I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive.
We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.
I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated.
In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess.
Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity.
I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.
What would that entail? The whole of the UK has been a human managed ecosystem for centuries. Deforestation was completed about 400 years ago and the larges stand of contiguous trees is under 300 sq. mi. So many of the species that would have made up the old ecosystem are gone.
Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs.
There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...
If the circle of life scars somebody out of farming, that's probably for the better. Farming is hard work and any time you have livestock, you have to make hard decisions about managing them, including how to protect them from predation.
Amusing you disparage a scientifically mandated effort to incrementally pull back from an environmental precipice as "protection of the 'cute' species".
What's the tradeoff tho? People usually are mad because those animals threaten part of their income, not because they cause harm to the environment. It's not about beavers or wolves or beavers or another ugly animal. Is usually about beaver or corn, or soy or whatever they're planting.
It would be a start, though, if we reintroduced keystone species, allowed less problematic predators free reign, and adopted a policy of generally consigning river floodplains to nature as much as possible rather than making rivers into sewers or canals. Trying to live inches from a flowing river is an anachronism from an earlier era when we cared about very different things.
That solution seems to work best through a colonial, capitalist lens. Rather than TINA (Thatcher's "there is no alternative"), consider TIA (Yoda's "there is... another")?
The beavers were released yesterday in the UK: "the National Trust has legally released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset. "
"Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported."
I don't understand what a stakeholder is in this context. Also, why are licenses involved? What does this even mean?
The stakeholders in this matter are primarily third-sector organizations in support of beaver reintroduction, of which the many regional Wildlife Trusts are most prominent, and farmers, who are generally but not entirely against reintroduction.
The licences are necessary because with such a sensitive issue, it must be ensured that only responsible and well-resourced organizations can release beavers into the wild. Otherwise, beavers may be introduced into areas that are unsuitable for them, or into areas where they will cause disproportionate damage to farming operations, and either eventuality would harm the perception of beavers. If that happened, the beavers might become so unpopular that it becomes politically impossible to continue with the reintroduction, so it's in everyone's best interests to be careful. Beavers are wonderful animals and can be very beneficial to their local environment, but you can't just dump them on a housing estate or something and expect good results.
I don't know what the exact criteria is, but the winding, damp brooks of the area where I live have been among the successful trial areas for beaver reintroduction. An abundance of willow trees is one factor that makes for an ideal beaver environment, for instance.
Population control. Mostly hunting and demolishing dams. Beavers went extinct where I live in 1841. Reintroduction started in 1957. By now there is a very healthy population that stabilised around year 2000.
I'm not sure of the licence specifics related to downstream water, but in general:
The impact on downstream water is almost entirely positive, the leaky dams they build filter sediment and excess nutrients (often from fertiliser run off).
They also smooth out peak water flow to help alleviate downstream flooding. Obviously this comes at the cost of flooding areas behind their dams, but this can also be positive, because in the increasingly dry summers, the ponds they create help keep the land upstream cooler and wetter.
The beaver site in Ealing, London was mostly funded because it was a cheaper solution to help with downstream flooding than equivalent hard infrastructure and a significant cost of that project was the fence to keep them in.
Even fish which need to navigate upstream, can leap these dams because they have co-evolved with the beaver, and also beavers are vegetarian so don't predate the fish.
Obviously the main problem, is because in the UK we wiped them out, we've not co-evolved with them, hence the problems of them flooding land that would regularly have flooded, but we have decided to use for other purposes.
I highly recommend anyone who's interested in ecosystems go visit an established beaver site, the mosaic of habitats they create can support large amounts of biodiversity.
A license is needed to be a beaver in England. Beavers not carrying license cards will be considered illegal aliens and returned to their country of citizenship.
On several UK rivers, most notably the River Wye on the Welsh/English border, there exists a powerful river trust that has raised millions to remove 'barriers to salmon migration'. They took down and bypassed weirs on tributaries. They pulled out dead trees.
Then other bodies started felling trees into their river to create habitat for juvenile fish.
As an angler you might forgive me for thinking one of those bodies was in the wrong. Either way their conservation efforts have not mitigated the collapsing stocks of salmon over the two decades of their management.
I for one am happy for the beavers to have a go instead
Yes they did. They would deforest the banks, fence it off and clear the stream. Then they tried to convince other trusts to do the same. Now they are planting trees etc.
Depending on the tree and local conditions it can take tens or hundreds of years for them to decay. That’s why old growth forests take so long to restore, they require several generations of dead trees in different states of decay. This allows everything to fungi and insects get established.
They definitely shouldn’t have removed dead trees. Worst case scenario if they were ugly and someone politically powerful wanted them gone they should have been broken up or ground into large mulch.
They also removed a lot of living trees to 'let in more light'. I always felt that let in more heat too. Other river trusts were planting more trees at the same time!
I was once at a conservation event with the Wye and Usk foundation and the Wild trout Trust. WUF presented first on removing obstructions, then WTT presented on large woody debris! WUF, however, was rich and could push out other people and groups and push their vision. Another group were working on a novel way to stock salmon (semi natural rearing, pioneered successfuly on the Tyne) and WUF campaigned successfully to have it banned! It was a lesson to me as a young man that not all conservation groups were net good. The rod salmon catch on the Wye was 188 last year, down from 6,000 in the 1960s.
This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting.
REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it!
Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.
Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad.
it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol
Another interesting (free!) book is Utah State's Riverscapes Restoration Design Manual [1], which is about "Process-Based Restoration" of streams. Unlike the more common "form-based" restoration, PBR provides materials in the form of hand-built structures of natural materials, especially large pieces of wood.
Actually, I'd really recommend first just looking at all the pictures in the "pocket guide" version of the book. [2]
My brother had some beavers move back into the stream near his house. I’m sure he’d happily ship them over to the UK. Knowing they’ll be more next year means he’d probably give you an annual subscription.
He doesn’t really hate the beavers, just doesn’t want them going after his pair tree, though he found a way to defend it. They’re fascinating animals.
