A review of the first four chapters of Black Ops and Beaver Bombing; adventures with Britain’s wild mammals, by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, Oneworld, 2023
This is a fairly detailed review without, I hope, too many spoilers (although there is so much good stuff it has proved hard to resist some retelling), of the first four of the book’s eight chapters.
After an apology for any dad jokes which may follow – unnecessary for me since I love dad jokes – the book opens with a preface giving the usual kind of relentlessly depressing statistics, although even these are delivered with a light touch: “Whereas Bulgaria has half a million hectares of forest classified as ‘undisturbed by man’, Britain at almost twice the size, has a grand total of zero.” Fiona and colleagues at the Mammal Society published a review of the status of British mammals in 2018 which led to the first ever Red List for mammals, usefully reproduced in an appendix to the book. There are, we learn, 46 species in Britain, a quarter of which are under threat of extinction and a further 44% officially categorised as at risk. Our ranking in terms of “biodiversity intactness”? 189th out of 218 countries.
I have a problem with the word beaver, deriving from a puerile sense of humour (I adore Viz magazine) – sorry, but it just makes me giggle. At HART one morning I succumbed when the manager used the word, to my great embarrassment, but thankfully everyone seemed to find it amusing (my embarrassment at least). It is somewhat reassuring to read an allusion to it in this book.
A more serious problem, for some, is the presence of the wrong sort of beavers in the wrong place who will not stick to the areas we have decided they can live in. See my earlier post “All wild animals have to be culled”, and Animal Trust and Animal Wild. There is confirmation here, with much more detail and knowledge, of my writing that beavers transform landscapes for the better, improve water quality, help to prevent flooding and increase fish numbers and those of many other species. The real problem is our obsession with tidying up landscapes, straightening things out, particularly prevalent in the farming industry which seems interested only in getting water off the land as quickly as possible, never mind the consequences, and getting the farming done as easily and cheaply as they can. It is worth noting that in spite of what some anglers may tell you, beavers are herbivores – they don’t eat fish. In any case, salmon and trout, for example, have co-existed with them for millennia. It is our interventions and pollutions that screw everything up.
I have often wondered, incidentally, how it is that fish appear in such places as quarry lakes. At Tice’s Meadow Nature Reserve (see separate post), the lake teems with life. The answer, our guide told us, is that the eggs come in on vegetation attached to birds such as ducks’ legs.
Beaver bombing, the unlicensed reintroduction of beavers, is controversial. But do we have time to wait for reluctant government with all of its equivocation and red tape, do we trust them to do the job properly? Experience would suggest not.
For more on this intriguing subject, see the ever brilliant George Monbiot: Beaver bombing | Ecohustler
I am pleased to see this first chapter expressing too some righteous anger about some of the things I get angry about – the shooting industry, and government incompetence of such magnitude that it seems wilful and its mistruths, the apparently God-given and inalienable right which some anglers believe they have to practice their bizarre and sadistic hobby over the rights of others to enjoy nature, to name but a few.
Confidence in government is not bolstered by the second chapter, which is about wild boar (not really dangerous to humans and which really don’t do terribly much damage, but rather a lot of good). Fiona and team’s population review estimated the presence of 2,600 wild adults in Britain. The governments of England, Scotland and Wales declared that they simply didn’t exist – if anything they were feral pigs. This was essentially a means to avoid dealing with the ‘problem’. Moreover, defining them in that way means that they are afforded no legal protection. Domestic pigs and wild boar belong to the same species and there are complexities to the matter brought about by generations of breeding between the two, deliberately or accidentally largely as a result of human action, nevertheless, essentially, a wild boar is a wild boar. The wretched Forestry Commission gets short shrift in this chapter too, along with DEFRA (DEATHRA) and the National (Dis)Trust. Boar can certainly make the place untidy, but untidiness in the countryside is precisely what we need. They too, like beavers, are creators of rich bioscapes. There’s an interesting aside – vast carpets of bluebells are not a sign of a forest in good health, there’s a monoculture because everything else is either eradicated or diminished.
