The beavers last roamed the Scotland waterways more than 250 years ago, until a pair of the amphibious rodents has been spotted in a lodge on a fishery loch banks. Besides triggering enthusiasm among beaver-lovers, it also generated as much anger among the scientists!
They have earned this formidable enmity, because of their prodigious ability to gnaw through most material obstacles, also blocking waterways with their dams.
The authorities have invested their best efforts to prevent their return. But, unfortunate for them, the wild beaver has made an ‘unscheduled’ comeback in rural Perthshire.
It was in Britain, by the mid-18th century, the beaver, has once been hunted to the brink of extinction.
It was not that, proposals to return beavers to the wild have not been put forward in the past, but farmers created obstacles kicking up fears among them that the rodents would block their land and stock – leading to great inconvenience and damage for them.
Edwin Blake, Edinburgh Zoo’s head keeper said,
Frankly releasing them was just stupidity as well as being illegal. If you are going to release these animals then it has to be part of a properly controlled and monitored experiment. These would be captive animals and it’s not fair to dump them in the countryside. Blake has been given the job of reviving the forgotten art of trapping beavers.
Now what! Should another merciless killing episode of the rodents in their righteously indigenous land be lodged, to meet humans’ selfish ends kick off?
Can’t the researchers come up with (may not be as easier a solution as hunting them down can be) a humane solution to prevent the rodents from disrupting the people’s life there?
Image: natur-fritid.no