counting coots

Stand by - it's a rant!

Natural England (a fresh story on the radio and the papers today - who says that I'm not topical?) have given the green light for the introduction of Beavers into the countryside. Whats the fucking point? I can understand reintroducing species that have recently been pushed out or extending a helping hand to those that are on the edge, but why bother bringing back something that hasn't had a place in our country for hundreds of years? No old folks are sitting back in a rocking chair bemoaning the fact that 'in my day, this were all beavers - and now look at it'. Nobody looks over a reserve that is being developed and thinks 'I know exactly what we need to maintain the water levels here - Beavers!"Nobody can remember what they were like and the habitat will have changed in that period.

It just strikes me as a nothing more than vanity project, when the money could be much better spent on a whole host of projects (maybe chucking Buglife some money - they do a lot more to promote biodiversity). Now this may be controversial, but conservation groups need to realise that to have maximum effect, they need to keep the shooting lobby, landowners, farmers and the like on-side as much as possible as many of our aims are much the same. Bringing in some big old gap-toothed tree munching flappy tailed mammal into the equation is just going to annoy the shit out of everyone, for no gain in biodiversity. Stupid.

Have a rubbish picture I took of what might be a beaver.