We have some beavers that dam up parts of our property every few years which stops water from flowing to certain areas we need water in. We just throw smoke in them to make sure they abandon it and then stick some Tannerite in their dams and blow em up. Honestly, it's a pretty fun way to deal with it.
Rewilding the UK is a great idea, especially considering that we have so little boring wildlife. Why is it so painstakingly slow, Lynx should be introduced urgently, the countryside is overrun with deer causing an unbalanced eco-system and many road traffic accidents.
As my late Mum often said about hedgehogs - "I want one! Or two!". I've always planned to have back-garden pond, which might be nice for beavers, but I don't suppose I will now, due to age and not being able to look after it. Sniff.
Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
I came across both on the same day back in the early 1970s. I was hitching up the A1 to Edinburgh and got stuck, then I came across a hog trying to cross the very busy road, so I grabbed it and ran across and dumped it in the verge. A little later, still with thumb stuck out, I heard rustling in the undergrowth, and this black and white critter waddled past me as if I wasn't there.
Kind of sad that people don't hitch anymore. You come across all sorts of stuff and people. My little brother was in a garage band and wrote a song called "Stick Out Your Thumb And Have Some Fun", which I liked.
I'd love if hitchhiking made a revival. I've tried it once, but didn't get far. Well, actually, I didn't get anywhere at all!
There's something about looking personable, well-groomed and attentive, and still being ignored by a succession of mostly empty vehicles that takes a toll on one's ego :(
The people who deliver new cars in the UK are well known for hitchhiking home. I think they are on a fixed fee, so hitching saves them money. You will see them holding their 'trade plates' (temporary registration plates that dealers can use without having to tax and insure the car registration) out to let other professional drivers know they are professionals. I met one in the Midlands once who had already driven to Edinburgh and hitched all the way back in the day. You often see them on the exits of motorway services where a lorry driver has dropped them so they can find someone going their way.
I used to thumb a lot, standing by the side of the road you often see these car delivery lads, but only briefly; always picked up within a few minutes. I toyed with the idea of getting myself some fake trade-plates but thought better of it (they're mostly pretty hard looking blokes ...)
I know, it was a bit soul destroying. In my experience, the thing to do was not to try too hard (a bit of Zen here, perhaps). I remember being dropped at a roundabout outside Doncaster UK where there were already a couple of other guys, which is usually the kiss of death for all concerned. So I went up the road's embankment, laid down and slept for an hour or so - it was a sunny day. When I woke the other guys had got lifts and I stuck out my thumb and got one too.
The thing about hitching is that you want a little money in your pocket so that if you really do get stuck somewhere you can maybe get a bus to somewhere better, and you don't feel too powerless and miserable. Also, hitch with a pretty woman - me and my ex-wife hitched Edinburgh-Yorkshire-Wales and back, doing camping. The last bit back to Edinburgh was in a Rolls Royce!
Ha, thanks for the tips! Knowing me though I'd lie down for a 'nap' and wake up eight hours later!
Re. public transport, indeed the occasion when I tried hitchhiking was after missing the one of the two twice-a-day buses on a recent journey of mine from a remote village. However, I eventually caught a succession of unlikely connections further on; I ended up arriving earlier than expected even without successfully hitchhiking, so all's well that ends well!
There were still quite a few hitchhikers in the mid-1990s and I would always pick them up. I heard some tall tales but I never felt threatened. People have become absurdly risk-averse.
A bit more complicated than that. There also issues about the spread of tuberculosis to cattle which encourages badger culls, but may or may not actually happen much.
Baiting is obviously horrible though. And we in the UK also have vile "sports" such as hare-coursing. But we have more or less got rid of fox hunting.
I'm interested that you put hare coursing in a similar category to badger baiting. I have a semi religious attachment to hares, as do many country people, so I wouldn't do it. However, coursing hares or rabbits doesn't appear more cruel than any other way of killing them to me. I think it is odd to turn it into a competition, but that shouldn't stop a solitary hunter.
I suppose the cruelty aspect is somewhat arguable, but the people doing coursing are almost all criminal gangs who, at the same time as coursing, do a lot of theft and damage in the rural environment here in Lincolnshire.
That's ok then, there is already a law against being in a criminal gang and against stealing! I don't agree with the constant stream of legislating against things that are already illegal!
(Half)joking aside, I do understand that Lincolnshire has a much worse problem than my native Welsh border country. Our smaller fields and undulating ground make coursing much more difficult. We also don't have the density of hares.
Yes it is typical overreaction stuff. "Badger baiting is bad, so instead of enforcing the ban on badger baiting from 1835, let's 100% protect badgers". I think there is a popular idea that badgers are rare, because badgers are nocturnal. If you venture to shine a bright torch on a field now and then you will see that they very common.
Whilst baiting is a persistent sub culture, it is extremely niche. I live in a country area, and my life puts me in contact with the shooting and farming communities. I heard of baiting once ever. It is much more niche than other countryside crimes like stealing GPS units off tractors, sheep rustling, poaching etc. None of which attract attention from the public.
I don't want to see animals killed, but the UK is a highly managed landscape. The badgers success has been a disaster for ground nesting birds (especially lapwings, or peewits as we call them locally) , and hedgehogs. This makes me sad.
Then there is the issue of TB. Because the populace, as you put it, are so fond of badgers there has been this appalling censorship of the debate about this issue. In fact for years we had all kinds of groups pretending that there was no link between TB in badgers and TB in cows. Lets have some facts. If a dairy cow catches TB from a badger then it will be killed by the government. The herd will get constant checks and animals will keep getting killed for having antibodies present in their bloodstream. This is because the spread of TB must be stopped at all costs! That makes me sad. If a badger gets TB, it will likely infect its whole sett. It is likely to die of the disease. You can't kill them though, because badgers must be protected at all costs. I spy a logical inconsistency in those two positions.
