As someone who as spent considerable time in America I well know know of the problems caused by beavers, writes Julian Taylor.
They can easily gnaw down a tree and do so to make themselves dams over streams and often get the water so high that over the banks it goes causing no little havoc.
In this country there are many rivers next to canals and in fact rivers are often used as part of a canal, and also act as a feed. And then there are the reservoirs.
It is obvious that in the urge to diversify the people behind the urge to introduce beavers have little knowledge of the way they will spread and the damage they will do, so I shall inform them by quoting an authority:
‘Beaver problems primarily involve flooding from dams, damaging valuable trees and woodlands and creating safety hazards by burrowing into banks, which can destabilize them or damage infrastructure like roads and culverts. These issues often arise from their instinct to build dams and fell trees, creating conflict with landowners and farmers, though their dams also provide ecological benefits like wetland creation and flood control’.
It is obvious that the beavers will take to the canal banks for burrowing thus causing damage and even a breach that the authorities will find difficult to repair through lack of finance.
This is a clear case of ‘leave well alone’ – and the beavers where they are, out of harm’s way.