Dusk is slipping in quietly as I sit at the edge of a still pond on the Argaty estate, beside rewilding advocate and author Tom Bowser.
The spring air is still warm. Birdsong drifts peacefully from the trees, growing softer as the light fades.
Before us lies a fortress of sticks and mud – an immense dam built by beavers, holding back a total of 2.5 million litres of water.
A handful of birch trees rise from the water like half-forgotten sculptures, their bases long since claimed by the ever-expanding pond. The scene is hushed, peaceful. But we’re waiting for movement.
“There they are,” Tom whispers.
Ripples bloom on the surface. A rounded brown head breaks the water. Then another.
The beavers are out – slipping through the shadows in search of food. One vanishes momentarily, only to reappear moments later with a mouth full of aquatic vegetation.
Then another lumbers from the water, climbing the bank to search for food, before splashing quietly back into the pond. It’s hard not to be mesmerised by their quiet purpose.
“You think these have come from areas where family members have been caged or shot,” Tom says, his voice low.
“It’s humbling. People struggle to accept them – and yet they know we’re here and accept us.”
This intimate encounter with Scotland’s most ambitious ecological engineers isn’t a coincidence.
It’s part of a much larger story, one that Tom tells in his new book Waters of Life.
The deeply personal book offers a passionate account of how Tayside beavers, which were facing a death sentence, were first relocated to his family farm in November 2021.
Tom tells of his attempts to save these animals, of the support and opposition received and of the “unimaginable gains” that beavers have brought to his home.
And yet controversies continue to surround this ongoing Scottish conservation battle.
How did beavers end up on Argaty estate?
In a sit-down interview, the 41-year-old father of two explains how Argaty’s beaver journey began, as many transformative stories do, with a quiet conversation.
“It was January 2020,” Tom recalls, “when James Nairne, a trustee of the Scottish Wild Beaver Group, came down to visit. He said he had something important to ask.”
As they watched red kites soaring to their winter roost, the visitor to the 1400-acre estate, where the Bowser family have been farming since 1916, got to the point: would the Bowser family consider rehoming beavers?
The rodents in question were living wild on farmland in Tayside and faced a stark choice: be relocated – or be shot.
Beavers had been wiped out in Scotland by the 1600s, victims of the fur and meat trade and the demand for castoreum, a scent-producing secretion once prized for use in perfumes and medicine.
But in 2001, a group of captive beavers escaped from a wildlife park near Comrie.
Their unsanctioned return into the River Tay system would trigger decades of conflict.
By 2006, beavers had become impossible to ignore.
They were felling ornamental trees at a fishery near the junction of the rivers Tay and Earn.
Without protected status, many were shot legally. When protection finally came in 2019, it was limited. Licences to kill, issued by NatureScot, were still easily available. That year, one in five of Scotland’s estimated 450 beavers was shot under licence.
“I think people expected protection to mean protection,” Tom says. “But it didn’t.”
What government policy didn’t allow was the translocation of beavers from conflict areas to safer habitats. That changed in late 2019, after significant pressure from conservationists.
Suddenly, it became possible for landowners near existing beaver populations to apply for licences to rehome the animals.
James Nairne, map in hand, realised Argaty might be ideal.
Giving beavers a chance at Argaty
The Argaty estate, tucked into the Braes of Doune, near Stirling, was already home to the successful Red Kites project.
That’s a wildlife tourism initiative Tom’s parents began in 2003. Beavers were never part of the plan – but they were already just five miles away.
“I thought, they’re coming anyway,” says Tom. “Better to make a place for them.”
It wasn’t an easy decision. While conservation groups offered strong support, some neighbours were less enthusiastic.
Five local farmers formally objected, fearing damage to their land. Representatives from the National Farmers Union were openly hostile. One even posed as a local farmer then later accused Argaty of impropriety, Tom recalls.
“It got really toxic,” Tom admits. “But we also had hundreds of people write in support – schools, community groups, ecologists, even celebrities.”
Despite the opposition, Argaty became Scotland’s first private estate to legally host a beaver reintroduction.
In November 2021, the first family was relocated from Tayside.
A second family – the one we are watching now during my visit – followed in February 2022.
In total, Tom says they have released 20 beavers on to their land.
