In some good wildlife news

[nineveh_uk]

Scotland now has about a thousand wild beavers! Adults weigh 20+kg, which is the point at which I find a suitcase tips from heavy to really, really heavy, so they are quite substantial animals. I don't think I'll be seeing one any time soon, but hopefully at some point they will become a reasonable day trip when I'm in Edinburgh.

There aren't yet so many in England and Wales, where reintroductions started later (plus some just 'turned up'), but they are doing well, with a number of releases and wild colonies in southern England, and a trial project in Wales. Oddly, beavers never seem to have made it to Ireland. Anyway, keep at it, chunky native rodents!

Comments

[pensnest]

How splendid! Oddly, I never seem to think of beavers as locals - their dam-making habits and logging tendencies strike me as, well, Canadian. But I'm charmed to think the are coming back.

[antisoppist]

They are very vague about where exactly the ones near Exmoor are. I know it is the Holnicote estate but it covers quite a large area that isn't accessible by car and tracking them down would take quite a lot of energy.

I saw beavers in Finland where they had been introduced to a nature reserve in the town I lived in and the amount of trees they chopped down was amazing.

[slemslempike]

That is an excellent metric to think of weight. I shall adopt it.

[nineveh_uk]

Yes, their reputation is very much as little loggers out in the Canadian wilderness! Or Narnia. I suppose unlike wolves, they didn't make their way into folklore, though they only became extinct in the sixteenth century. I suppose an animal you can make a warm hat out of is less mythologised than one that might make dinner out of you.

[nineveh_uk]

I think I'll wait until they are publicly known rather than scouring the bogs of Exmoor or banks of the R. Otter!

I'm not sure I've even seen any in a zoo ever, unless they have them at Skansen and I've forgotten. I can't imagine they are easy to keep in zoos, they would need a very robust enclosure.

[nineveh_uk]

Whether suitcase or beaver, I find it most handy.

[lilysea]

Hurray! ^_^

This DELIGHTS me, thank you for sharing! ^_^