Reintroductions of beavers into the wild in several parts of England
153 comments
·March 3, 2025time0ut
DeathArrow
It's nice to live on a property which accommodates wildife. That would be very rare in Europe. Most larger properties would be agricultural land.
fennecfoxy
It's not rare in Europe at all...
mngnt
I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated.
In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess.
Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity.
I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
pancakemouse
The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.
ch4s3
> letting an ecosystem manage itself
What would that entail? The whole of the UK has been a human managed ecosystem for centuries. Deforestation was completed about 400 years ago and the larges stand of contiguous trees is under 300 sq. mi. So many of the species that would have made up the old ecosystem are gone.
HdS84
Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs. There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...
alistairSH
If the circle of life scars somebody out of farming, that's probably for the better. Farming is hard work and any time you have livestock, you have to make hard decisions about managing them, including how to protect them from predation.
hulitu
Wolf is an unfortunate animal. Since one ate vdL's poney, the whole EU is after him. /s
xhkkffbf
So if a wolf "culls" the deer, it's good. But if a human does it, it's bad?
iechoz6H
Amusing you disparage a scientifically mandated effort to incrementally pull back from an environmental precipice as "protection of the 'cute' species".
tclancy
Having just finished Fuzz[0], I think it's fair to question how well any effort to prefer one animal over another ever works out.
hulitu
> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
This takes time and you can't score quick rewards. That's why it doesn't look good on an agenda.
londons_explore
> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
The only long term fix is to move all humans off earth to space/mars/moon/elsewhere, and keep the whole of earth for nature and observation only.
Everything else won't work.
The question is do we all collectively care about the environment enough to all lose our home planet? I suspect no.
mapt
It would be a start, though, if we reintroduced keystone species, allowed less problematic predators free reign, and adopted a policy of generally consigning river floodplains to nature as much as possible rather than making rivers into sewers or canals. Trying to live inches from a flowing river is an anachronism from an earlier era when we cared about very different things.
meristohm
That solution seems to work best through a colonial, capitalist lens. Rather than TINA (Thatcher's "there is no alternative"), consider TIA (Yoda's "there is... another")?
guax
What's the tradeoff tho? People usually are mad because those animals threaten part of their income, not because they cause harm to the environment. It's not about beavers or wolves or beavers or another ugly animal. Is usually about beaver or corn, or soy or whatever they're planting.
thinkingemote
The beavers were released yesterday in the UK: "the National Trust has legally released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset. "
https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo
TriangleEdge
"Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported."
I don't understand what a stakeholder is in this context. Also, why are licenses involved? What does this even mean?
seabass-labrax
The stakeholders in this matter are primarily third-sector organizations in support of beaver reintroduction, of which the many regional Wildlife Trusts are most prominent, and farmers, who are generally but not entirely against reintroduction.
The licences are necessary because with such a sensitive issue, it must be ensured that only responsible and well-resourced organizations can release beavers into the wild. Otherwise, beavers may be introduced into areas that are unsuitable for them, or into areas where they will cause disproportionate damage to farming operations, and either eventuality would harm the perception of beavers. If that happened, the beavers might become so unpopular that it becomes politically impossible to continue with the reintroduction, so it's in everyone's best interests to be careful. Beavers are wonderful animals and can be very beneficial to their local environment, but you can't just dump them on a housing estate or something and expect good results.
I don't know what the exact criteria is, but the winding, damp brooks of the area where I live have been among the successful trial areas for beaver reintroduction. An abundance of willow trees is one factor that makes for an ideal beaver environment, for instance.
lurk2
> but you can't just dump them on a housing estate or something and expect good results.
How do you prevent them from spreading to these locations once they are reintroduced?
IndrekR
Population control. Mostly hunting and demolishing dams. Beavers went extinct where I live in 1841. Reintroduction started in 1957. By now there is a very healthy population that stabilised around year 2000.
petesergeant
Sounds like a problem for a future parliament in 20 years' time
markdown
Ask them nicely.
chad_oliver
Another stakeholder meeting.
seanw444
> Also, why are licenses involved?
It's the UK.
(Sorry, had to.)
fiftyacorn
I imagine there is an impact on downstream water so needs to be considered before granting a licence
Litost
I'm not sure of the licence specifics related to downstream water, but in general:
The impact on downstream water is almost entirely positive, the leaky dams they build filter sediment and excess nutrients (often from fertiliser run off).
They also smooth out peak water flow to help alleviate downstream flooding. Obviously this comes at the cost of flooding areas behind their dams, but this can also be positive, because in the increasingly dry summers, the ponds they create help keep the land upstream cooler and wetter.
