N/A

Land man­ager name (if dif­fer­ent to above)

Land man­ager con­tact details N/A

Land own­er / man­ager per­mis­sion gran­ted? (includ­ing date per­mis­sion granted)

All trap­ping is under­taken with landown­er per­mis­sion under trap and remov­al licence issued by NatureScot to Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer, Beaver Trust.

Con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion afforded to the site (if yes, what type)

Most likely, but not exclus­ively, Prime Agri­cul­tur­al Land grade 1 – 3a.

Pop­u­la­tion size of focal species

The most recent pop­u­la­tion estim­ates of beavers with­in the Tay­side and Forth catch­ments are giv­en as a min­im­um of 251 act­ive ter­rit­or­ies, and have been demon­strated as increas­ing in dis­tri­bu­tion across Scot­land. Pop­u­la­tion size has been deemed by NatureScot to be in favour­able con­ser­va­tion status.

How pop­u­la­tion size was estim­ated (sur­vey meth­od, date(s) of estimate)

Field sign sur­vey com­mis­sioned by NatureScot, Camp­bell-Palmer et al. 2021 https://www.nature.scot/doc/naturescot-research-report-1274-survey-tayside-area-beaver-population-2020 – 2021

If sampled from an ex situ collection

Name of col­lec­tion owner

Col­lec­tion own­er con­tact details

Name of collection

Pop­u­la­tion size of ori­gin­al donor population

How ori­gin­al pop­u­la­tion size was estim­ated (sur­vey meth­od, date(s) of estimate)

Pop­u­la­tion size of ex situ population

How ex situ pop­u­la­tion size was estim­ated (sur­vey meth­od, time of estimate)

Ex situ pop­u­la­tion con­sists of cap­tive bred/​reared indi­vidu­als or is the ori­gin­al wild-col­lec­ted stock?

Num­ber of donor indi­vidu­als to be removed /​sampled

Min­im­um of six pairs with any depend­ent off­spring in the first year, up to 12 pairs (and depend­ents) over next five years accord­ing to annu­al assess­ment of pop­u­la­tion sur­viv­al, expan­sion and avail­able release sites. Estim­ate (12 — 60 individuals).

Nature of donor mater­i­al (e.g. eggs, seeds, lar­vae, adults etc)

Adults and any depend­ent off­spring, sub-adults of dis­pers­al age.

Donor selec­tion meth­od (e.g. ran­dom sampling vs selec­tion for spe­cif­ic traits; num­ber of moth­ers when pro­geny sampled; col­lec­tion area etc)

Remov­al accord­ing to issu­ing of trap and remov­al licence, all fam­ily mem­bers at any one site removed and trans­lo­cated as a pair / fam­ily unit as far as possible.

Hab­it­at type of donor pop­u­la­tion (e.g. Phase 1 hab­it­at cat­egory, NVC or HIS)

Most likely Prime Agri­cul­tur­al Land.

Intra-spe­cif­ic clas­si­fic­a­tion of donor pop­u­la­tion (e.g. sub-spe­cies / vari­ety / eco­type / race)

Addi­tion­al inform­a­tion about donor pop­u­la­tion rel­ev­ant to the translocation

The Tay­side pop­u­la­tion has been well sampled and mon­itored; pop­u­la­tion dis­tri­bu­tion and estim­ates, health status and genet­ic diversity. Data pub­lished by NatureScot has demon­strated that pop­u­la­tion num­bers and expan­sion are not being reduced through leth­al con­trol / trap­ping in these source areas. It is cur­rently con­sidered as in favour­able con­ser­va­tion status, meet­ing one of the licens­ing con­di­tions for the issu­ing of leth­al con­trol as a last resort mit­ig­a­tion is met and can be licensed by NatureScot. Since 2019 Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer has held a licence for trap and relo­ca­tion, with a long-stand­ing col­lab­or­a­tion with Dr Romain Pizzi to under­take beaver health screen­ing accord­ing to agreed pro­to­cols. More recently the Beaver Trust has inves­ted in beaver hold­ing facil­it­ies with Five Sis­ters Zoo staff under­tak­ing cap­tive care. This donor pop­u­la­tion has been deemed suit­able for licensed beavers trans­lo­ca­tions in Scot­land includ­ing Scot­tish beaver (Knap­ale); Argaty Red Kites (Doune) and mul­tiple enclosed beaver pro­jects licensed by Nat­ur­al Eng­land and Nat­ur­al Resource Wales.

