Beavers Return to Loch Ness Catchment as Dormice Numbers Turn a Corner

A family of six beavers has been released into the Loch Ness catchment at the Dundreggan estate in Glenmoriston, Scotland — the hardest news fact in this week's Guardian "Week in wildlife" gallery, published Friday 13 November at 09.00 CET by picture editor Joanna Ruck. Fifteen more beaver families will follow, reintroduced to nearby waterways over the next few years, according to the caption accompanying Jane Barlow's photograph for PA.

That is a concrete conservation commitment with a number attached. It is also the only reintroduction figure in the set, and the gallery offers no detail on who is funding the programme or monitoring its outcomes — readers wanting those answers will have to look beyond the captions.

What does the week's other data point say?

The second hard statistic belongs to the hazel dormouse. Since 2000, hazel dormice have suffered declines of 59% in the UK, the caption to Clare Pengelly's photograph for PTES/PA states. The same caption reports an upturn in numbers over the past few years, which it says "offers cautious optimism for the rare species". Note the wording: an upturn, not a recovery, and cautious optimism, not good news — a distinction the headline's "good news for dormice" smooths over.

Which images made the cut?

The 16-frame gallery ranges across four continents:

• A robin perched among holly berries at RSPB Loch Leven nature reserve, Kinross, Scotland, photographed by Ken Jack for Getty Images.
• Hippopotamuses wallowing in a pond at Serengeti national park, northern Tanzania, by Gent Shkullaku.
• A group of ashy woodswallows on a power line at Pobitora wildlife sanctuary, Assam, India, by Anuwar Hazarika.
• Maasai giraffes running with zebra and wildebeest at Serengeti, again by Shkullaku.
• A large swarm of bees flying from car to car in Auckland, New Zealand, by Shannon Grange. Experts say an unusually large bee-swarming season has been exacerbated by mild weather during the winter just gone.
• Pheasants in foggy weather near Knutsford, Cheshire, by Christopher Furlong.
• A sika deer wandering through a shopping mall in Nara, Japan, by Guy Bell. The deer hold special status in the city as believed messengers of the shinto gods and roam almost anywhere.
• A peacock walking past Polish honour guard soldiers before the informal meeting of foreign ministers of the Council of the Baltic Sea States and Ukraine in Warsaw, by Sergei Gapon.
• A mute swan reflected in a boating lake at Abington Park, Northampton, by Joe Giddens.
• A white-throated kingfisher perched on an egret statue at Tsing Yi park in Hong Kong, by James Modesto.
• A wild goat scrambling down a cliff face in Erzurum, Turkey, by Muhammed Onur Yavruturk.
• An African migrant butterfly — also known as a pioneer white — and a caterpillar on a dried plant stem in the Tigris valley, Diyarbakir, Turkey, by Bestami Bodruk. The species lays its eggs on caper leaves, which feed the caterpillars after hatching.
• An Indian one-horned rhinoceros grazing at Pobitora, Assam, by Anuwar Hazarika.

What holds the set together?

Two threads run through the gallery: species under pressure, and species living unperturbed alongside humans. The dormice statistic and the Auckland bee swarm sit on one side — both shaped by weather and habitat change, though only the bees get an attributed explanation. The Nara deer, the Warsaw peacock and the Hong Kong kingfisher on its egret statue sit on the other: animals accommodated, ignored or merely tolerated by human ceremony and infrastructure.

The beaver release is the frame's forward-looking edge. If the remaining 15 families establish as planned, the Loch Ness catchment becomes one of the more measurable rewilding efforts in Scotland — and the one to watch when the next winter count arrives.