This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

Beavers? Red squirrels? Scottish Wildcats? I've been struggling to choose my positive environment story of the year. This is not because I am about to assail you with climate doom and gloom but because I’ve been mulling over three of them, and I just can’t decide.

Therefore, since there’s a bit of a theme – they are all fairly charismatic icons of Scottish wildness – I am going to give you a triple present of all of them. Let’s celebrate them all. Let’s even go the full gift, since it’s nearly Christmas, of sharing a few cute pics to keep in the stocking of your imagination. I'm certainly going to keep them in mine.

First to unwrap, the beavers. Back in April, the plan to release beavers into Glen Affric, which had gone through two years of exhaustive consultation, looked under threat. NatureScot announced it was delaying granting a licence citing “concern among the community and representatives”. Rewilding campaigners described it as the “great beaver betrayal”.

What was planned was the first official release of beavers to the northwest Highlands, four centuries since the native species was driven to extinction, and it was looking shaky.

Thankfully the delay turned out not to be an unravelling, and the licence was granted in August. Hence, in October this year, a family of a five beavers were released at two sites on Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin in the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve in the northwest Highlands, by a partnership between

© Herald Scotland