5.2. Release site details (add addi­tion­al pages for each release site)

Release site 1

Pop­u­la­tion name

Rothiemurchus

Pop­u­la­tion loc­a­tion (region, country)

Upper Spey, near Aviemore

Grid ref­er­ence / coordin­ates (includ­ing details of coordin­ate sys­tem, datum etc)

Inside or out­side of nat­ive range of trans­lo­cated spe­cies or type?

Out­side

Inside or out­side of nat­ur­al range of trans­lo­cated spe­cies or type?

Inside

Date(s) of release

Autumn 2023 – spring 2024

Landown­er name

Rothiemurchus Estate

Landown­er con­tact details

Land man­ager name (if dif­fer­ent to above)

Land man­ager con­tact detail

Landown­er / man­ager per­mis­sion gran­ted? (includ­ing date per­mis­sion granted)

Yes, 9^th July 2023

Con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion afforded to the site (if yes, what type)

With­in Cairngorms Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area; North Rothiemurchus Pine­wood SSSI; Cairngorms Spe­cial Area of Conservation

Hab­it­at type (e.g. Phase 1 hab­it­at cat­egory, NVC or HIS, or gen­er­al description)

This is a good sized fresh water loch lined by diverse wood­land with diverse under­storey includ­ing grasses and bracken.

Prox­im­ity and con­text to oth­er pop­u­la­tions of the focal species

Nearest known pop­u­la­tions are present in Pit­lo­chry, Tay­side and on the River Beauly, both > 50 miles away with no dir­ect and unim­peded con­nec­tion via fresh­wa­ter courses. Should beavers be released across the mul­tiple release sites in this applic­a­tion, then release sites are all con­nec­ted via the River Spey and with­in a range of <15km of each other

Which donor pop­u­la­tions are being released at this site?

Wild Tay­side catchment

Dis­tance of donor population(s) to release site

~55 miles

Is the donor pop­u­la­tion in the same coun­try as release site?

Yes

Num­ber of indi­vidu­als to be released

1 pair with any depend­ent offspring

Nature of released mater­i­al (e.g. eggs, seeds, lar­vae, adults, sex ratios etc)

Adults 1:1 (with any depend­ent offspring)

If mul­tiple donor sources are used, what are the pro­por­tions of the mix?

All anim­als will be sourced from con­flict sites with­in the Tay and Forth catchment

If an exist­ing pop­u­la­tion is present at the release site (rein­force­ment)

Pop­u­la­tion size of res­id­ent population

How pop­u­la­tion size was estim­ated (sur­vey meth­od, date(s) of estimate)

Reas­on for reinforcement

Intra-spe­cif­ic clas­si­fic­a­tion of res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion (e.g. sub-spe­cies / vari­ety / eco­type / race)

Intra-spe­cif­ic clas­si­fic­a­tion of donor population(s) (e.g. sub-spe­cies / vari­ety / eco­type / race)

Release strategy sum­mary (includ­ing details of what is released where)

A site vis­it to has been under­taken with Park Author­ity staff and Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer (fur­ther details in the feas­ib­il­ity report attached Appendix 2). The is almost with wood­land. The

