The Wild Trout Trust responded to Defra’s consultation last autumn, I hope with a positive and constructive tone that welcomes beavers and what they might do for river conservation, our charitable mission. We, as with many other respondents, argued for a national strategy and the need for responsive and rapid management, in our case to protect unintended impacts for migrating fish. I know that many dismiss this issue, arguing co-evolution and co-existence, but that it is not the view of my expert colleagues who, collectively can offer nigh-on two hundred professional years in fisheries research and practical management. To our minds, beaver dams will, in some/many places in England, negatively impact fish populations through impediment of essential migration (especially juveniles) and quite possibly locally through habitat alteration.
My main reason for writing now is on the subject of Protected Status for beavers. I understand of course that this was not part of the consultation (though we commented on it in our response) and have been told in several Defra/NE workshops that UK Govt is obliged to specially protect the animal under the Bern Convention; there is, we’ve been told, no debate. However, I would welcome your view on the matter and plead for a rethink.
I can see that Appendix III of the Convention does indeed list the Eurasian beaver, but so does it list grayling and Atlantic salmon, neither of which have been given special Protected Status, despite the acknowledged imperilled status of the latter across England (and beyond). The protection of beavers at this stage, until we fully understand what will happen in England’s massively modified and populated landscape, will make rapid, effective and responsive management practically extremely difficult, maybe impossible, quite aside from who does it and/or how it’s funded. Having spent nearly forty years working with government environmental licensing agencies, I can attest to a view that those arrangements are very, very rarely rapid and responsive. I mean no criticism of any individual here – it is actually a recognition that such systems can never be thorough and as responsive and rapid as beaver management will necessitate to protect against unintended consequences. Those of my colleagues who have migrated from the Environment Agency and thus have seen such licensing/permitting systems inside and out, agree unreservedly. I understand that class licensing is the currently considered route for low impact intervention but even that will not allow us the management flexibility that we will require for a wild animal without comparison in its capacity to reshape the English landscape. Further, I would question why at this stage beavers require special protection – if they prove to be the gamechanger that we hope and are so widely popular with people, they should face no persecution. If that situation changes, then protect them. It is surely easier to protect at a later date rather than face the trickier proposition of unprotecting them in some future time if things are not as hoped.
