Ecosystem Engineers

Welcoming Back Our Beavers

Adam Ramsay explores the crucial role that beavers’ natural dam-building behaviour plays in the natural world – and how and why his parents helped to reintroduce them in Scotland

My siblings and I used to build dams in a burn a short walk from the house. We’d use rocks and sticks to slow the flow and, sometimes, the level would briefly rise from ankle-deep to knee-deep. If I tried to stand in the same place now, I’d be out of my depth.

Just downstream from where our ramshackle barrages were, the professionals have moved in and built a neat structure from tree trunks and turf. It’s about two metres high and 20 metres wide, and holds back a long, deep pond, where, at dusk, you can watch the trout rise and the bats dive to feed on a zigzagging thicket of burgeoning insect life. And, if you’re lucky, the beavers themselves will slip into view.

This is just one of many dams that have been built on my parents’ land in rural Perthshire, which have transformed it since my childhood from a low-productivity upland farm criss-crossed with drainage ditches, into a rich, biodiverse wetland – a haven for birds, mammals, fish, and amphibians.

My Dad has had a strong interest in what we now call ‘rewilding’ ever since the 1980s.