13th February 2025
Dear Mr Swinney,

In relation to your statement regarding lynx reported in the BBC News, we note the
following statement:

“John Swinney said there needed to be a “considered discussion” around reintroducing
species, pointing out that the beaver population in Perthshire was now “formidably more
comprehensive than it was at the beginning”. He said he had witnessed “very directly and
dramatically” the impact of beavers on flood prevention measures in his own constituency.”

What we understand you to mean by this is that beavers have burrowed into certain flood
banks on Strathmore farms. These flood banks have failed in storms or high water events
leading to the flooding of fields and these breaches have been routinely blamed on beavers
whenever possible.

However, you may not be aware that hydrological experts from Dundee and Stirling
Universities investigated 228 breaches of flood banks on the Tay system which happened
between 1990 and 1998 – before any beavers returned to Scotland. This demonstrates that
the failure of flood banks is not a recent issue – and in fact looking at historical sources they
have failed periodically since their erection in the 18th century.

Clearly, the failure of flood banks over such a long period of time shows that the flood banks
are poorly sited and constructed. Flood banks situated on the banks of a river do not leave
any room for the river to naturally expand in times of high water, and overtopping of the
banks is known to be a common cause of a flood bank to fail – and a lack of stabilising
vegetation on the bank will only exacerbate the issue of an unnatural and unstable bank.
While in some cases beaver burrows may have been the critical factor in the collapse of a
flood bank, they are obviously only one of the many reasons for flood bank failure. Beavers,
because they only build burrows on the river bank with their entrances under water, are
really highlighting that the flood bank is too close to the river. I attach to this email a copy of the NatureScot report “Mitigation options for reducing beaver burrowing impacts on agricultural land in the River Isla Catchment, Scotland” published in 2022, and also direct you to the blog we published in August 2024:

Mitigation-options-for-reducing-beaver-burrowing-impacts-on-agricultural-land-1.pdf

https://www.scottishwildbeavers.org.uk/blame-climate-not-castor/

You describe these flood banks as “flood prevention measures” which implies that their
integrity is important to voters for the protection of their homes. In fact, the opposite is the
case. These flood banks were designed and constructed to protect fields on floodplains
from inundation by the river expanding in times of high water such as storms or heavy rain –
not to protect any towns from flooding. Their construction channelled water faster
downstream and led to significant removal of sediment from the Isla/Ericht area that was
deposited at the mouth of the Tay (noted in the 1790s by a local minister). Therefore, the
flood banks you have visited do not prevent flooding of people’s homes and were never
designed to do so. By forcing the water faster downstream away from natural storage areas,
they are actually more likely to cause flooding by overwhelming flood prevention measures
in downstream towns and cities, such as Perth, and indeed the historic flood-vulnerable
status of Perth is well known to be exacerbated by the presence of these flood banks. This
was discussed in the House of Lords in 1993. (See Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish:
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1993/jan/28/perthshire-floods )

In summary, the direct and dramatic impact of the flood bank failure that you have
witnessed was not an impact on flood prevention measures for the benefit of the local
community, it was a direct impact on the landowner growing crops on a former floodplain
which relies on the flood bank keeping the river from using the natural flood storage area.

While this is a historic situation which we have all inherited, we expect our local MSP and
First Minister to listen to all his voters, rather than just the relatively small but powerful and
vocal agricultural sector. Scotland’s wildlife is important to the people of Scotland and
outdated zoophobic attitudes will not persuade the hundreds of thousands of members of
eNGOs in Scotland to vote SNP in future, nor the general public who have largely positive
attitudes towards beavers. To use beaver reintroduction on a misleading pretext as a reason
to reinforce your decision to halt lynx reintroduction is very poor judgement and will
alienate yourself from the majority of the public that support the beaver reintroduction and
the subsequent benefits the whole population enjoys from their (cheap) and natural water
management. Last year, in a survey by independent research agency Survation, nearly three
quarters of Scotland’s people not only support the beavers but want more beaver
reintroductions across Scotland.

Here is a link to the press release of this survey:
https://www.rewild.scot/news/21/44/Three-quarters-of-Scots-want-more-beaver-reintroduc
tions-but-government-agencies-go-slow-despite-beaver-deaths#:~:text=Three%2Dquarters%
20of%20Scots%20want,land%20where%20beavers%20could%20live.

There is a huge amount of scientific evidence that shows, far from causing flooding beavers
prevent downstream flooding. Their dams hold back the water, slowly filtering it into the
river system and preventing the water from rushing downstream at the same time – the
benefit for humans being that this removes the peak flow of the high water and it is the
peak flow that often overcomes the flood barriers in downstream towns and cities. In a time
when climate change is bringing more frequent and severe high rainfall events around the
year, the beavers can help us prevent downstream flooding – carrying it out more efficiently
than humans and at little or no cost. This is in addition to the scientific evidence showing the
beaver dams filter many of the pollutants resulting from agricultural run-off into the
watercourses and impact our water quality.

No-one is suggesting that all the floodplain high value agricultural land is given to the
beavers, but some strategic small floodplain storage areas managed by our beavers would
produce benefits in terms of natural floodplain and at the same time benefit biodiversity
which desperately needs the return of small natural wetlands to the landscape. Even
farmers can benefit from this because a beaver dam can be a useful source of water in times
of drought! There is room in our landscape for flood storage areas in marginal low value
areas while still producing food in areas away from our watercourses, and Brexit has
provided an opportunity to reward farmers for providing public goods such as flood plain
storage within the subsidy system. I have attached to this email a peer-reviewed scientific
paper published in 2020 “Ecosystem services provided by beavers Castor spp.” that gives
more information on beaver ecosystem services and quantifies some of the benefits.

Perth and Kinross Council are holding an informative drop-in gathering at Perth Museum on
the 15th March 2025 which aims to raise awareness of flooding and explore solutions to
water safety, climate and environmental factors. SWBG have been asked to hold a stall
showcasing the role that beavers can provide and we would welcome the chance to chat
further with you on this topic, should you be able to attend.

Kind regards,

Jean Oudney
Secretary and trustee,
Scottish Wild Beaver Group