1 Reappearance of the Eurasian beaver Castor fiber L. in Tuscany (Central Italy): the success of 2 unauthorised releases? 3 4 Chiara Pucci1, Davide Senserini2, Giuseppe Mazza3, Emiliano Mori4 5 6 1. Free-lance wildlife technician, Str. di Pilli, 1 - 53035 Monteriggioni - Siena, Italy. Email: 7
[email protected];
[email protected] 8 2. Free-lance wildlife technician, Loc. Defizio, 58036, Roccastrada, Grosseto, Italy. Email: 9
[email protected] 10 3. CREA Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification, Via di Lanciola 12⁄a, Cascine del 11 Riccio, 50125, Firenze, Italy. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6644-1429. Email: 12
[email protected] 13 4. CNR-IRET, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto di Ricerca sugli Ecosistemi Terrestri 14 (CNR-IRET), Via Madonna del Piano 10, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy. Email: 15
[email protected], ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8108-7950. Email:
[email protected] 16 17 18 Running title: occurrence of the Eurasian beaver in Central Italy 19 20 Acknowledgements 21 22 Authors would like to thank a local fisherman, Alessandro Cilli, who first discovered some possible signs 23 of presence along the river Ombrone, Stefano Morelli and Filomena Petrera, agents of the Siena 24 Provincial Police, who reported us the possible presence and cooperated in the field investigations and 25 Dr. Pio Federico Roversi, who kindly informed us on the new legal provisions on reports of alien species 26 affecting native or cultivated plants in Italy. Duncan Halley, Frank Rosell, and Alexander Saveljev kindly 27 provided us with useful recommendations for field work and laboratory analyses.