Current status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 9 January 2017
To ask the Scottish Government what action is being taken to catalogue and measure biodiversity changes resulting from the spread of beaver populations.
A range of detailed studies were undertaken at Knapdale, Argyll as part of the Scottish Beaver Trial. Monitoring took place from 2009-2014, and reporting was concluded in 2015. The independent monitoring programme was coordinated by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and involved a number of partner organisations. Beaver interactions with species and habitats, such as aquatic macrophytes, woodland habitat (including Atlantic hazel woodland), river habitat, otter, fish, and odonata were monitored. Individual monitoring reports can be found at www.snh.gov.uk/beavers-in-scotland and a summary is provided in the SNH ‘Beavers in Scotland’ report published in 2015.
Measures of biodiversity change have not been monitored in the Tayside area to any significant extent at the catchment scale, partly because the presence of beavers there was unplanned and limited baseline information is available.