Chapter Three concerns pine martens, continuing the slew of delightfully bad puns even in its title. It opens with the true story of one of them who, fitted with a radio collar, was relocated in mid-Wales as part of a hugely necessary reintroduction programme (the book is very far from being all gloom and doom, there are success stories too), whence she headed to the coast. She was next seen in Savannah, Georgia, having made her way there independently, presumably on a container ship. I love the authors’ iconoclasm – there is mention of an “interminable” poem in an earlier chapter and here a “godawful sonnet” by Coleridge – some of them most certainly are. For some reason this feeble couplet from his poem ‘Christabel’ has always stuck in my mind: “Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch”. Must have been the opium.
Stone martens, meanwhile, known for their habit of chewing through vital car lines, to the extent that, in Germany, there’s a special insurance policy, have been responsible for bringing the Large Hadron Collider to a halt, twice. The authors have a wonderful knack of throwing in amazing apparently unrelated facts. Such as that there are two species of African elephant. What now? I have read a large number of books about elephants but this has never sunk in before. Forest and savanna – not just different habitats but different species. Also included is a great story about George Best (I met him once outside Fulham’s football ground – he was very drunk but utterly charming), in a hotel bed with Miss World and with his casino winnings scattered all over the floor. A bellboy entered: “Ah George, where did it all go wrong?” I am the opposite of a football fan but watching him, I see poetry in motion. That story in turn reminds me of my eldest daughter coming home from school. “Dad, I got 59 out of 60 in my maths test!” “What went wrong Naya?” She wasn’t amused.
I absolutely love this book.
The fourth chapter is about water voles and (therefore) American minks. The latter is classed as an invasive species, a topic I wrestle with on an almost daily basis. An article by Vince Lea in the latest issue of British Wildlife, Volume 35, number 5, April 2024, deals precisely with one of the mink eradication programmes referred to in the book which has been successfully taking place in East Anglia. Following a previous article about methodology and strategy, this is mostly about the results. As one would expect in this magazine, it’s all about unsentimental science, but I would prefer at least some acknowledgement that this presents a moral and ethical dilemma and is by no means a clear-cut issue. All of this, like any programme of reintroduction or eradication is extremely complex. Our authors here at least, whilst acknowledging the necessity of the removal of minks if we are to have water voles, concede that it is a “hideous business”.
The Waterside Recovery Trust’s website WRT FAQs – Waterlife Recovery Trust gives a great deal of information, but you have to go pretty much right to the end of the FAQs to determine the means of dispatch – the answer is by air gun. Grim, but better than an existence on a mink farm and death by gassing or oral or anal electrocution (https://www.animalaid.org.uk/). I continue to find the whole business extremely problematic to say the least. Our authors point out that water vole population decline (which has been catastrophic) is not wholly down to the minks. There are also all the usual suspects: habitat loss, atrocious and mind-blowingly stupid river ‘management’ – the pond refuges which used to provide refuges for the voles have all but gone, farming practices and so on. We are also reminded that the existence of minks in this country is entirely a result of human greed – fur farms going back as far as the 1920s from which there have been many escapes and deliberate releases are the cause (and it’s not at all to do with irresponsible animal rights activists as some would have you believe).
What troubles me in particular is that water voles are undeniably cute. I happen to think minks are rather beautiful too. Minks predate in other ways of course, but I do wonder if we would be going to quite so much trouble if the vole was an unappealing animal or if they were a species of rat, which for many years in various parts of the world they were thought to be. I do also wonder if leaving out food in mink traps laced with come contraceptive substance might be a kinder solution, but no doubt that would be highly complex and raise all sorts of issues of its own, if it would be possible at all.
A happier piece of news is that, although there is not yet enough evidence to be certain, minks are far less likely to thrive if there is a healthy otter population.
I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book and will review the remaining chapters soon.
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