I'm glad to hear that badgers are doing well somewhere at least. They used to be common in the western US but their numbers have plummeted due to over killing, habitat loss, vehicle deaths, and other causes.
From Wikipedia:
"About 140 kilograms of castoreum are harvested a year. An average beaver has 100 - 200 grams of castor sacs. So less than 2000 wild beavers are trapped and killed each year for castoreum, mostly in Canada - Eurasian beaver population levels are still too low for trapping to be effective."
Reminds me of the (supposed) benefits of reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone; they reduced and got the elk population moving, reducing overgrazing, helping beavers recover, and helping rivers and biodiversity to recover.
Of course, that's Yellowstone which is a lot bigger and not populated by people. Wolves are returning (or, being allowed to return) to the Netherlands as well where they end up decimating sheep populations for the fun of it, much to the chagrin of farmers.
My parents' neighbours have a huge number of goats in their property. It really is in the middle of nowhere Northern Portugal and for decades everyone always said "oh the wolves are gone, they used to be such a menace to our animals but not anymore. Barely any need for guard dogs".
However, there is a small (200~300) population of wolves and since Covid it seems they got less scared of people, or more brave and desperate because the intense forest fires have ravaged their turf. Last year they attacked the goats and killed dozens of them. It was, according to my dad, one of the goriest things he ever saw.
Guess what, the guard dogs are back, nobody says it's all a thing in the past. On one hand it's great news that wolves are making a comeback but there's always the other side.
I think it's good they're prospering! Was just telling an anecdote. Guard dogs and better fences seem to be working, they never had another attack since then.
All solutions are compromises. For example here in France:
Wolves ? You have to get guardian dogs (a requirement to get compensated for attacks), accept that a part of your herd will be killed each year (disrupting the dynamic of the herd I've been told) and getting a small compensation. Guardian dogs cause problems with hikers. Someone I know had her dog killed, and I hate having 3 or 4 of them barking around me until I get far from a herd. They aren't that many incidents but it's always a stressful situation.
No wolves? You rely on hunters to regulate the population of some species (chamois, alpine ibex, etc.)
People against the reintroduction of wolves seem to see proponents as city dwellers with no experience of the real world, and proponents seem to see people against it as retrograde.
I live in the SF Bay Area (Los Altos Hills). My neighbor used to raise miniature goats. A few years ago a mountain lion got into the goat pasture and killed all the goats. It was pretty gory. On the other hand, it seems like the mountain lions (and coyotes) are doing a pretty good job bringing down the local deer population. I wish they would also start eating the non-native wild turkeys that have migrated into my area over the past 5 years or so.
As someone with young kids... I want to be a free-range parent to the extent possible, but I'm not going to let my kids wander around in the forest if there are wolf packs loose in the area.
This worked well in 1950s Britain because they had exterminated all large predators! Let's be real about that. For most of human history, nature was deadly.
We have wolves and the occasional bear on our property. They cause problems with chickens and trash cans, not people. They don't want to mess with us any more than we want to be messed with, and they typically keep their distance to the point that we see their tracks, not them.
I wouldn't tell a toddler to go play in the woods, you are correct about that, but the rest of us freely wander nature without fretting too much over it. I also just checked and there have been zero wolf attacks on humans in my state. Ever. We just aren't their preferred targets.
I agree that we shouldn't be worrying about reintroduced wolves causing much risk to humans, but historical perspective is a good idea: We shouldn't worry about them in the context of today, since wolves have learned to be very careful about bothering humans. In earlier history, it was a different story.
From what i've read, lethal wolf attacks in premodern Europe, even up to the late 18th century, were extremely common and claimed hundreds of human lives per year. Predators are predators. They stop attacking easy prey only if they're forcefully habituated into not doing so, not because they've become more warm, fuzzy and calm.
I lived the first 40 years of my life in bear and mountain lion territory and spent lots of time out in the wild, especially as a kid (usually a group of three or four of us). This is the first time I've lived where there is no wild animals to worry about aside from one variety of snake. It was a very odd sensation to realize I didn't have to be vigilantly aware of my surroundings to prevent a wild animal encounter. People have lived with predators for all of our existence
There have been a small number of cases where wolves attack humans, but the majority of attacks that do occur generally prey on cattle or sheep. With fencing and guard dogs, an equilibrium can be reached. Maybe have you kids wander with a protective dog. I don't want to see us continually destroy and suppress biodiversity because it's inconvenient for us.
2. Humans adapt their behavior to minimize the risk of attack by wild predators.
This is like saying "relatively few people get mugged wandering around alone in the tenderloin at 3am". It's because everyone knows it's a terrible idea and avoids doing so. That doesn't make the area safe.
To be honest, that area is very hilly and rough. Even without wolf packs loitering around I wouldn't recommend young kids wandering by themselves outside of the fenced areas.
I have livestock in an area with mountain lions, bears, and coyotes. There’s no fence that I could build that will reliably keep out a mountain lion, because they can jump very high and climb trees. Electrified fences with a high enough hot line will keep out coyotes and bears, but no one I know fences entire pastures that way. It would be very expensive and require a lot of maintenance. Livestock Guardian Dogs bred to protect livestock will do a much better job of scaring off and fighting predators. They’re specific breeds like Anatolians and Maremmas, not regular farm dogs.
My parent's neighbours, they're not my parents' goats (they only have a few to keep their property clean).
The neighbours have a big piece of land and electrifying the fences would be quite expensive, the guard dogs seem to be doing their jobs quite well, no attacks since then.
A stream in my community that had been rerouted and straightened in the name of both farming and development was recently restored to a more natural course, including its flood plains. Beavers came back quickly. Most obvious sign, beyond the dams and ponds created, are the signature pointed stumps and felled trees. Some are significant in size, and have actually fallen across trails and roads. They have fenced around some trees bordering roads, and have gone in to do see preventative trimming. Pretty cool.
Yes, beavers. They're very efficient an building dams but awful at following engineering instructions, often ignoring them altogether. They make for a very untrustworthy workforce and we should keep an eye on their behaviors especially around critical architecture.
