NatureScot, Beaver Trust, and the University Collecting Data on Beaver Populations Around Tayside

NatureScot, Beaver Trust, and the University of St Andrews are currently working in collaboration to collect data on the beaver populations around the Tayside area. 

Dr Roisin Campbell-Palmer, the Head of Restoration at Beaver Trust, said: “This latest survey is important because it enables us to understand, with an objective approach, how beaver territories have changed, where beavers are living, and what impacts they are having.”

“It will also allow NatureScot to compare the results with those of the previous survey that we ran three years ago and understand the impact of beaver management through numbers and territories, to learn lessons, and improve approaches to beaver management in the future."

Dr. Roo Campbell, the project leader at NatureScot said that although data collection has not yet started, the process is nonetheless slowly getting underway. Dr Campbell anticipates that it will be completed by next summer. He added: “This is the fourth survey that we have done since 2012, and we have done it sporadically ever since.”

According to Dr Campbell, the best way for the public to support the researchers’ work is by reporting any beaver sightings on the Mammal Mapper App on your phone.

When asked about why collecting this data is significant, Dr Campbell said: “Beavers are known as a keystone species, which means that they have an impact on the environment that far exceeds what you would expect based upon their biomass.”

While addressing the many biodiversity benefits that beavers bring to Scotland, Dr Campbell also made sure to note that on the other hand, “they can cause impacts on other human land use, like farming.” Campbell emphasised that it is essential for this data to be collected as it can reveal where the beaver populations are most concentrated and what kind of impacts it may have.

Dr Campbell highlighted that the University’s role in this process is to model how the team can more effectively subsample the beaver populations and continue to come to a reliable population estimate, “so that in the future, you don’t have to do this enormous survey everywhere.”

“I’m predicting an increase in population. Between the last two surveys, the population increased 30% per year in terms of the number of [beaver] territories – And there is no reason to think that that increase has stopped.”

Photo by Elise Liu