Environment

Four areas of eastern Scotland remain at the highest level of SEPA’s water-scarcity system despite the return of rain, with 136 abstraction licences temporarily restricted and one Fife river gauge having recorded its second-lowest flow in six decades. Rain has returned to Scotland, rivers

Scotland is deliberately expanding its beaver population into new Highland catchments while continuing to remove animals from farmland and other conflict sites. NatureScot’s latest figures record 84 beavers removed in a year, 35 released elsewhere in Scotland and 22 killed under licence. Thirty-five beavers