In early 2002, Paul and Louise Ramsay released a pair of beavers into a drainage ditch on their family estate in northeastern Perthshire, Scotland. The estate had been in the Ramsay family since 1232, when King Alexander II granted the land to an ancestor. The beavers, a species extinct in Britain for nearly 400 years, were released without government permission.

The first two animals died within months. One was struck by a falling tree; the other died from a parasite carried by sheep grazing nearby. Scottish authorities charged Paul Ramsay with introducing an inappropriate animal, though the charges were later dropped. The Ramsays then obtained beavers from a conservationist in Devon and released them in July 2002.

By 2003, the beavers had built their first dam. From that small beginning, the population grew, and the landscape began to change in ways the family had not anticipated. By 2020, the estate held roughly 60 beaver dams, and the drainage ditch had become a functioning wetland again.

The beavers had once been common across Britain. They were hunted to extinction by the 1600s for fur, meat, and castoreum, a glandular secretion used by perfumers. In the centuries that followed, much of the British landscape was drained and given over to sheep farming. Wetlands, which scientists describe as the kidneys of the landscape, declined sharply. Since 1900, nearly two-thirds of the world’s wetlands have been lost.

When the Ramsays took over Bamff in the early 1980s, the estate was a working farm of about 530 hectares, with barley, cattle, and sheep. Paul Ramsay had read European research on using beavers to restore damaged wetland systems. He proposed the idea to his wife, and she agreed.

Their early attempts were unsuccessful, but the second pair of beavers, of Polish and Russian stock, settled in. The first dam was small, only about 30 centimeters wide and 7 centimeters high. It grew as the beavers expanded their work, eventually becoming a substantial structure. Beavers coppice trees rather than destroy forests, cutting young willow or aspen and allowing new shoots to regrow, and the estate now carries more native woodland than when the project began.

The effects of the beavers’ presence have been documented by researchers from the University of Stirling. In 2017, a study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that plant species richness per plot had increased by 46 percent, cumulative species recorded were up 148 percent, and habitat variation had increased by 71 percent. Follow-up studies found more beetles and plant species, and a 2025 pollinator study recorded 45 percent more butterflies and 119 percent more hoverflies in the beaver wetlands compared with nearby artificial ponds. Research from the University of Exeter found that beaver dams reduce flood peaks by roughly 60 percent while releasing stored water slowly during dry periods.

The recovery of the estate was further demonstrated when Storm Arwen hit eastern Scotland in November 2021 with gusts up to 189 kilometers per hour. Conifer plantations across Perthshire suffered heavy damage, while the native oak, birch, and Scots pine planted at Bamff in 1992 largely survived.

The decision to remove the sheep came after a visit from writer George Monbiot, who asked what the family was doing with the fields beyond the beaver ponds. In December 2020, the Ramsays removed all sheep from 12 fields, roughly 450 acres. The animals were sold to neighboring estates rather than slaughtered. Internal fencing was removed, and the area was named Bamff Wildland.

The land now supports Luing cross cattle, Tamworth pigs, and Exmoor ponies, breeds selected for their closer resemblance to the wild animals that once shaped the British landscape. The cattle stand in for the aurochs, the wild ox extinct since 1627, while the ponies occupy a niche similar to the tarpan, a wild horse that survived into the early 20th century.

In 2022, the family installed osprey nesting platforms. The following spring, a pair of ospreys found the platforms, and in July 2024, the first osprey chick in modern memory was raised on the land. Ospreys had been extinct as a breeding species in Scotland since 1916, though they have been recolonizing the country since the 1950s.

The family has also planted native trees, dug small ponds, and removed invasive rhododendron. In February 2025, they removed about 4,750 meters of internal fencing with funding from Scotland’s Nature Restoration Fund. In May 2025, Bamff became one of the first pilot estates in Scotland’s new framework for other effective area-based conservation measures, which recognizes private working land that supports ecological recovery.

The beaver reintroduction has not been without controversy. Beavers became a protected species in Scotland in May 2019, and the wild population in the Tayside region has grown substantially, causing flooding and damage on some working farms. In 2019, 87 beavers were shot under license, and 115 were shot in 2020. Conservation groups have argued for translocation over killing. The Ramsays’ estate has been suggested as a possible source of the wild Tayside population, but the family says there is no way to know with certainty.

Researchers at the University of Stirling monitored the Bamff wetland for 12 years and published their findings in 2017. The family now runs the reserve with income from ecotourism, including yurts, cabins, and guided beaver walks. A crowdfunding campaign in 2021 raised more than 40,000 pounds from 461 donors.

Sophie Ramsay, Paul and Louise’s daughter, now leads the restoration project with her mother. Sophie’s daughter, Flora, born in 2019, is the 30th generation of the family to grow up on the land, and the first who has never seen sheep on the estate. Sophie has said the family believes in actively restoring the land rather than simply conserving it as it is.