All beavers will be live trapped and trans­por­ted by the Beaver Trust accord­ing to estab­lished best prac­tice pro­to­cols via exper­i­ence gained in oth­er trans­lo­ca­tions over sev­er­al years. Fol­low­ing neg­at­ive health screen­ing res­ults and being signed fit for release by a spe­cial­ist wild­life vet. Each indi­vidu­al will be micro­chipped enabling per­man­ent iden­ti­fic­a­tion. Beavers will be crated in spe­cific­ally designed travel crates at Five Sis­ter Zoo on morn­ing of release. Each crate will be pro­vi­sioned with a deep straw lay­er and apples for food and mois­ture. Crates will be covered with light sheets to keep anim­als calm and darkened, but ensur­ing good vent­il­a­tion. On site beavers can be trans­por­ted closely to the loch shoreline itself via vehicles, with last dis­tance covered by car­ry­ing crates/​or with assit­ence from trail­er and quad. A visu­al exam­in­a­tion will be under­taken before anim­als are released. Each travel crate will be posi­tioned in close prox­im­ity to the water line so that beavers can imme­di­ately seek the water. Beavers would be released sim­ul­tan­eously as a pair/​fam­ily unit. Only a small num­ber of people will be present for the release, with fur­ther view­ing from a dis­tance poss­ble from the pub­lic track. Noise and dis­turb­ance will be kept to a minimum.

It is pro­posed that the beavers are released on eas­ily access­ible areas to the pub­lic and access track This enables the beavers to be away from view and have imme­di­ate access to water.

Release site pre­par­a­tion ahead of the release may include the cre­ation of freshly cut brash placed cre­ate imme­di­ate shel­ter, fam­ily reunit­ing and for­aging points to encour­age site fidel­ity. Sev­er­al cam­era traps will also be placed in likely used areas ahead of the release to reduce dis­turb­ance — it is pro­posed these are baited with food items and used bed­ding from the beavers again as a tem­por­ary mon­it­or­ing and set­tling in tool.

Addi­tion­al inform­a­tion about the release site rel­ev­ant to the translocation

Inform­a­tion relat­ing to addi­tion­al sites is provided in Appendix 2.2 Addi­tion­al release site details

1. Meth­od­o­lo­gic­al summary

Out­line the approaches that will be used in under­tak­ing the trans­lo­ca­tion, includ­ing key rel­ev­ant aspects of the spe­cies’ bio­logy and any spe­cial­ist advice received. This should provide suf­fi­cient inform­a­tion to demon­strate that achiev­ing the desired con­ser­va­tion out­come is feas­ible (see Chapter 6 for more details of rel­ev­ant issues)

Under­stand­ing spe­cies bio­logy — the Euras­i­an beaver is a well stud­ied spe­cies that has been widely and suc­cess­fully trans­lo­cated across Europe. Beaver trans­lo­ca­tions have been under­taken in Scot­land offi­cially via the Scot­tish Beaver Tri­al. Trans­lo­ca­tion hus­bandry and best prac­tices are well doc­u­mented, this applic­a­tion would work closely with NatureScot’s Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Team and The Beaver Trust who have act­ively trans­lo­cated beavers across Bri­tain. The Beaver Trust, namely Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer, hold trap­ping and trans­lo­ca­tion licences, all rel­ev­ant equip­ment and, in col­lab­or­a­tion with Five Sis­ters Zoo, under­take all anim­al pre-release assess­ments and screen­ing to pass indi­vidu­als fit for release and accord­ing to all cur­rent requirements.

