Four new sites being considered for more beavers in Cairngorms National Park

Four new potential release sites for more beavers in the Cairngorms National Park Authority are currently being looked at.

An update on the reintroduction of the species after more than four centuries was provided at the latest park authority board meeting in Grantown.

But a farming group has called for future releases to be put on hold until the impact of the first releases in flood risk areas are known.

CNPA chief executive Grant Moir stated in his report: “The six families or pairs released at three sites in 2023/24 have moved around exploring their territories, before establishing themselves on or near the release sites.

“The comprehensive monitoring programme of cameras, patrols, sightings, reports from land managers, and river surveys is working well.

“Two potential issues were reported to the park authority and the management and mitigation plan was successfully implemented, to the satisfaction of all concerned, on both occasions.

“The flood bank survey is due to be completed by the end of September.

“Plans are nearly finalised for the September 2024 to March 2025 release season.

“Surveys, assessments and land manager liaison are underway on a potential four new release sites within the licence area.”

But a spokesperson for the Cairngorms Crofters and Farmers Community said they were disappointed not to have been consulted on the latest plans.

They said whilst aware that the licence granted up to 15 families, they had not been made aware of another imminent release.

A spokesperson for CCFC said: “We created CCFC to forge a better working relationship with the park authority and encourage better consultation on critical issues such as the beaver release.

“This is a major land management decision and can hugely impact land particularly that adjacent to the Spey and its tributaries where the risk of flooding can be high already so further potential flooding impact by beavers is unacceptable.

“We have worked hard to try to ensure the beaver management and mitigation plan was fit for purpose and while we made gains on this, we feel the urgency behind measures is nowhere near adequate and the request to have ‘no-go’ areas where high risks to food-producing and biodiverse farmland existed has not been given the importance it needs.

“We requested that farmers and crofters are represented on the beaver management group so we could give the necessary expertise on this but so far the information flow is not yet what it should be including the current frequency and content of updates on the beavers activity.

“It would appear sensible to halt future releases until these areas can be agreed and until we can really see the results of the impacts of the current releases.

“We are hopeful that the CNPA board is beginning to realise the importance of protecting productive ground protected by flood banks to ensure the future of farming in the strath.

“We look forward to more urgent dialogue on any current release programme so we might take this information back to the farming and crofting community but also feed in important practical information to the programme.”

The CCFC was formed earlier this year to improve communication between the agricultural community and the CNPA amongst other objectives.

The first beaver kits since the species reintroduction were born in the wild in the strath at the start of August.

One kit was born to a pair of beavers released onto Wildland Cairngorms Ltd land and the other kit arrived on Rothiemurchus by Aviemore.

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