I love the idea of pricing all externalities as time required to be around dangerous animal. I think it would really help make the cost of externalities viscerally real in a way that helps stimulation the imagination :)
well, you can imagine that happens to the beaver who instead of building a dam insists on calling meetings and getting approvals... Natural selection so to speak.
In the human population though the natural selection (i.e. whose children are going to be more successful?) seems in the current environment to favor the strategy of hoarding resources to yourself and denying them to the others.
I live in an area where basic infrastructure like this is safety critical. It was installed 50-100 years ago over a weekend for ~ $10Ks of 2025 money, with no environmental impact and lasted half a century with zero upkeep.
Now, with modern permits, etc, these projects take 5-10 years, $10M’s and have significant environmental impact.
As a direct result, every few years, people around here burn to death or lose their homes or whatever.
So, everyone is less safe, and the environment suffers.
Also, I make jokes about beavers, because it’s better than crying.
Ok, this is hacker news, so let me put this in terms legible to a hacker: If "dropped queries" are forced to "grant permissions," you're establishing a system that rewards a targeted "dos attack."
>Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported.
What a bunch of dissimulating bullshit. If they actually wanted to support landowners, they wouldn't be re-introducing this destructive species.
Man someone has gotta say it. Thank you. This is not acceptable and does not solve the root problem. If anything it creates so many more. Stupid government. They have to get rid of the destructive species once and for all. Let the Beavers have the human houses, whatever it takes, just get the humans away from earth before they make the place uninhabitable for all.
There is a stream behind our yard and one year beavers built a dam. They were hard to spot in the daytime but we caught them at night with trailcams. They are very cute but surprisingly big and round. Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. We enjoyed the process of watching the nature unfold.
> Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not.
I've encountered relatively few people who were concerned about the damage to trees. The typical concern is over damage to land. Any animal than engineers their environment, including both beavers and humans, has a disproportionate ability to alter land use. That includes humancentric development and natural ecosystems.
I am not going to claim that beavers are either good or bad. I am going to point out that humans are as much a part of nature as beavers, so preserving natural ecosystems is almost always in our favour. Yet there are circumstances where managing is likely a better approach than preserving, simply because nature can throw nasty things our way too. (We are, for example, not to eager to let rats thrive in our cities.)
Beavers are horrible creatures that tease, provoke and bait reactive dogs into attacking them. Some dogs may even get injured while killing them! Beavers should be banned!
I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive.
We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.
It's nice to live on a property which accommodates wildife. That would be very rare in Europe. Most larger properties would be agricultural land.
It's not rare in Europe at all...
They weren't. They were reintroduced in Scotland in 2009.
Right. I took the article to mean they were extinct before then. I did not know that they had ever lived there.
I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated.
In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess.
Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity.
I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.
> letting an ecosystem manage itself
What would that entail? The whole of the UK has been a human managed ecosystem for centuries. Deforestation was completed about 400 years ago and the larges stand of contiguous trees is under 300 sq. mi. So many of the species that would have made up the old ecosystem are gone.
Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs. There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...
If the circle of life scars somebody out of farming, that's probably for the better. Farming is hard work and any time you have livestock, you have to make hard decisions about managing them, including how to protect them from predation.
Wolf is an unfortunate animal. Since one ate vdL's poney, the whole EU is after him. /s
Could you explain the vdL’s poney reference? I’d really love to understand it.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/27/a-wolf-k...
So if a wolf "culls" the deer, it's good. But if a human does it, it's bad?
Amusing you disparage a scientifically mandated effort to incrementally pull back from an environmental precipice as "protection of the 'cute' species".
Having just finished Fuzz[0], I think it's fair to question how well any effort to prefer one animal over another ever works out.
[0] https://maryroach.net/fuzz.html
> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
This takes time and you can't score quick rewards. That's why it doesn't look good on an agenda.
What's the tradeoff tho? People usually are mad because those animals threaten part of their income, not because they cause harm to the environment. It's not about beavers or wolves or beavers or another ugly animal. Is usually about beaver or corn, or soy or whatever they're planting.
> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
The only long term fix is to move all humans off earth to space/mars/moon/elsewhere, and keep the whole of earth for nature and observation only.
Everything else won't work.
The question is do we all collectively care about the environment enough to all lose our home planet? I suspect no.
It would be a start, though, if we reintroduced keystone species, allowed less problematic predators free reign, and adopted a policy of generally consigning river floodplains to nature as much as possible rather than making rivers into sewers or canals. Trying to live inches from a flowing river is an anachronism from an earlier era when we cared about very different things.
That solution seems to work best through a colonial, capitalist lens. Rather than TINA (Thatcher's "there is no alternative"), consider TIA (Yoda's "there is... another")?
The beavers were released yesterday in the UK: "the National Trust has legally released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset. "
https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo
"Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported."
I don't understand what a stakeholder is in this context. Also, why are licenses involved? What does this even mean?
The stakeholders in this matter are primarily third-sector organizations in support of beaver reintroduction, of which the many regional Wildlife Trusts are most prominent, and farmers, who are generally but not entirely against reintroduction.
The licences are necessary because with such a sensitive issue, it must be ensured that only responsible and well-resourced organizations can release beavers into the wild. Otherwise, beavers may be introduced into areas that are unsuitable for them, or into areas where they will cause disproportionate damage to farming operations, and either eventuality would harm the perception of beavers. If that happened, the beavers might become so unpopular that it becomes politically impossible to continue with the reintroduction, so it's in everyone's best interests to be careful. Beavers are wonderful animals and can be very beneficial to their local environment, but you can't just dump them on a housing estate or something and expect good results.
I don't know what the exact criteria is, but the winding, damp brooks of the area where I live have been among the successful trial areas for beaver reintroduction. An abundance of willow trees is one factor that makes for an ideal beaver environment, for instance.
> but you can't just dump them on a housing estate or something and expect good results.
How do you prevent them from spreading to these locations once they are reintroduced?