What Tom and his team found was that the beavers did exactly what centuries of evolution had taught them to do: build, shape, and enrich the land.
What landscape impact have beavers had?
The pond where we sit was once a dug-out peat bog. A tiny outflow burn trickled away from it, causing issues on the farm during storms by eroding tracks.
The beavers blocked that burn with a dam. Now, the area holds an extra million litres of water, like a sponge, slowing floodwaters and offering resilience in summer droughts.
“It’s amazing,” Tom says. “In dry spells, this whole place becomes an oasis.”
There have been other benefits too. Ongoing research by Stirling University is showing how beaver wetlands improve water quality, boost insect and fish populations, and enhance biodiversity.
Even the chewed-up trees aren’t a loss – species like birch and rowan quickly coppice back, greener and lusher than before.
And the risks?
“Honestly, not much,” says Tom. “Sometimes we’ll wrap a heritage tree in wire to protect it. That’s about it.”
The evidence so far, Tom says, suggests that beavers, aren’t a plague – they’re precise engineers. They rarely travel more than 20 metres from water, regulate their own populations, and will only build dams if conditions demand it.
When food runs out, they move on, giving the ecosystem time to recover. They’re not the problem. In many ways, they’re a solution, he says.
Political waters
Yet, Scotland’s beavers remain at the centre of a political storm.
Just weeks before my visit, NatureScot delayed a long-planned, community-backed reintroduction to Glen Affric, citing “local concerns.”
The proposal had followed years of consultation and had majority support – but it was paused anyway.
Tom is furious.
“It’s cowardly stalling,” he says. “What more consultation could there possibly be?”
He believes NatureScot, and the government, have become too afraid of rural backlash – especially from lobby groups representing landowners and farmers.
Still, Tom sees beavers as a way forward. “Farming relies on a healthy environment,” he says. “Beavers help create that. They reduce floods, store water, support wildlife. We should be working together – farming and conservation – to make room for them.”
NatureScot told The Courier it is “absolutely committed to expanding the beaver population across Scotland for the benefit of biodiversity”, in line with Scotland’s Beaver Strategy.
A spokesperson said: “A huge amount of work has been taking place to ensure this, and a lot of progress has been made…We understand that there may be frustration around the timeframe for this licencing decision, but with proposals such as this we have to ensure the best chance of success for wildlife living alongside the people and communities most affected.”
Why did Tom Bowser write the book?
Tom said one of the reasons he wrote the book is so that his kids understand what he did and why. But he also wrote it to “help make things better for beavers.”
The book tells the history of beavers in Scotland, their unsanctioned return, and the long road to public acceptance via often bitter opposition. But it’s not just about beavers – it’s about us.
“There’s a moment in the book,” Tom says, “where I remember thinking: we’ve struggled so hard to accept them. And yet they just accept us. They carry on, even in the face of hostility. We can learn so much from them.”
Back at the pond, the beavers are still at work. One drags a branch into the water. Another slips silently beneath the surface, leaving only a ripple.
Tom smiles, watching them. He explains that they build dams, when they need to, to create water way so that they can swim safely underwater to get food.
They are pre-programmed to think that they are still being predated by animals like wolves and lynx which no longer roam our landscapes.
“I love the kites,” he says. “But beavers? Beavers do things only humans can do – and better than us. They’re the most important animal in Britain. We need them more than anything right now.”
Continuing controversies
As the light fades to dark, it’s hard to disagree. In a time of climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and political paralysis, the beavers of Argaty offer proof that healing the land is still possible – if we make room for the right kind of wild.
Yet it’s a debate that continues to prove controversial.
To date Argaty is Scotland’s only private site to have legally reintroduced beavers to the wild. The RSPB have since relocated beavers to their Loch Lomond reserve, and Forestry and Land Scotland started relocating at the Trossachs.
But the “big one”, Tom says, was their reintroduction to the Cairngorms National Park in December 2023.
“Moving them to a new catchment is big progress given that two years previously you couldn’t move them within Scotland at all,” he adds.
Tom Bowser is author of A Sky Full of Kites: A Rewilding Story and the Waters of Life: Fighting for Scotland’s Beavers, which was published on May 1.
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