Beavers in Bamff, Perthshire in Scotland

Bamff is a private beaver collection in Perthshire, Scotland. Wood was on the menu but had the beavers slipped out the back door and eluded us?

                                        A Beaver landscaped dam at Bamff in Scotland.

A group of 15 unwitting students made the thousand mile or more round trip to Scotland with the promise of observing the recently introduced European beaver (Castor fiber) in a place called Bamff on the outskirts of Perth, Scotland. Hunted to near extinction in Europe for their meat, fur and scent glands, the beaver was once a widespread species. It is well known of the beaver, that they are regarded as a keystone species meaning they have the ability to modify an ecosystem for the benefit of other species. Our studies are looking into the effects of beaver on carbon storage and biodiversity as a part of a long term scoping study to asses for suitability of introducing beaver to Welsh rivers. 

We arrived at the beaver site not knowing what to expect but had a promise of beaver activity, so off we went to survey the site and look for our first beaver dam. 

Site 1

A wetland created by a beaver dam across a small stream. Beavers will only dam a river less than 70 cm deep to keep their lodge entrances submerged, movement range and increase food availability and storage. 

Site one, pictured left is the waterlogged area, Juncus dominated with several Salix stumps, fallen victim to the elusive beavers. Th macroinvertebrate fauna at the first beaver pond consisted of 20 unidentified pea mussels and 10 unidentified freahwater snails

Scotland, we prepared well for cold and wet weather and were not disappointed. Snow persisted for a short time, followed by small hailstones. However, we were there to do a job and that is what we did. At site one, the group split neatly into three smaller groups and took soil, water, vegetation and gas samples from of waterlogged, "moderately damp" and dry “upland” areas of the land beside the pool.  We also cracked through the 1cm thick ice covering the pond surface to take water samples. The temptation to sample of macroinvertebrate diversity finally overcome me and found myself with waders on sifting through the pond macrophytes for invertebrates. Site one, three and four were sampled for invertebrates to compare the effects beaver activity on aquatic invertebrate diversity.

Site 2 

Location of second Beaver Dam

We moved onto site two and found another larger dam and named this site two! After spending site one submerged in the waterlogged soil, our team samples the "damp" area which offered some welcome restbite. 

Site 3 

Dammed agricultural ditch with a metal casing surrounding a pipe inflow to protect it from beaver inference. The pipe ensure that the drainage ditch doesn't flood by diverting it through the beaver dam in the foreground. 

The ditch was abundant with macroinvertebrates, Daphnia being the most frequent with number in the 1000's, Ephemeroptera (unidentified mayfly larvae) reached about 100 as did Hemiptera (Waterboatman)

Site 4 
The river downstream of the beaver dam. This would have been view of the beaver site if no beaver had been introduced, a stream at the bottom of grazing pasture. Quite a contrast to the above pictures!

The macroinvertebrate population in this stream was dominated by freshwater shrimp: Decapoda, probably of the genus Gammarus. 19 invertebrates were counted in total