Population control. Mostly hunting and demolishing dams. Beavers went extinct where I live in 1841. Reintroduction started in 1957. By now there is a very healthy population that stabilised around year 2000.
Sounds like a problem for a future parliament in 20 years' time
Ask them nicely.
And if that fails, we invite them to an interview without tea and biscuits.
Another stakeholder meeting.
> Also, why are licenses involved?
It's the UK.
(Sorry, had to.)
I imagine there is an impact on downstream water so needs to be considered before granting a licence
I'm not sure of the licence specifics related to downstream water, but in general:
The impact on downstream water is almost entirely positive, the leaky dams they build filter sediment and excess nutrients (often from fertiliser run off).
They also smooth out peak water flow to help alleviate downstream flooding. Obviously this comes at the cost of flooding areas behind their dams, but this can also be positive, because in the increasingly dry summers, the ponds they create help keep the land upstream cooler and wetter.
The beaver site in Ealing, London was mostly funded because it was a cheaper solution to help with downstream flooding than equivalent hard infrastructure and a significant cost of that project was the fence to keep them in.
Even fish which need to navigate upstream, can leap these dams because they have co-evolved with the beaver, and also beavers are vegetarian so don't predate the fish.
Obviously the main problem, is because in the UK we wiped them out, we've not co-evolved with them, hence the problems of them flooding land that would regularly have flooded, but we have decided to use for other purposes.
I highly recommend anyone who's interested in ecosystems go visit an established beaver site, the mosaic of habitats they create can support large amounts of biodiversity.
A license is needed to be a beaver in England. Beavers not carrying license cards will be considered illegal aliens and returned to their country of citizenship.
You got a loicense for that beaver?
you get 50€ if your tracor axle breaks because your wheel sinks into a lodge.
On several UK rivers, most notably the River Wye on the Welsh/English border, there exists a powerful river trust that has raised millions to remove 'barriers to salmon migration'. They took down and bypassed weirs on tributaries. They pulled out dead trees.
Then other bodies started felling trees into their river to create habitat for juvenile fish.
As an angler you might forgive me for thinking one of those bodies was in the wrong. Either way their conservation efforts have not mitigated the collapsing stocks of salmon over the two decades of their management.
I for one am happy for the beavers to have a go instead
To be clear, they pulled out isolated dead trees, that weren't part of a weir? It's hard to imagine how those could act as a migration barrier.
Yes they did. They would deforest the banks, fence it off and clear the stream. Then they tried to convince other trusts to do the same. Now they are planting trees etc.
I believe that the group pulling out the dead trees was wrong. A good search term for this topic, btw, is "large woody debris".
Depending on the tree and local conditions it can take tens or hundreds of years for them to decay. That’s why old growth forests take so long to restore, they require several generations of dead trees in different states of decay. This allows everything to fungi and insects get established.
They definitely shouldn’t have removed dead trees. Worst case scenario if they were ugly and someone politically powerful wanted them gone they should have been broken up or ground into large mulch.
They also removed a lot of living trees to 'let in more light'. I always felt that let in more heat too. Other river trusts were planting more trees at the same time!
I always felt that varied habitat was better.
I was once at a conservation event with the Wye and Usk foundation and the Wild trout Trust. WUF presented first on removing obstructions, then WTT presented on large woody debris! WUF, however, was rich and could push out other people and groups and push their vision. Another group were working on a novel way to stock salmon (semi natural rearing, pioneered successfuly on the Tyne) and WUF campaigned successfully to have it banned! It was a lesson to me as a young man that not all conservation groups were net good. The rod salmon catch on the Wye was 188 last year, down from 6,000 in the 1960s.
For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.
This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting.
REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it!
Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.
Isle Royale is amazing. Just filter your water... because beavers.
Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad.
it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol
That's the Minong Ridge. Ups and downs. :)
free folk activities fascinate pets as much as pets fascinate free folk
Another interesting (free!) book is Utah State's Riverscapes Restoration Design Manual [1], which is about "Process-Based Restoration" of streams. Unlike the more common "form-based" restoration, PBR provides materials in the form of hand-built structures of natural materials, especially large pieces of wood.
Actually, I'd really recommend first just looking at all the pictures in the "pocket guide" version of the book. [2]
[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19590.63049/2
[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28222.13123/1
I appreciate the rec! The extended phenotype (Dawkins) also highlights this phenomenon.
Does it discuss the patagonian (transplanted) beavers?
My brother had some beavers move back into the stream near his house. I’m sure he’d happily ship them over to the UK. Knowing they’ll be more next year means he’d probably give you an annual subscription.
He doesn’t really hate the beavers, just doesn’t want them going after his pair tree, though he found a way to defend it. They’re fascinating animals.
They also can be pests and a nuisance.
We have some beavers that dam up parts of our property every few years which stops water from flowing to certain areas we need water in. We just throw smoke in them to make sure they abandon it and then stick some Tannerite in their dams and blow em up. Honestly, it's a pretty fun way to deal with it.
what is a pair tree?
When you have a pair of programmers sitting around the same tree. Could also be a pear tree.
is that like the bodhi tree but instead of buddhism it is basic
There’s two of them. Very tasty
Rewilding the UK is a great idea, especially considering that we have so little boring wildlife. Why is it so painstakingly slow, Lynx should be introduced urgently, the countryside is overrun with deer causing an unbalanced eco-system and many road traffic accidents.
Vote for bears here. They're so cute.
https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/
Also worth a watch
As my late Mum often said about hedgehogs - "I want one! Or two!". I've always planned to have back-garden pond, which might be nice for beavers, but I don't suppose I will now, due to age and not being able to look after it. Sniff.
Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
> Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
They're protected species in much of Europe, so the law is to prevent people from grabbing them out of their backyard.
You can have African Pygmy Hedgehogs! My girlfriend and I owned 3, and they're adorable little menaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog
Seems a bit silly, seeing as hedgehogs are somewhat endangered in the UK. If they were bred for pets, we'd surely have more of them!
