Farmers and landowners in Tayside have been accused of inhumanely shooting beavers that were heavily pregnant or had just given birth.
Autopsies of 21 animals shot in the region were carried out by a team from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS).
It was licensed by Scottish Natural Heritage to examine the carcases after it emerged the beavers had been shot despite a plea to landowners to tolerate the animals until a decision has been made on their reintroduction.
The RZSS said it had written to SNH and the Scottish Government to raise welfare concerns over “how they were shot, the distance they were shot from and, most significantly, the timing of dispatch, particularly of females with dependent young still in the lodge”.
A licence is not needed to shoot beavers because they have no legal protection in the UK and farmers and estate owners have long blamed them for costly flood damage to low-lying land in Angus and Perthshire.
The region is now one of Scotland’s two beaver heartlands, alongside that created as part of an official reintroduction at Knapdale Forest in Argyll.
Environment minister Aileen McLeod said she would take time to “consider the issue carefully” before making a decision on the future of beavers in Scotland, but encouraged land managers not to resort to lethal control.
NFU Scotland said that while evidence of the wounding of animals was sad, it was “the product of a situation where a lack of action by the authorities over the years has effectively left the farmers being the only ones doing the management in that area”.