There is almost nothing I enjoy better than a new word about beavers. Unless its spending the morning looking up the new word about beavers. Now if I lived in a the home of my dreams I would do it in a massive archane library with vaulted ceilings and ancient texts. But the internet will do handily. Thank you, Wales.
Ecosystem engineers: should beavers be introduced back into Welsh rivers?
“When you start looking into some of the history books, you actually find that there is lots of evidence of beavers going back hundreds and hundreds of years and there are references in written literature, and in folklore in Wales,” said Alicia Leow-Dyke.
One of the Welsh words for beaver is ‘afanc’, which in Welsh mythology is a type of river monster resembling a crocodile or giant beaver. The word ‘afanc’ can also be spotted in some place names, such as Llyn-yr-Afanc, which means ‘Beaver’s Pool’.
Since 2005, however, the Welsh Beaver Project has been investigating the feasibility of reintroducing beavers in specific and suitable areas of Wales in the future. With this in mind, the Welsh Beaver Project is working with Natural Resources Wales to obtain a licence for a first release of beavers into the Welsh wild.
“We’re trying to put the right information out there to demonstrate that beavers in the right place can be very suitable and beneficial to wildlife and people,” said Alicia Leow-Dyk
Oh my goodness! a BEAVER-DILE! or Croc-beaver! I’m so excited. There must be so many amazing welsh artists who have taken a stab at this. When you think of it it almost makes a kind of sense. They can both hold their breath a very long time. They both have amazingly strong jaws and remarkable teeth. And they are actually both considered keystone species… Well alligators so I assume crocs because of the space they create for other species when they use their tails to make a mud hole and lay their eggs.
Although beavers are wayyyyyyyyyyyyy cooler.
At the moment the Welsh Beaver Project is looking at the Dyfi catchment in west Wales as a potential location.
“At the same time we’re developing plans for a beaver enclosure on a Wildlife Trust reserve and we’re just waiting for some feedback from Natural Resources Wales,” said Alicia Leow-Dyke.
Not everyone is happy, however. Another example of a successful conservation project in Wales has been otters. The Cardiff Otter Project is a leading research centre on otter conservation and research, and it partners with several other institutions.
Dr Elizabeth Chadwick, Head of the Cardiff Otter Project, said that reintroduction of beavers were likely to face similar opposition, which is concern about the impact on fish in rivers.
“Some negative attitudes toward otter population recoveries include issues with otter predation on fish,” said Dr Elizabeth Chadwick, Head of the Cardiff Otter Project.
“Some people have used this as an argument against beavers, based on a misconception that beavers also eat fish – which is not the case. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that beaver introductions help boost fish populations.”
As if an otter non profit could help a beaver nonprofit! HRMPH! Well I suppose the is several generations of poor fools who read Naria as children and believed beavers ate fish. How many times must you be told? Lions aren’t religious and beavers are vegetarians!
The Welsh Beaver Project, however, are keen to point to a number of positive aspects of reintroducing beavers to Wales, particularly in relation to flooding.
Beavers are excellent ecosystem engineers: their dams slow the flow of rivers, so that when there is heavy rain it takes much longer to flow down and reach towns or villages.
In 2015 two family groups of Eurasian beavers were reintroduced in the River Otter catchment in south-east Devon as part of the River Otter Beaver Trial. Findings showed that peak flows of water in villages exposed to risks of flooding have significantly reduced thanks to the upstream beaver dams.
“There are many landowners who would like to see beavers back because of ecological and environmental benefits,” said Alicia Leow-Dyke. “They want the beavers to help to prevent the risk of flooding in the land if the dams are in the right places.”
There are other advantages to river biodiversity too.
“Their activities can improve the health of rivers and lochs, reduce flooding and the impacts of droughts, and contribute to carbon sequestration,” said Richard Bunting, a spokesperson from Rewilding Britain, a charity that looks at the restoration of nature and at reconnecting people with the natural world.
“They coppice and fell trees, letting light into woodlands, enabling plants to flourish and stimulating new tree growth.”
Beavers activities also boost the presence of other wild species: birds, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians have been seen increasing where beavers are present.
“This can encourage reptiles to move in, and water poles. Otters can all benefit from beavers increase in habitat,” said Alicia Leow-Dyke, Welsh Beaver Project Officer. In the future, beavers in Welsh rivers might also be able to bring more tourism to the area, they say.
Well of course. Beavers can do all those things for you and much, much, more. By the way, in case you didn’t recognize it, that picture above is of Little Beaver and the Echo in Wales. I think the artist is actually Welsh.
“Management costs are a tiny fraction of the value of the benefits of beaver reintroduction,” said Richard Brazier, Professor of Earth Surface Processes at the University of Exeter and Chair of River Otter Beaver Trial Science and Evidence Forum.
Beavers were reintroduced to Scotland in 2009 and now enjoy protected status there. Several beavers reintroduction trials have also proved successful in Europe, for example in Bavaria, Germany.
Perhaps Wales will be next, and the ‘afanc’ will no longer be relegated to Welsh myth but become a visible, and helpful, part of our lives once more.
Well said. It takes a little resourcefulness to solve beaver problems, but beaver rewards are countless! I especially want to see Lizzie Harper (who lives in wales) painting beavers with her glorious attention to detail. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t look like crocodiles.
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