Black Ops and Beaver Bombing by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall

  

Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall

Published by One World Books, this edition published 2024

This is an interesting book about Britain’s wild mammals and their present state, which for most of them seems to be, in a bad way and in need of help. The question is, how bad and what is the best way to help.

The red list was created as a way of showing how bad a state nature is in, everything is studied by a set of criteria and their status shown accordingly. The author, Fiona Mathews was part of but even she can see problems with them.

First there is the question of numbers, before you can say an animal is endangered,you need to know how many there are and how that number are distributed, that needs observation. Some come under the category of insufficient data, meaning they don’t know how many there are or where, it could be that there are none left or they are just good at hiding from the ones who are trying to count them.

Then there is the question of, are they native or introduced and if introduced when. Rabbits were introduced by the Romans, so they have been here long enough to be considered naturalised. I can’t imagine anyone suggesting a cull of rabbits, though, but then again, I don’t think anyone is trying to save them either.

Also, if animals became extinct before 1500 then there is little chance of them being reintroduced. 1500 does seem a bit of an arbitrary date, but that is the way it seems to be and it does exclude Lynx who became extinct about 1,500 years ago. Wolves are a different question, they became extinct in England round about the year 1500, but if you are considering the whole of Britain, they became extinct in Scotland in 1743, so there could be a case made for their reintroduction,especially as they tend to avoid people rather than see them as dinner. Of course, they are apex predators and that can make them unpopular, though they do prevent areas from being overgrazed and can encourage biodiversity.

Beavers became extinct in Britain in the 16^th or 17^th century, everyone wore hats and they had to be beaver skin. They are being reintroduced because Beavers are good at shaping the environment and making it more resilient to floods, draught and wild fires and much cheaper than getting engineers in to do the same job. They will put a wiggle into any river, and improve the areas biodiversity at the same time. Not everyone is a fan, anglers worry that they will eat the fish and make the rivers less friendly for the fish. Beavers are herbivores, they don’t eat fish, what they do do is make slow moving areas of water at least one meter deep which would be a safe place for fish and the insects which the fish eat.

It is an interesting book, it highlights the problems which many of our mammals are experiencing, we are one of the countries lowest on a list of biodiversity, not the bottom, but not far off, basically, could do better and admitting the problem is the first step to resolving it.