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

[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.

[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.