I find it funny that its top predator, the badger, is also protected, despite being very common.
I came across both on the same day back in the early 1970s. I was hitching up the A1 to Edinburgh and got stuck, then I came across a hog trying to cross the very busy road, so I grabbed it and ran across and dumped it in the verge. A little later, still with thumb stuck out, I heard rustling in the undergrowth, and this black and white critter waddled past me as if I wasn't there.
Kind of sad that people don't hitch anymore. You come across all sorts of stuff and people. My little brother was in a garage band and wrote a song called "Stick Out Your Thumb And Have Some Fun", which I liked.
I'd love if hitchhiking made a revival. I've tried it once, but didn't get far. Well, actually, I didn't get anywhere at all!
There's something about looking personable, well-groomed and attentive, and still being ignored by a succession of mostly empty vehicles that takes a toll on one's ego :(
Good on you for rescuing the hedgehog though!
The people who deliver new cars in the UK are well known for hitchhiking home. I think they are on a fixed fee, so hitching saves them money. You will see them holding their 'trade plates' (temporary registration plates that dealers can use without having to tax and insure the car registration) out to let other professional drivers know they are professionals. I met one in the Midlands once who had already driven to Edinburgh and hitched all the way back in the day. You often see them on the exits of motorway services where a lorry driver has dropped them so they can find someone going their way.
I used to thumb a lot, standing by the side of the road you often see these car delivery lads, but only briefly; always picked up within a few minutes. I toyed with the idea of getting myself some fake trade-plates but thought better of it (they're mostly pretty hard looking blokes ...)
Also works if you're a serial killer.
> didn't get anywhere at all
I know, it was a bit soul destroying. In my experience, the thing to do was not to try too hard (a bit of Zen here, perhaps). I remember being dropped at a roundabout outside Doncaster UK where there were already a couple of other guys, which is usually the kiss of death for all concerned. So I went up the road's embankment, laid down and slept for an hour or so - it was a sunny day. When I woke the other guys had got lifts and I stuck out my thumb and got one too.
The thing about hitching is that you want a little money in your pocket so that if you really do get stuck somewhere you can maybe get a bus to somewhere better, and you don't feel too powerless and miserable. Also, hitch with a pretty woman - me and my ex-wife hitched Edinburgh-Yorkshire-Wales and back, doing camping. The last bit back to Edinburgh was in a Rolls Royce!
Ha, thanks for the tips! Knowing me though I'd lie down for a 'nap' and wake up eight hours later!
Re. public transport, indeed the occasion when I tried hitchhiking was after missing the one of the two twice-a-day buses on a recent journey of mine from a remote village. However, I eventually caught a succession of unlikely connections further on; I ended up arriving earlier than expected even without successfully hitchhiking, so all's well that ends well!
There were still quite a few hitchhikers in the mid-1990s and I would always pick them up. I heard some tall tales but I never felt threatened. People have become absurdly risk-averse.
It is increasingly illegal, for the drivers too. They don't want people walking on highways, nor cars stopping randomly.
Badgers are protected mostly because of badger ‘baiting’ which is a medieval blood sport the populace is repulsed by yet is a persistent subculture.
A bit more complicated than that. There also issues about the spread of tuberculosis to cattle which encourages badger culls, but may or may not actually happen much.
Baiting is obviously horrible though. And we in the UK also have vile "sports" such as hare-coursing. But we have more or less got rid of fox hunting.
I'm interested that you put hare coursing in a similar category to badger baiting. I have a semi religious attachment to hares, as do many country people, so I wouldn't do it. However, coursing hares or rabbits doesn't appear more cruel than any other way of killing them to me. I think it is odd to turn it into a competition, but that shouldn't stop a solitary hunter.
I suppose the cruelty aspect is somewhat arguable, but the people doing coursing are almost all criminal gangs who, at the same time as coursing, do a lot of theft and damage in the rural environment here in Lincolnshire.
That's ok then, there is already a law against being in a criminal gang and against stealing! I don't agree with the constant stream of legislating against things that are already illegal!
(Half)joking aside, I do understand that Lincolnshire has a much worse problem than my native Welsh border country. Our smaller fields and undulating ground make coursing much more difficult. We also don't have the density of hares.
Hare coursing is also illegal.
Yes it is typical overreaction stuff. "Badger baiting is bad, so instead of enforcing the ban on badger baiting from 1835, let's 100% protect badgers". I think there is a popular idea that badgers are rare, because badgers are nocturnal. If you venture to shine a bright torch on a field now and then you will see that they very common.
Whilst baiting is a persistent sub culture, it is extremely niche. I live in a country area, and my life puts me in contact with the shooting and farming communities. I heard of baiting once ever. It is much more niche than other countryside crimes like stealing GPS units off tractors, sheep rustling, poaching etc. None of which attract attention from the public.
I don't want to see animals killed, but the UK is a highly managed landscape. The badgers success has been a disaster for ground nesting birds (especially lapwings, or peewits as we call them locally) , and hedgehogs. This makes me sad.
Then there is the issue of TB. Because the populace, as you put it, are so fond of badgers there has been this appalling censorship of the debate about this issue. In fact for years we had all kinds of groups pretending that there was no link between TB in badgers and TB in cows. Lets have some facts. If a dairy cow catches TB from a badger then it will be killed by the government. The herd will get constant checks and animals will keep getting killed for having antibodies present in their bloodstream. This is because the spread of TB must be stopped at all costs! That makes me sad. If a badger gets TB, it will likely infect its whole sett. It is likely to die of the disease. You can't kill them though, because badgers must be protected at all costs. I spy a logical inconsistency in those two positions.
I'm glad to hear that badgers are doing well somewhere at least. They used to be common in the western US but their numbers have plummeted due to over killing, habitat loss, vehicle deaths, and other causes.
I knew someone with a pet albino hedgehog. I thought it wS a european hedgehog but maybe not?
Castoreum is back on the menu, boys.
