I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny,
but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.
Dr.Seuss
Oh sure 7 million Californians have just been ordered to shelter in place but there is still lots of fun to be had if you’re us. Heck, who knows, beaver readership might go UP in this crisis! There’s no great loss without some small gain.
In the UK at least, beaver comeback has been greeted with good cheer in some quarters. They even grace the new National Geographic which celebrates the return of several lost species.
Welcome home: the lost English species making a comeback
The reintroduction of native species, lost for decades or even centuries from the British countryside, is at the heart of the Government’s 25-year Environment Plan. Alongside the recovery and restoration of wildlife-friendly habitats, the plan explicitly states that the reintroduction of native species is key to nature’s recovery.
A tiny corner of Cornwall is showcasing the huge potential benefits that could stem from the reintroduction of beavers to the south west of England. Hunted to extinction for their valuable fur, beavers are a keystone species with the power to transform local landscapes and provide natural solutions to major problems, such as flooding, water quality and declining biodiversity. A series of trials are currently assessing the impact of reinstating the tree-munching animals to areas of the south west, including Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
Hurray! The comeback kid! That’s a great photo but honestly I can’t look at it without thinking that the photographer saw Cheryl’s iconic tree carrying photo and decided he needed to take his own. Of course this is slightly better because it proudly displays the renewable generations to come.
Carefully fenced in a two-hectare (five-acre) enclosure of plantation woodland alongside Nankilly water, near Ladock, three Cornish beavers have built effective flood and drought prevention infrastructure, cleaned water, and recreated wetland habitats rich in biodiversity. Their dams, for example, have reduced the peak flow of the stream by 30% after heavy rainfall, says Cheryl Marriott, head of nature conservation at Cornwall Wildlife Trust.
With climate change leading to more frequent extreme weather events, the opportunity to trap water upstream in areas where flooding is less of an issue, rather than let it accelerate downstream to areas where flooding is a major issue, is a huge win. Elsewhere in England, a pair of beavers reintroduced to Yorkshire’s Cropton Forest in 2019 have been suggested as a factor in preventing local flooding during Storm Dennis last month.
Yes beavers can do a whole lot of good things for you, and I’m glad England is recording every step of the way. Chris Jones really became a legendary pioneer when he agreed to try offering his farm up for beavers.
Three years into the five-year trial, Chris Jones, the farmer hosting the Cornwall beavers, said that his farm had recorded six new bird species, including water rail and green sandpiper, and three new mammals (water shrews, harvest mice and polecats).
“This has all happened on a stretch of land that is just 200 metres long, which begs the question of what would happen if we had 2,000km of beaver habitat in the south west,” he says. Jones would be delighted to see the beavers freely released, arguing that on land like his, and along the banks of many rivers and streams, the animals cause precious little, if any, loss of productive land.
Aren’t you proud of every single one of these brave pioneers pushing the beaver conversation forward? Chris Jones and Mark Elliot, Alan Puttock and Derek Gow and Paul Ramsay. They forced this into being and we are all the better for it.
And the advantages of stripping the energy out of rivers and streams brings other advantages too, adds Marriott. “Scientists have been really surprised at the reduction in agricultural pollutants in the water, such as phosphates and nitrates, as the stream leaves the beaver enclosure,” she says.
Water backed up in ponds behind beaver dams slows to such an extent that its pollutants can sink and percolate into the soil, rather than float downstream. These ponds are also creating an environment where algae thrive, kickstarting a food chain that rises through invertebrates to birds and mammals.
Oh yes, beavers kickstart it all. They are the original catalyst. We couldn’t agree more.