Giv­en the beaver breed­ing peri­od and licen­cing require­ments, any anim­als would only be trapped and relo­cated from the end of the kit depend­ency peri­od. Trap­ping will occur from the 16^th of August 2023 to end of March 2024 to ensure very young kits and late preg­nancy females are not trans­lo­cated. Giv­en beaver breed­ing struc­ture, it is likely that any bon­ded pairs may have depend­ent off­spring, usu­ally 2 – 4 on aver­age, dur­ing the trap­ping peri­od. Beavers typ­ic­ally remain with­in the fam­ily unit before dis­pers­ing in the 2^nd year. There­fore, any depend­ent young will be trapped and relo­cated with their par­ents. Mon­it­or­ing at a trap­ping site will con­tin­ue until there is a strong con­fid­ence no depend­ents remain. Any trans­lo­cated off­spring would also be expec­ted to dis­perse from the release site in their 2^nd year to find suit­able hab­it­at, typ­ic­ally with­in a few kilo­metres or less. Beaver dis­pers­al typ­ic­ally fol­lows water courses, with open land dis­pers­al more unlikely.

All release sites offer imme­di­ate access to large water bod­ies and ripari­an food resource. Depend­ing on the time of year and age of any depend­ent young being released, addi­tion­al pro­vi­sion­al shel­ter may be cre­ated ahead of the release. This will take the form or either a rudi­ment­ary shel­ter cre­ated from straw bales and a brash top or piles of freshly cut brash placed along the shoreline to provide imme­di­ate shel­ter on release, and a place for the fam­ily to come togeth­er. Anim­als can both for­age on these piles and dig under­neath to cre­ate shelter.

Donor pop­u­la­tion — Tay­side wild population.

NatureScot have deemed there are suf­fi­cient num­bers and an increas­ing pop­u­la­tion through­out Tay­side to per­mit remov­al pre­dom­in­antly as a last resort, fol­low­ing a hier­archy of mit­ig­a­tion, in areas where leth­al con­trol licences have been issued. Trap­ping and trans­lo­ca­tion can be a suit­able altern­at­ive to reduce per­mit­ted cull levels. Any such remov­al is agreed to not have adverse effects on the donor pop­u­la­tion. Adequate and proven screen­ing, quar­ant­ine and bio­se­c­ur­ity pro­ced­ures are in place and have been pre­vi­ously accep­ted for sim­il­ar wild release pro­jects to both Red Kite Centre at Doune, and RSPB Loch Lomond.

Any beavers used in this pro­ject will be respons­ibly sourced and under­go any pre-agreed health screen­ing in line with any stat­utory require­ments, fol­low­ing pro­ced­ures pre­vi­ously employed by sim­il­ar beaver pro­jects. The veter­in­ary and anim­al care team at Five Sis­ters Zoo are highly exper­i­enced in beaver hand­ling, cap­tive care and have been under­tak­ing beaver trans­lo­ca­tion work for a num­ber of years in col­lab­or­a­tion with Dr Roisin Campbell-Palmer.

• Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion will be giv­en to the prox­im­ity of trap­ping loc­a­tions in order to max­im­ise the trap­ping of a com­plete fam­ily unit, whilst min­im­ising the risk of trap­ping poten­tially related neigh­bour­ing ter­rit­or­ies, in order to ensure both good wel­fare and as far as pos­sible increas­ing genet­ic diversity.

Release site and strategy

Release site selec­tion has been based on a robust under­stand­ing of beaver hab­it­at require­ments and exper­i­ence from beaver dis­tri­bu­tion sur­veys and release pro­jects over the last 15 years. All release sites pro­posed meet the spe­cies require­ments. In addi­tion, the sites pro­posed are highly

con­nec­ted to suit­able hab­it­at across the upper Spey catch­ment and so released anim­als can relo­cate should they choose, with future off­spring hav­ing a range of suit­able site options. All sites have also been con­firmed to sup­port large quant­it­ies of year round veget­a­tion and shel­ter oppor­tun­it­ies, includ­ing when the river is in spate. The upper Spey rep­res­ents a catch­ment with high beaver car­ry­ing capa­city and con­nectiv­ity, there­fore cap­able of sup­port­ing viable future pop­u­la­tions over the long-term. The pro­posed release sites also rep­res­ent those requir­ing few pre-release site pre­par­a­tion require­ments bey­ond tem­por­ary shel­ters or tem­por­ary dam­ming of small water courses to pro­duce deep­er impoun­ded water for release.

