From the archive
1 Aug 2026
Sometime in the last few weeks, two young beavers slipped out of a lodge on Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin and into the outside world. They are the first beaver kits known to be born in Glen Affric in roughly four hundred years. Their parents cannot tell the difference, but the people watching can: wildlife cameras have already caught one kit playing alongside its mother, and Tobias Leask, Trees for Life's locally based beaver officer, has filmed the youngsters from a canoe.
The kits are the visible end of three years of groundwork. Trees for Life and Forestry and Land Scotland, which manages the 17,604-hectare national nature reserve, began the reintroduction work in 2022, with the Beaver Trust carrying out the releases and three rounds of consultation with local communities and land managers before any animal arrived. Eleven beavers in all, relocated from agricultural land in Tayside under licence from NatureScot, were released on the loch between October and February.
Beavers are nocturnal and shy, so most of what is known about how they are settling comes from camera traps and from a volunteer group Leask set up: nearly thirty local people now monitor the animals' activity and keep the wider community up to date. The project partners have measures ready for the localised trouble beavers can cause, a dammed drain or a flooded corner of ground, on the principle that problems answered quickly stay small.
The absence these kits end was made deliberately. Beavers were once widespread in Scotland but were hunted for their pelts, meat and musk oil, perhaps clinging on in small numbers until the sixteenth century; they returned to the country only in 2009. Glen Affric, often called Scotland's most beautiful glen, holds the third-largest remnant of the Caledonian forest, now reduced to less than 2 per cent of its original extent, which Trees for Life and its partners have spent more than thirty years working to restore.
A release is the easy half; the watching is the other. Put a named local officer in place and recruit a volunteer rota before any animal arrives - Trees for Life signed up nearly thirty local monitors, and weatherproof trail cameras do most of the night work on nocturnal, shy animals. Budget for the quick-response measures too: beaver problems answered early stay small.
Trees for Life · Read the source