It’s not clear yet whether this is one beaver who escaped from elsewhere or a pair who were released by rewilders, but it sounds like a good dam move to me!
A couple whose garden was being vandalised in the night has uncovered a surprising culprit in Wales’ first wild beaver for 400 years.
The dam-building rodent was discovered by a husband and wife who noticed trees going missing and machete-like damage in a field next to their house in Pembrokeshire, west Wales.
Curious about the cause of the damage, the homeowners bought a ‘stealth camera’ which captured footage of the creature swimming in their pond and felling their trees.
The origins of the beaver are unexplained, but the landowners believe it may have come from an unsanctioned release by rewilding enthusiasts.
The rodent has been found living near a rural property where it has started to build itself a lodge under the family’s pond deck.
Nicknamed Anthony by the family – after military historian Antony Beevor – the herbivore has become as ‘fat as a pig’ spending as much as six hours a night chewing tree trunks and dragging branches around.
The discovery is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.
Beavers – which can grow to be the size of a large spaniel – were hunted to extinction in Britain 400 years ago, but have been slowly reintroduced in recent years.
The landowners, who wished to remain anonymous to protect the location of the animal, were ‘astonished’ to discover the herbivore was living behind their house.
They said: ‘Some of our trees began to go missing overnight and others were simply being mauled. It looked like someone was hitting them with a machete.
‘There are no deer in Pembrokeshire, so we couldn’t work out what was causing the damage.
‘The only clue were some teeth marks left in the bark.’
Two weeks after first noticing the damage, the couple decided to buy a £100 stealth camera and leave it out overnight to try and catch the vandal in action.
When they reviewed the footage a week later, they spotted the creature.
‘To our astonishment, the camera showed a beaver swimming around our pond and eating our trees. We couldn’t believe it.
‘Since then, it has cleared quite a few trees and branches.
‘There is nothing subtle about a beaver. They are very easy to spot.’
The closest official colony of beavers to Pembrokeshire is in the Dyfi Estuary over 50 miles away in Mid Wales, where no escapes have been reported.
‘It’s much more likely the beaver has been released in Pembrokeshire by a determined rewilder’, the landowners added.
Since their reintroduction to the country in Argyll in 2009, beaver numbers have been increasing across the UK through enclosed colonies set up by various wildlife trusts.
But this is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.
Other wild populations were discovered in Scotland’s Tay-Forth catchment area, in East Devon’s River Otter and on the Avon near Bristol.
A similar beaver discovery was made in East Devon in 2014, despite there being no reintroduction trials in the area.
Initially, DEFRA planned to remove the beavers, but the Devon Wildlife Trust persuaded them to allow England’s first wild beaver trial.
The trial was successful and in 2020 DEFRA announced the beavers could stay. In October 2022, beavers were protected by law in England.
But in Wales, where environmental law-making is devolved, no such protection exists, and the discovery of a wild beaver could now force the Welsh Government to legislate on the issue.
The Pembrokeshire landowners continued: ‘It looks like the Welsh Government need to legislate or they’ll be in danger of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
‘With so many enclosed beavers around Britain, you wonder how long it will be before there are more escapees.’
The animals, which can live for as long as ten years and weigh up to 30kg, are not universally popular.
In Scotland, where beavers have been so successful many farmers feel their livelihoods are being threatened because beaver dams can flood valuable farmland.
The Scottish Government has even begun issuing licenses to cull them.
But rewilders call this ‘ecosystem engineering’ and highlight the positive effects of wetland creation, providing habitat for animals like otters, water voles, toads, frogs and wildfowl.
This is what makes beavers a ‘keystone species’, in other words, they are the glue that holds a habitat together.
One of Kelowna’s urban beavers is back splish-splashing after being rescued with an injured tail.
The beaver was captured from the Rotary Park Marsh on April 5, after a pedestrian noticed the sick-looking critter and contacted the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (IWRS).