The over­all release strategy across these sites includes the con­sid­er­a­tion of when to release beavers and which pair­ing / fam­ily group may be best suited to each site. Namely those pairs with depend­ent young <1year old will be released into more con­tained, deep­er water bod­ies, whilst adult pairs without depend­ent young would be released into more con­nec­ted water courses. This is to encour­age fam­ily cohe­sion and release site fidel­ity as far as pos­sible. Note long-term weath­er fore­cast and river spate con­di­tions will be mon­itored ahead of any release.

To try and ensure all indi­vidu­als are in as best con­di­tion for release as pos­sible can­did­ates will be tem­por­ar­ily held in pur­pose-built beaver hold­ing facil­it­ies at Five Sis­ter Zoo to ensure that a fam­ily unit is main­tained and enable veter­in­ary assess­ment pri­or to release. Sample col­lec­tion or any health screen­ing require­ments can be under­taken by the zoo’s exper­i­enced veter­in­ary and anim­al hus­bandry team. Any trans­lo­cated beavers will be indi­vidu­ally tagged for future iden­ti­fic­a­tion and mon­it­or­ing pur­poses before being trans­por­ted to the release site.

Beavers would be trans­por­ted to the release site in spe­cif­ic trans­port crates on the day of release. To try to increase release site fidel­ity, food and used bed­ding from the indi­vidu­als being released will be placed at vari­ous points around the water’s edge of the release pond. This does not guar­an­tee suc­cess­ful reten­tion but has worked well at oth­er releases. All noise, move­ment and num­ber of people present will be kept to a min­im­um with obser­va­tion from a dis­tance behind the crates. Anim­als will be allowed to exit crates in their own time and move around freely. Remote cam­er­as will be placed around the release ponds in advance and baited feed­ing points main­tained over the first few weeks to check for beaver pres­ence. Any walk­ing in and around each beaver site will be min­im­ised as far as pos­sible for the first few weeks, apart from cam­era trap checks dur­ing the day, so as to allow beavers to settle and establish.

Mon­it­or­ing of the beavers post-release would involve routine check­ing for fresh field signs by the Park Author­ity and pro­ject part­ner staff and volun­teers. Addi­tion­al ad-hoc sur­veys will be car­ried out by the wider Park Author­ity team and loc­al landown­ers / man­agers. Reports of beavers and beaver activ­it­ies by the pub­lic will be encour­aged and a report­ing App launched.

How to fill in the bene­fits, legis­la­tion and risk sections

The fol­low­ing sec­tions of the Trans­lo­ca­tion Pro­ject Form include tables sum­mar­ising bene­fits, legis­lat­ive con­sid­er­a­tions, bio­lo­gic­al risks and socioeco­nom­ic risks.

For the bene­fits table, indic­ate the types and levels of benefit.

For the tables of legislation/​biological risk/so­cio-eco­nom­ic risk, delete and edit the pre-entered text to cap­ture the rel­ev­ant issues for your trans­lo­ca­tion. Use the Best Prac­tice Guidelines to assist in this process.

Add addi­tion­al rows as required if import­ant issues for your trans­lo­ca­tion are not cap­tured in the templates.

Where there is an appre­ciable bene­fit, legis­lat­ive issue or risk (e.g. a response in the ​‘medi­um’ or ​‘high’ columns for any row in any table), use the text box below each table to expand on each indi­vidu­al issue:

• Bene­fits: explain the nature of the benefits
• Legis­la­tion
  • Where a spe­cies licence or a non-nat­ive spe­cies licence is required com­plete the addi­tion­al Spe­cies or Non-nat­ive spe­cies Licence Applic­a­tion Information
  • List oth­er permits/​permissions required and obtained and the steps taken to ensure the trans­lo­ca­tion is legal
• Bio­lo­gic­al risks: out­line the steps taken to mit­ig­ate against risks
• Socioeco­nom­ic risks: out­line the steps taken to mit­ig­ate against problems