From Wikipedia: "About 140 kilograms of castoreum are harvested a year. An average beaver has 100 - 200 grams of castor sacs. So less than 2000 wild beavers are trapped and killed each year for castoreum, mostly in Canada - Eurasian beaver population levels are still too low for trapping to be effective."
Reminds me of the (supposed) benefits of reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone; they reduced and got the elk population moving, reducing overgrazing, helping beavers recover, and helping rivers and biodiversity to recover.
https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/, https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/
Of course, that's Yellowstone which is a lot bigger and not populated by people. Wolves are returning (or, being allowed to return) to the Netherlands as well where they end up decimating sheep populations for the fun of it, much to the chagrin of farmers.
Slightly off-topic but it's related to wolves.
My parents' neighbours have a huge number of goats in their property. It really is in the middle of nowhere Northern Portugal and for decades everyone always said "oh the wolves are gone, they used to be such a menace to our animals but not anymore. Barely any need for guard dogs".
However, there is a small (200~300) population of wolves and since Covid it seems they got less scared of people, or more brave and desperate because the intense forest fires have ravaged their turf. Last year they attacked the goats and killed dozens of them. It was, according to my dad, one of the goriest things he ever saw.
Guess what, the guard dogs are back, nobody says it's all a thing in the past. On one hand it's great news that wolves are making a comeback but there's always the other side.
What’s the alternative here? No wolves and less biodiversity? That’s detrimental in the long-term.
The real issue here seems to be the forest fires that disturbed the wolves’ equilibrium.
I think it's good they're prospering! Was just telling an anecdote. Guard dogs and better fences seem to be working, they never had another attack since then.
All solutions are compromises. For example here in France:
Wolves ? You have to get guardian dogs (a requirement to get compensated for attacks), accept that a part of your herd will be killed each year (disrupting the dynamic of the herd I've been told) and getting a small compensation. Guardian dogs cause problems with hikers. Someone I know had her dog killed, and I hate having 3 or 4 of them barking around me until I get far from a herd. They aren't that many incidents but it's always a stressful situation.
No wolves? You rely on hunters to regulate the population of some species (chamois, alpine ibex, etc.)
People against the reintroduction of wolves seem to see proponents as city dwellers with no experience of the real world, and proponents seem to see people against it as retrograde.
I live in the SF Bay Area (Los Altos Hills). My neighbor used to raise miniature goats. A few years ago a mountain lion got into the goat pasture and killed all the goats. It was pretty gory. On the other hand, it seems like the mountain lions (and coyotes) are doing a pretty good job bringing down the local deer population. I wish they would also start eating the non-native wild turkeys that have migrated into my area over the past 5 years or so.
As someone with young kids... I want to be a free-range parent to the extent possible, but I'm not going to let my kids wander around in the forest if there are wolf packs loose in the area.
This worked well in 1950s Britain because they had exterminated all large predators! Let's be real about that. For most of human history, nature was deadly.
We have wolves and the occasional bear on our property. They cause problems with chickens and trash cans, not people. They don't want to mess with us any more than we want to be messed with, and they typically keep their distance to the point that we see their tracks, not them.
I wouldn't tell a toddler to go play in the woods, you are correct about that, but the rest of us freely wander nature without fretting too much over it. I also just checked and there have been zero wolf attacks on humans in my state. Ever. We just aren't their preferred targets.
I agree that we shouldn't be worrying about reintroduced wolves causing much risk to humans, but historical perspective is a good idea: We shouldn't worry about them in the context of today, since wolves have learned to be very careful about bothering humans. In earlier history, it was a different story.
From what i've read, lethal wolf attacks in premodern Europe, even up to the late 18th century, were extremely common and claimed hundreds of human lives per year. Predators are predators. They stop attacking easy prey only if they're forcefully habituated into not doing so, not because they've become more warm, fuzzy and calm.
When you say kids, do you mean young goats or young humans?
I lived the first 40 years of my life in bear and mountain lion territory and spent lots of time out in the wild, especially as a kid (usually a group of three or four of us). This is the first time I've lived where there is no wild animals to worry about aside from one variety of snake. It was a very odd sensation to realize I didn't have to be vigilantly aware of my surroundings to prevent a wild animal encounter. People have lived with predators for all of our existence
There have been a small number of cases where wolves attack humans, but the majority of attacks that do occur generally prey on cattle or sheep. With fencing and guard dogs, an equilibrium can be reached. Maybe have you kids wander with a protective dog. I don't want to see us continually destroy and suppress biodiversity because it's inconvenient for us.
There have been a small number of cases where wolves attack humans because
1. Humans have spent centuries exterminating wolves anywhere humans regularly go.
2. Humans adapt their behavior to minimize the risk of attack by wild predators.
This is like saying "relatively few people get mugged wandering around alone in the tenderloin at 3am". It's because everyone knows it's a terrible idea and avoids doing so. That doesn't make the area safe.
Let’s put it into perspective. How many people get attacked by dogs vs wolves?
How many people are attacked by grizzly bears vs dogs?
To be honest, that area is very hilly and rough. Even without wolf packs loitering around I wouldn't recommend young kids wandering by themselves outside of the fenced areas.
Is your parents' property fenced off? How does using guard dogs compare to having an electric fence?
I have livestock in an area with mountain lions, bears, and coyotes. There’s no fence that I could build that will reliably keep out a mountain lion, because they can jump very high and climb trees. Electrified fences with a high enough hot line will keep out coyotes and bears, but no one I know fences entire pastures that way. It would be very expensive and require a lot of maintenance. Livestock Guardian Dogs bred to protect livestock will do a much better job of scaring off and fighting predators. They’re specific breeds like Anatolians and Maremmas, not regular farm dogs.
My parent's neighbours, they're not my parents' goats (they only have a few to keep their property clean).
The neighbours have a big piece of land and electrifying the fences would be quite expensive, the guard dogs seem to be doing their jobs quite well, no attacks since then.
Of the 800,000 sheep in the Netherlands, dogs kill 13,000 every year. There's quite a smaller wolf population than dogs.
