BEAVERS ARE causing devastation to agricultural land and should instead be confined to non-food-producing areas.

Perthshire farmer Adrian Ivory, of Strathisla Farms, has decided to speak up about the damage the animals are inflicting on his land.

Mr Ivory's intervention comes as the final report from the Scottish Beaver Trial is set to be handed to the Scottish government for consideration in May.

The beavers in that trial were released in the Knapdale Forest, mid-Argyll. The beavers on Mr Ivory's farm are separate - they escaped illegally from a private collection and have flourished on the Tay, causing severe damage to land and drainage systems.

Ahead of any decisions being made on whether to fully reintroduce beavers, or give them protected status Mr Ivory wants to highlight the devastation they can cause.

He is not calling for culls, just that farmers continue to be allowed to remove dams and are able to have the animals re-homed when they are living on food-producing land. Then, they can be allowed to live on designated land.

Mr Ivory explained that if beavers continue to cause damage on his land, it could actually lead to him taking measures to remove trees: "The argument from the beaver fraternity is that they create biodiversity, which I am not disputing.

"But they create so many hassles, and in order to stop me receiving digger bills to clear dams, I would fell the trees by the riverside and that would certainly not be good for biodiversity.

"We hope the government will be like Scandanavia. They have deemed that in food producing areas beavers are an agricultural pest, while in non-food producing areas they are protected and they are meant to be there.

"As soon as they are seen as an agricultural pest they can be caught and re-homed.

"The damage they cause is unbelievable and at the end of the day I enjoy the trees, birds, bees around the river and we don't want to fell the trees and get rid of everything."

On a visit to the farm, it was clear to see the damage and Mr Ivory explained it is a chain reaction, where they fell trees to build dams which then causes river levels to rise and means drainage systems on fields no longer work and are subsequently waterlogged. As the water tries to pass the dams, the land is eroded and the land on the riverside is undermined, making it structurally unsound.

He has also witnessed dams being made from a neighbours crop and during the winter, rising water levels caused by a dam meant a river burst, flooding 400 acres of food-producing land.

The suggestion Mr Ivory has to combat the problem is to ensure these animals are not living in agricultural areas: "I would like to see land zoned and have agricultural land able to remove dams and re-home beavers.

"This whole valley is flat lying and drainage is crucial. We've seen it dammed up and the drains sitting two and a half feet below the water level, then it rains and drainage won't work. The river bank is also eroded and that is a big problem."