1. Bene­fits

7.1. Bene­fits Table (tick as appropriate) *

Bene­fi­ciary	Bene­fit type	Level of benefit*
		Low Med. High
Focal Spe­cies	Redu­cing extinc­tion risk and/​or improv­ing the con­ser­va­tion status of a spe­cies by:
	Increas­ing the num­ber of indi­vidu­als, improv­ing pop­u­la­tion struc­ture, and/​or increas­ing the num­ber of loc­a­tions at which a spe­cies occurs	☑
	Improv­ing the genet­ic health and resi­li­ence of a pop­u­la­tion by dir­ectly intro­du­cing genet­ic diversity	☑
	Estab­lish­ing ​‘bridging pop­u­la­tions’, to facil­it­ate migra­tion and/​or gene flow	☑
	Estab­lish­ing pop­u­la­tions in areas where the spe­cies will exper­i­ence reduced levels of threat (e.g. by mov­ing organ­isms into more suit­able ​‘cli­mate space’, dis­ease-free areas, or loc­al­it­ies with suit­able management)	☑
Habitat/​Eco­sys­tem	Improv­ing the con­ser­va­tion status of an eco­sys­tem, hab­it­at and/​or oth­er spe­cies by:
	Increas­ing the over­all spe­cies rich­ness of a hab­it­at to enhance its biod­iversity value	☑
	Increas­ing hab­it­at qual­ity (e.g. trans­lo­cat­ing spe­cies to change graz­ing regimes)	☑
	Improv­ing eco­sys­tem ser­vices and func­tions (e.g. trans­lo­cat­ing spe­cies to provide pol­lin­at­or services)	☑
People	Addi­tion­al socio-eco­nom­ic bene­fits that may arise as a res­ult of con­ser­va­tion trans­lo­ca­tions through:
	Enriched human exper­i­ences and envir­on­ment­al aware­ness due to increased con­tact with biodiversity	☑
	Increased bene­fits to humans from eco­sys­tem ser­vices (e.g. pollination)	☑
	Increased income (e.g. rev­en­ue from eco­tour­ism where the trans­lo­cated spe­cies leads to increased vis­its or spend)	☑

• Low value bene­fits are those which make little appre­ciable dif­fer­ence to people or the con­ser­va­tion status of the species/​habitats/​ecosystems con­cerned. Medi­um value bene­fits are those which bring some gains, such as improv­ing the loc­al or region­al con­ser­va­tion status of a spe­cies or hab­it­at, or socioeco­nom­ic bene­fit to a small num­ber of indi­vidu­als. High value bene­fits are those which improve the national/​international con­ser­va­tion status of a spe­cies or hab­it­at, or bring appre­ciable socioeco­nom­ic bene­fits to com­munit­ies or wider groups of society.

7.2. Details of bene­fits (expand on the ​‘medi­um’ and ​‘high’ bene­fits iden­ti­fied above)

Focal spe­cies bene­fits — Trans­lo­cat­ing beavers to the Cairngorms would help with con­flict man­age­ment in exist­ing pop­u­la­tions with­in the Tay­side region due to beaver activ­it­ies (pre­dom­in­antly dam­ming, bur­row­ing and for­aging) in prime agri­cul­tur­al land. Some landown­ers have been gran­ted leth­al con­trol licenses to deal with these issues where no altern­at­ives exist. Trans­lo­ca­tions will allow the beaver pop­u­la­tion to grow out­side of prime agri­cul­tur­al areas, col­on­ise new catch­ments and encour­age pop­u­la­tion con­nectiv­ity across Scot­land. This would read­ily increase num­bers and pop­u­la­tion expan­sion. Any beavers used in this pro­ject will be respons­ibly sourced and under­go appro­pri­ate health screen­ing in line with any stat­utory require­ments, fol­low­ing pro­ced­ures pre­vi­ously employed by sim­il­ar beaver pro­jects. Note: beavers can only be trapped and trans­lo­cated from Scot­land under strict license con­di­tions issued by NatureScot. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion will be giv­en to the prox­im­ity of trap­ping loc­a­tion of these indi­vidu­als to try to min­im­ise cap­tur­ing neigh­bour­ing ter­rit­or­ies. The aim of avoid­ing this is to reduce inbreed­ing but also main­tain cur­rent genet­ic diversity levels that could be reduced by leth­al con­trol. Giv­en land­scape, hydro­lo­gic­al and land-use dif­fer­ences between Tay­side and Spey­side, it is expec­ted beaver pop­u­la­tions will face reduced levels of threat.

