Eager achiever: Frank McNally on introducing the beaver to Ireland

Irish Times

2 days ago

Not only are they cute and cuddly to look at, beavers are among the heroes of the natural world. Known for their prodigious work ethic, especially in the construction of river dams, they always bring their projects in on time, at minimal cost.
But they're not just great builders. In the era of climate change, beavers have also become recognised as ecological engineers, with a track record of helping to reduce floods, restore wetlands, and promote biodiversity in and around rivers.
So it's hardly a surprise to find that a coalition of environmentalists is working quietly to introduce the beaver to Ireland. Or preferably to
re
introduce it, although that would require proving it was ever here in the first place, which is a challenge.
Wary of the potential of new species to go forth and multiply with unforeseeable results, like grey squirrels and rhododendron, a working principle of the National Parks and Wildlife Service is 'not in the past, not in the future'.
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This doesn't mean the beaver could never be introduced on its own merits, as a first-time migrant with special skills. But it would boost the case if beaver bones or DNA were found somewhere. Failing which, even linguistic or folkloric fossils might help.
This is where Manchán Magan comes in. A member of the movement's language and folklore wing, he's been in correspondence with a benign conspiracy of ecologists on ways the beaver cause might be advanced. Hoping to broaden the net this week, he copied me into the correspondence.
A possible link between a Welsh word for beaver,
afanc
, and the Irish placename Avoca is one of the group's lines of inquiry. Another animal of interest, meanwhile, is the otter, which already exists here, but curiously is called by two different words in Irish,
onchu
and
dobarchu
.
Both occur in an old poem, translated by William Wilde (Oscar's father), about gathering up all the wild animals of Ireland. Two pairs of otters are found, described variously as 'dá onchoinn' and 'dá dhobran'.
Might one of those couples have been beavers instead? Well, onchu seems to have covered a very broad range of animal life in the past. Our old friend, the lexicographer Dinneen, tells us it meant primarily otter but was also 'variously translated [as] ounce, lynx, leopard, wolf, wolf-dog, a standard or ensign; (and figuratively) a hero, knight, or warrior.'
Further complicating the picture, Onchu is inextricably connected with a mythical Irish creature known in English as the Enfield.
Not to be confused with the town in Meath, the Enfield is like an animal designed by a committee that couldn't agree on anything. It comprises the head of a fox, claws of an eagle, chest of a greyhound, hindquarters of a wolf, and a bushy tail. Sometimes it has wings too.
You won't find the DNA of that anywhere. It exists mainly in heraldry, as a symbol of the O'Kelly clan, one of whose forebears died 'fighting like a wolf dog' at the Battle of Clontarf.
But onchu has also been translated as water-dog or sea-dog, which may be more helpful to the beaver cause. Speaking of the sea, beavers are formidable swimmers.
A Norwegian study suggested they can travel at least 15km through water, which could almost get one from Scotland to Ireland, although other studies show the species doesn't like salt water.
I reminded Manchan of a curious detail in Ernie O'Malley's War of Independence memoir On Another Man's Wound. As well as being a travelling IRA organiser, O'Malley was a bit of a naturalist. Of his manoeuvres near my hometown once, he wrote this:
'I wondered for months through the small lakes and little hills of Monaghan. I saw sieges of heron in the weeds and waited for bat-tailed otters near Carrickmacross where they are said to pass through when going from one lake to another.'
You see a lot of strange things around Carrickmacross, it's true, but bat-tailed otters I had never heard of before. And when I first Googled the term, the only reference to it anywhere was from O'Malley's book. There are now at least two references, because I then mentioned it in An Irishman's Diary, appealing for readers' enlightenment. Five years later, I'm none the wiser.
The bat-tailed otters were hardly beavers, either way, unless there was a short-lived smuggling racket in the species. But the failure to find the animal's bones or DNA anywhere in Ireland to date doesn't mean it's not there. It may just be that there are better places to look. Improved understanding of the animal's habits may help.
In this vein, as if beavers were not heroic enough already, it appears they also sometimes bury their dead, in river dams or elsewhere. So, I'm told, writes British rewilder David Gow in his book Bringing Back the Beaver (while trying harder than me to avoid anthropomorphism):
'When beaver kits die…there is even evidence that their mothers will on occasion try to bury their tiny cadavers if they can. We have no knowledge as to why…but recent footage from Switzerland demonstrates that they undertake this task with extreme care. While it may not be prompted by 'love', it is a sentient act that is moving in the extreme.'