Beavers create suitable habitat for water voles in Scottish woodlands

Beavers reintroduced into a Scottish rainforest 15 years ago may have created the right habitat for the area’s endangered waterfowl to thrive.

The flowers, once abundant in Scotland but now one of the country’s most threatened native animals, can thrive in the “complex boundary between water and land” that beavers have created at Knapdale in Argyll and Bute since their reintroduction there in 2009 .

The construction of beaver dams in the forest has led to the creation of new habitat along the banks of watercourses, where water eddies can excavate burrows hidden from predatory minks.

John Taylor, western region wildlife manager for Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), which manages Knapdale Forest, said: “Apart from flooding in some places, the biggest impact we’ve seen from beavers is the creation of a habitat of new along water courses. They have grown what we call edge habitat: instead of a sharp change from water to land, edges along burns and lakes soften and flood seasonally.

“This more complex boundary between water and land can be great for the waters.”

He added: “One of the main predators of moorhens is the mink. If you have a very plain burn or lake, it’s easy for mink to find water mink dens – and female mink are small enough to fit inside. Knapdale’s beavers have blurred the lines between water and land, meaning more places for water voles to hide and hopefully thrive.

Pete Creech, a wildlife ranger at the Heart of Argyll Wildlife Organisation, which is working with FLS on the initial phase of reintroducing the waters, said beavers were better engineers than humans when it came to creating wetlands.

“Human creation of wetlands is an extremely expensive enterprise and, frankly, we’re not as good as beavers.” He added that water voles were themselves “eco-engineers” that could create conditions for wildflowers to flourish.

“Water seals and beavers are complementary species and, in their own way, seals are just as busy eco-engineers as their larger cousins. Their scavenging of seeds and grasses provides space for a greater variety of wildflowers, while their digging moves soil nutrients to the surface, increasing their availability for plant growth.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in the 16th century before being reintroduced.