Hab­it­at / eco­sys­tem bene­fits — We are in a cli­mate and nature emer­gency. The Park Author­ity recog­nises beavers as key­stone spe­cies and eco­lo­gic­al engin­eers who’s activ­it­ies will change, restore and ren­at­ur­al­ise the land­scape. Mul­tiple peer-reviewed pub­lic­a­tions, includ­ing the NatureScot Beavers in Scot­land: a report to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment 2015 and the recent Stra­tegic Envir­on­ment­al Assess­ment for the Spey catch­ment indic­ate beavers will provide numer­ous biod­iversity and envir­on­ment­al bene­fits to help meet wider hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion goals, includ­ing improved eco­lo­gic­al func­tion­al­ity through wet­land cre­ation and expan­sion, recon­nect­ing the flood­plain, water qual­ity improve­ment and stor­age, flood atten­u­ation and ripari­an wood­land improve­ment which also help meet the tar­gets of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 — 27 and Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 — 24.

People — the release and res­tor­a­tion of beavers with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and the interest from loc­al and nation­al audi­ences will provide a sub­stan­tial plat­form to raise the pro­file of both the spe­cies and fresh­wa­ter hab­it­ats, increas­ing envir­on­ment­al aware­ness. There is an oppor­tun­ity to demon­strate an exem­plar approach to beaver trans­lo­ca­tion, mit­ig­a­tion and man­age­ment, bring­ing max­im­um bene­fits for wild­life and people. This includes sup­port­ing land man­agers and com­munit­ies to live along­side beavers. A wide range of engage­ment oppor­tun­it­ies exist from web­site and social media plat­forms, to wild­life watch­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for all abil­it­ies, loc­al school and com­munity out­reach pro­jects, to eco­tour­ism spend in loc­al shops and accom­mod­a­tion out­lets. There is high loc­al rev­en­ue poten­tial with this pro­ject as we have seen as a res­ult of the rees­tab­lish­ment of the osprey and sub­sequently the devel­op­ment of Boat of Garten as the Osprey Vil­lage. People will also bene­fit loc­ally from the eco­sys­tem ser­vices they provide, such as stor­ing water which can reduce the impacts of flood­ing and drought, espe­cially as pop­u­la­tions grow.

1. Legis­la­tion

8.1. Legis­la­tion table (delete/​edit as applic­able to present the legis­la­tion rel­ev­ant to your trans­lo­ca­tion see Chapter 5 for fur­ther details on legis­lat­ive issues)

