223: Waters of Life with Tom Bowser
From Conservation and Science by Tommy's Outdoors
March 10, 2026 · 55 min
About this episode
Tom Bowser discusses the challenges and lessons learned from relocating beavers onto his family's farm in Scotland.
What happens when a farming family decides to become the first private landowner in Britain to legally relocate beavers onto their farm? How do you navigate the bureaucracy, the opposition from farming neighbours and the politics of wildlife management? And can beavers actually help a farm deal with the effects of climate change? To find answers to those questions I sat down with Tom Bowser, author of “ Waters of Life: Fighting for Scotland's Beavers ”, a book that tells the story of his journey from a self-described placid pacifist to a self-proclaimed radical fighting for beaver restoration. Tom's family has farmed at Argaty in central Scotland since 1916, running the farm with two aims: producing food sustainably and making it as good a home as possible for nature. From the 2000s, beaver escapes or unlicensed releases led to a wild beaver population in Tayside, much of it on prime arable farmland where they were often unpopular with farmers. The Scottish government gave them protected status in 2019 but also handed out lethal control licences with alarming ease. In the first year alone, one in five beavers of Scotland's tiny population was killed under licence. When Tom was…
People in this episode
Host: Tommy
Guest: Tom Bowser
Topics covered
- beaver relocation
- wildlife management
- farming
- climate change
- conservation
- community relations
Keywords
- beavers
- farming
- conservation
- wildlife
- climate change
- Scotland
- Tayside
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Scottish government
Books & works: Waters of Life: Fighting for Scotland's Beavers
Places: Argaty, Scotland, Tayside
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