A beaver in Perthshire. Image, Bamff.co.uk
Beavers were extirpated from Scotland by about the 16th century. Our ancestors hunted them for their pelts and for castoreum, a secretion that contains natural aspirin. They were so valuable that as soon as they had more or less wiped out the species across Europe they started on their North American cousins, founding fortunes on their furs. In fact, the vast amounts of money made by the Hudson Bay Company’s slaughter of beavers and other fur-bearers provided a significant part of the capital that funded the industrial revolution.
After a discussion that began in 1994, and a consultation in 1998 European beavers finally arrived back in Scotland in the early 2000s, by which time around 22 other European countries had already reintroduced them.