A stream in my community that had been rerouted and straightened in the name of both farming and development was recently restored to a more natural course, including its flood plains. Beavers came back quickly. Most obvious sign, beyond the dams and ponds created, are the signature pointed stumps and felled trees. Some are significant in size, and have actually fallen across trails and roads. They have fenced around some trees bordering roads, and have gone in to do see preventative trimming. Pretty cool.
My mother lived in a gated community, in Maryland. They had a small lake.
Beavers used to come up from the nearby park, and dam up the lake. They'd chew down the decorative cherry trees (boo), and Bradford Pear trees (yay).
I was reading (maybe here), that beavers basically obviated a multimillion-dollar dam project, somewhere out West.
Yes, beavers. They're very efficient an building dams but awful at following engineering instructions, often ignoring them altogether. They make for a very untrustworthy workforce and we should keep an eye on their behaviors especially around critical architecture.
:)
This was the story: https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-plani...
Unironically, I believe the success of reintroducing beavers to the UK will be determined by how well they manage to follow planning legislature
The Beaver union has always had too much power.
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Related: While Government Officials Spent 5 Years Planning, Beavers Built their Dam for Free in 48 Hours:
https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials...
Now, if we could just train beavers to build affordable housing...
I think you need an apex predator / mammal to solve affordable housing...
Contractors' quotes 5x higher than for private buildings? Send a brown bear to talk to 'em.
Limited government funding? Send a wild boar to budget meetings.
Restrictive zoning laws? Put a mountain lion in the room at the next zoning review.
NIMBYs don't want affordable housing? Wolves roam their neighborhood until NIMBYs agree to allow new housing.
Lengthy approval process? A honey badger asks for approval.
Economic disparity between rising housing costs and stagnant wages? Moose roams around in businesses until wages raise.
I am sad the American|European bison didn't get a call out.
800+ kg of stubborn disagreement.
I love the idea of pricing all externalities as time required to be around dangerous animal. I think it would really help make the cost of externalities viscerally real in a way that helps stimulation the imagination :)
I was afraid you would suggest giving all the regulators malaria.
This is absolutely hilarious. Original story: https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-plani...
well, you can imagine that happens to the beaver who instead of building a dam insists on calling meetings and getting approvals... Natural selection so to speak.
In the human population though the natural selection (i.e. whose children are going to be more successful?) seems in the current environment to favor the strategy of hoarding resources to yourself and denying them to the others.
What do we do about the nimbyi beavers?
Nimbeavers went extinct for obvious reasons.
I asked before when that post came up here: what is the point?
I live in an area where basic infrastructure like this is safety critical. It was installed 50-100 years ago over a weekend for ~ $10Ks of 2025 money, with no environmental impact and lasted half a century with zero upkeep.
Now, with modern permits, etc, these projects take 5-10 years, $10M’s and have significant environmental impact.
As a direct result, every few years, people around here burn to death or lose their homes or whatever.
So, everyone is less safe, and the environment suffers.
Also, I make jokes about beavers, because it’s better than crying.
Permitting processes need reverse pressure: 'must reply or issue in ___ days' or it's granted by default.
Ok, this is hacker news, so let me put this in terms legible to a hacker: If "dropped queries" are forced to "grant permissions," you're establishing a system that rewards a targeted "dos attack."
That could potentially lead to some downsides.
The status quo also has downsides: no disincentives to making building orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive via permit delay.
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>Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported.
What a bunch of dissimulating bullshit. If they actually wanted to support landowners, they wouldn't be re-introducing this destructive species.
Man someone has gotta say it. Thank you. This is not acceptable and does not solve the root problem. If anything it creates so many more. Stupid government. They have to get rid of the destructive species once and for all. Let the Beavers have the human houses, whatever it takes, just get the humans away from earth before they make the place uninhabitable for all.
> does not solve the root problem
It kind of does! :-)
There is a stream behind our yard and one year beavers built a dam. They were hard to spot in the daytime but we caught them at night with trailcams. They are very cute but surprisingly big and round. Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. We enjoyed the process of watching the nature unfold.
> Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not.
I've encountered relatively few people who were concerned about the damage to trees. The typical concern is over damage to land. Any animal than engineers their environment, including both beavers and humans, has a disproportionate ability to alter land use. That includes humancentric development and natural ecosystems.
I am not going to claim that beavers are either good or bad. I am going to point out that humans are as much a part of nature as beavers, so preserving natural ecosystems is almost always in our favour. Yet there are circumstances where managing is likely a better approach than preserving, simply because nature can throw nasty things our way too. (We are, for example, not to eager to let rats thrive in our cities.)
Read it again - they aren't ranting about beavers.
If you’re arguing for untouched by wildlife perfect trails just go to Disneyland.
If we are in agreement then please accept my humble high five.
There are cats living in Disneyland, and many ducks.
Nuke em
maybe humans aren't the only species on the planet
There are farmers who are more than happy to work alongside them: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/28/ultimate...
And if you’re a farmer that’s working against nature not with it then you’re part of the problem.
Oi! You got a loicense for that beaver?!
Works in the Netherlands https://business.gov.nl/regulation/sex-business-permit/
Stupid idea. We're already having to kill them because of rising numbers.
England is a nation of floodplains. Its also overcrowded.
Another STUPID green fallacy.
Did a free-flowing river write this comment?
lmfao
With beaver, flooding is more common but the severity of the worst floods is lessened.
LOL tell that to the farmer who loses his entire field you wazzick
Exon mibile sponsors this idiicy and the pocahontas crowd happily self destructs. Idealization of reality is a retardation.
calm down mate
Beavers are horrible creatures that tease, provoke and bait reactive dogs into attacking them. Some dogs may even get injured while killing them! Beavers should be banned!
My goodness! Please, give us your source, I always suspected those flat tails and buck teeth were a vicissitude of some type.
I believe I've seen such behavior in the documentary film "Hundreds of Beavers".
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