The volunteers jumped into action and took the beaver to a vet to have the abscess drained. While waking up from the sedation, the beaver was given carrots and sweet potato, but she is now back on her regular diet of ‘browse’ such as twigs and other high-growing vegetation, said Eva Hartmann, founder of IWRS and registered veterinarian technician.
Everyday volunteers head out to the bush and pick twigs for the beaver to snack on.
Beavers munch on the tissue layer found just under the bark. Hartmann said the downtown girl in the IWRS’ care only likes to snack on poplar trees. The beaver spat out the Saskatoon berry bush and pine tree twigs that were collected for her. Hartmann laughed and said that she knew beavers preferred poplar and willow trees, but didn’t realize how picky they could be.
A new video was released from the Beaver Institute that is fantastic but they are going to tweak it and re-release it at a later date for now. Just know good things are afoot. Sneak preview my favorite line is that your local beaver pond is your rainforest, and your coral reef. How smart is that? This is a special edit from heidi who came home yesterday and is trying to figure things out.
You might remember that before the conference I mentioned that Mike Callahan had some big news he wanted to unfurl, well here it is:
The Beaver Institute™ is launched!
At the Conference I had the great pleasure of announcing that a new national charitable 510(c)3 nonprofit organization is being formed specifically to support beavers. It will be called The Beaver Institute™, and it will raise funds to support a myriad of beaver coexistence efforts on a national level, including key flow device installations, training installers, supporting scientific beaver management research and public outreach.
Here in Massachusetts a small grant program has subsidized many flow device installations and has been a huge success in demonstrating their effectiveness and changing a culture of lethal trapping to one of beaver coexistence. It is our hope that this model can be replicated on a national scale.
The Beaver Institute™ is still being formed so I welcome you to join as a charter member and submit any questions or suggestions to me by email or on the Beaver Management facebook page for projects you feel the Beaver Institute could support. Also if you have any suggestions for fundraising or connections with grant funders please let us know. The Board of Directors is also looking for beaver experts to serve on their Advisory Board.
I really think we can move beaver management forward at a significantly faster pace with a nationally focused nonprofit organization. More details to follow on this forum as they develop.
The Beaver Institute! What a wonderful platform for beaver advocacy and research! Congratulations Mike for leaping into the non-profit fray. We will help any way we can and do our best to get the news out. Hey maybe there could be a grant for a sister beaver conference on the East Coast in even years? Or a Massachusetts beaver festival to teach folks what to appreciate about the animal they go crazy over. You need to bring some academic types on board. Who’s on the beaver faculty at MIT or Cambridge?
And the whole thing can’t get going soon enough in my book. Medford is in dire need of a beaver intelligence transfusion, so maybe you have your first pilot project right there.
Beavers are such a pervasive presence in Medfield, they’re making an appearance at Town Meeting.
Tucked among the more than 40 articles voters will decide on at the April 24 Town Meeting is $5,000 “for the purpose of trapping beavers and removing beaver dams throughout the Town.”
“They build dams in culverts,” Town Administrator Michael Sullivan said. When left unchecked, he said, “They were flooding people’s backyards and affecting their septic systems.”
The Town Administrator, according to the article, is the town position authorized to spend the funds. Sullivan said the town spends about the same amount every year, using trapper Barry Mandell.
“You could bring the Conibear and the foothold (trap) back,” Mandell said, and encourage recreational trapping, “but then you’ll have negligent trappers catching dogs.”
Beavers are an issue across much of Massachusetts, and a regular appearance in town budgets.
Hey, I’ve got an idea for a BI project. Chose a small community around Medford and install culvert protection on every road like they do in Grafton where Skip Lisle is a Selectman. Get a big piece of paper and add up all the money it costs you on one half, then add the 5ooo you spend trapping every single year on the other half. Make sure to figure any extra hours public works spends ripping out debris or hiring back hoes to do the work. As well as every single minute you spend talking to the public to explain the need for this.
And then compare both sides! It’s a research project waiting to happen.
It’s not clear yet whether this is one beaver who escaped from elsewhere or a pair who were released by rewilders, but it sounds like a good dam move to me!