Degree of con­straints (stat­utory and non-stat­utory) on:	Low	Medi­um (should involve con­sulta­tion with SNH or oth­er rel­ev­ant body)	High (covered by form­al legislation)
Trans­lo­cated species			EPS
Release site (cur­rent)			Release site is (or is in prox­im­ity to) a SSSI, SAC, SPA, NNR, Ram­sar site. Release site con­tains pro­tec­ted spe­cies which may be affected by the translocation
Release site (post-release)	Estab­lish­ment of the trans­lo­cated spe­cies may res­ult in leg­al pro­tec­tion being applied to some spe­cif­ic places (e.g. its breed­ing sites/​resting places) that may impact on its man­age­ment (e.g. may add hurdles to plan­ning applic­a­tions). Any impact on pro­posed devel­op­ments clas­si­fied as low by CNPA Plan­ning Manager
Source pop­u­la­tion site	No form­al con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion — landown­er per­mis­sion should be sought
Anim­al welfare	Hand­ling and move­ment of ver­teb­rates. Expert staff and exist­ing wel­fare pro­to­cols mit­ig­ate this risk to low.
Quarantine/​biosecurity	With­in coun­try move­ments of spe­cies not covered by bio­se­c­ur­ity legis­la­tion and not known to pose a bio­se­c­ur­ity risk, SEA ER (2022) and SEA ER – Spey (2023)
Dan­ger­ous species	iden­ti­fied Beavers as hav­ing no sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tion­al human health risk.
			Organ­isms that could poten­tially harm humans dur­ing the trans­lo­ca­tion pro­cess. Expert staff and exist­ing wel­fare pro­to­cols mit­ig­ate this risk to low.

8.2. Spe­cies or Non-nat­ive Spe­cies Licences — Addi­tion­al Inform­a­tion (see Chapter 5)

Only com­plete sec­tion 8.2. if a Spe­cies or Non-nat­ive Spe­cies licence is required

When do you need a licence/​licences for (start & end dates)?

Novem­ber 2023 to Novem­ber 2028

Provide names, addresses and organ­isa­tions (if applic­able) of any addi­tion­al per­sons you want to include on the licences (either as Agent or Assistant)

Provide your pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence in car­ry­ing out spe­cies trans­lo­ca­tions or related activ­it­ies (includ­ing details of any pre­vi­ous licences held in Scot­land or the wider UK for sim­il­ar work)

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Spe­cial­ist ongo­ing advice has been sought from the Beaver Trust, namely Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer who has led on beaver trans­lo­ca­tion on pro­jects through­out Britain.

Please provide the con­tact details of a ref­er­ee (Name, address, tele­phone num­ber, email, plus licence num­bers held by the ref­er­ee if applic­able) — only com­plete this if the applic­ant has not held a licence for sim­il­ar work in the last five years

8.2.1. Spe­cies licences

List the spe­cies for which a ​‘spe­cies licence’ is required (e.g. focal spe­cies, and/​or any oth­er spe­cies that may be affected — see Chapter 5 for more details)

Focal spe­cies — Euras­i­an beaver

What activ­it­ies require a spe­cies licence? (Cap­ture, injure, kill, pick, uproot, take, dis­turb, pos­sess, trans­port, etc.?)

Release licence along with suit­able licens­ing to under­take beaver mit­ig­a­tion work and poten­tially to relo­cate indi­vidu­als and re-release any rehab­il­it­ated anim­als (cap­ture, dis­turb, pos­sess). All cap­ture and trans­port­a­tion of source anim­als would be under­taken under exist­ing licence held by Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer (222487)

What oth­er solu­tions have been con­sidered and why have these been dis­coun­ted (i.e. why can’t you under­take the work in a way which does not require a licence)?

As an European Pro­tec­ted Spe­cies a release licence will be required to under­take the rein­tro­duc­tion of this spe­cies to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The Park Author­ity staff linked to the beaver pro­ject will require a spe­cies licence to under­take mit­ig­a­tion work includ­ing dam man­age­ment, in line with

the cur­rent NatureScot Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme

What will the impact of the pro­posed trans­lo­ca­tion be on the con­ser­va­tion status of the population/​spe­cies concerned?

The pro­posed action will found a new beaver pop­u­la­tion and in time allow fur­ther col­on­isa­tion into new catch­ments. In turn this will lead to enhanced resi­li­ence and more adapt­ive cap­ab­il­ity to envir­on­ment­al change of this pop­u­la­tion. Cre­at­ing a