The beaver site in Ealing, London was mostly funded because it was a cheaper solution to help with downstream flooding than equivalent hard infrastructure and a significant cost of that project was the fence to keep them in.
Even fish which need to navigate upstream, can leap these dams because they have co-evolved with the beaver, and also beavers are vegetarian so don't predate the fish.
Obviously the main problem, is because in the UK we wiped them out, we've not co-evolved with them, hence the problems of them flooding land that would regularly have flooded, but we have decided to use for other purposes.
I highly recommend anyone who's interested in ecosystems go visit an established beaver site, the mosaic of habitats they create can support large amounts of biodiversity.
vjk800
A license is needed to be a beaver in England. Beavers not carrying license cards will be considered illegal aliens and returned to their country of citizenship.
optimalsolver
You got a loicense for that beaver?
ashoeafoot
you get 50€ if your tracor axle breaks because your wheel sinks into a lodge.
jimnotgym
On several UK rivers, most notably the River Wye on the Welsh/English border, there exists a powerful river trust that has raised millions to remove 'barriers to salmon migration'. They took down and bypassed weirs on tributaries. They pulled out dead trees.
Then other bodies started felling trees into their river to create habitat for juvenile fish.
As an angler you might forgive me for thinking one of those bodies was in the wrong. Either way their conservation efforts have not mitigated the collapsing stocks of salmon over the two decades of their management.
I for one am happy for the beavers to have a go instead
Dylan16807
To be clear, they pulled out isolated dead trees, that weren't part of a weir? It's hard to imagine how those could act as a migration barrier.
jimnotgym
Yes they did. They would deforest the banks, fence it off and clear the stream. Then they tried to convince other trusts to do the same. Now they are planting trees etc.
lukas099
I believe that the group pulling out the dead trees was wrong. A good search term for this topic, btw, is "large woody debris".
throwup238
Depending on the tree and local conditions it can take tens or hundreds of years for them to decay. That’s why old growth forests take so long to restore, they require several generations of dead trees in different states of decay. This allows everything to fungi and insects get established.
They definitely shouldn’t have removed dead trees. Worst case scenario if they were ugly and someone politically powerful wanted them gone they should have been broken up or ground into large mulch.
jimnotgym
They also removed a lot of living trees to 'let in more light'. I always felt that let in more heat too. Other river trusts were planting more trees at the same time!
I always felt that varied habitat was better.
jimnotgym
I was once at a conservation event with the Wye and Usk foundation and the Wild trout Trust. WUF presented first on removing obstructions, then WTT presented on large woody debris! WUF, however, was rich and could push out other people and groups and push their vision. Another group were working on a novel way to stock salmon (semi natural rearing, pioneered successfuly on the Tyne) and WUF campaigned successfully to have it banned! It was a lesson to me as a young man that not all conservation groups were net good. The rod salmon catch on the Wye was 188 last year, down from 6,000 in the 1960s.
onychomys
For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.
selykg
This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting.
REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it!
Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.
krunck
Isle Royale is amazing. Just filter your water... because beavers.
selykg
Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad.
it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol
lukas099
Another interesting (free!) book is Utah State's Riverscapes Restoration Design Manual [1], which is about "Process-Based Restoration" of streams. Unlike the more common "form-based" restoration, PBR provides materials in the form of hand-built structures of natural materials, especially large pieces of wood.
Actually, I'd really recommend first just looking at all the pictures in the "pocket guide" version of the book. [2]
the__alchemist
I appreciate the rec! The extended phenotype (Dawkins) also highlights this phenomenon.
__mharrison__
Does it discuss the patagonian (transplanted) beavers?
acomjean
My brother had some beavers move back into the stream near his house. I’m sure he’d happily ship them over to the UK. Knowing they’ll be more next year means he’d probably give you an annual subscription.
He doesn’t really hate the beavers, just doesn’t want them going after his pair tree, though he found a way to defend it. They’re fascinating animals.
edm0nd
They also can be pests and a nuisance.
We have some beavers that dam up parts of our property every few years which stops water from flowing to certain areas we need water in. We just throw smoke in them to make sure they abandon it and then stick some Tannerite in their dams and blow em up. Honestly, it's a pretty fun way to deal with it.
rickandmortyy
what is a pair tree?
jorgen123
When you have a pair of programmers sitting around the same tree. Could also be a pear tree.
rickandmortyy
is that like the bodhi tree but instead of buddhism it is basic
louthy
There’s two of them. Very tasty
Zaloog
https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/
Also worth a watch
zabzonk
As my late Mum often said about hedgehogs - "I want one! Or two!". I've always planned to have back-garden pond, which might be nice for beavers, but I don't suppose I will now, due to age and not being able to look after it. Sniff.
Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
itishappy
> Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
They're protected species in much of Europe, so the law is to prevent people from grabbing them out of their backyard.
You can have African Pygmy Hedgehogs! My girlfriend and I owned 3, and they're adorable little menaces.
justincormack
I knew someone with a pet albino hedgehog. I thought it wS a european hedgehog but maybe not?
garyclarke27
Rewilding the UK is a great idea, especially considering that we have so little boring wildlife. Why is it so painstakingly slow, Lynx should be introduced urgently, the countryside is overrun with deer causing an unbalanced eco-system and many road traffic accidents.
dboreham
Vote for bears here. They're so cute.
perdomon
Castoreum is back on the menu, boys.
standardUser
From Wikipedia: "About 140 kilograms of castoreum are harvested a year. An average beaver has 100 - 200 grams of castor sacs. So less than 2000 wild beavers are trapped and killed each year for castoreum, mostly in Canada - Eurasian beaver population levels are still too low for trapping to be effective."
Cthulhu_
Reminds me of the (supposed) benefits of reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone; they reduced and got the elk population moving, reducing overgrazing, helping beavers recover, and helping rivers and biodiversity to recover.
https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/, https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/
Of course, that's Yellowstone which is a lot bigger and not populated by people. Wolves are returning (or, being allowed to return) to the Netherlands as well where they end up decimating sheep populations for the fun of it, much to the chagrin of farmers.
world2vec
Slightly off-topic but it's related to wolves.
My parents' neighbours have a huge number of goats in their property. It really is in the middle of nowhere Northern Portugal and for decades everyone always said "oh the wolves are gone, they used to be such a menace to our animals but not anymore. Barely any need for guard dogs".
However, there is a small (200~300) population of wolves and since Covid it seems they got less scared of people, or more brave and desperate because the intense forest fires have ravaged their turf. Last year they attacked the goats and killed dozens of them. It was, according to my dad, one of the goriest things he ever saw.
Guess what, the guard dogs are back, nobody says it's all a thing in the past. On one hand it's great news that wolves are making a comeback but there's always the other side.
incompleteCode
What’s the alternative here? No wolves and less biodiversity? That’s detrimental in the long-term.
The real issue here seems to be the forest fires that disturbed the wolves’ equilibrium.
world2vec
I think it's good they're prospering! Was just telling an anecdote. Guard dogs and better fences seem to be working, they never had another attack since then.
draven
All solutions are compromises. For example here in France:
Wolves ? You have to get guardian dogs (a requirement to get compensated for attacks), accept that a part of your herd will be killed each year (disrupting the dynamic of the herd I've been told) and getting a small compensation. Guardian dogs cause problems with hikers. Someone I know had her dog killed, and I hate having 3 or 4 of them barking around me until I get far from a herd. They aren't that many incidents but it's always a stressful situation.
No wolves? You rely on hunters to regulate the population of some species (chamois, alpine ibex, etc.)
People against the reintroduction of wolves seem to see proponents as city dwellers with no experience of the real world, and proponents seem to see people against it as retrograde.
whyenot
I live in the SF Bay Area (Los Altos Hills). My neighbor used to raise miniature goats. A few years ago a mountain lion got into the goat pasture and killed all the goats. It was pretty gory. On the other hand, it seems like the mountain lions (and coyotes) are doing a pretty good job bringing down the local deer population. I wish they would also start eating the non-native wild turkeys that have migrated into my area over the past 5 years or so.
bpodgursky
As someone with young kids... I want to be a free-range parent to the extent possible, but I'm not going to let my kids wander around in the forest if there are wolf packs loose in the area.
This worked well in 1950s Britain because they had exterminated all large predators! Let's be real about that. For most of human history, nature was deadly.
codingdave
We have wolves and the occasional bear on our property. They cause problems with chickens and trash cans, not people. They don't want to mess with us any more than we want to be messed with, and they typically keep their distance to the point that we see their tracks, not them.
I wouldn't tell a toddler to go play in the woods, you are correct about that, but the rest of us freely wander nature without fretting too much over it. I also just checked and there have been zero wolf attacks on humans in my state. Ever. We just aren't their preferred targets.
willismichael
When you say kids, do you mean young goats or young humans?
sethammons
I lived the first 40 years of my life in bear and mountain lion territory and spent lots of time out in the wild, especially as a kid (usually a group of three or four of us). This is the first time I've lived where there is no wild animals to worry about aside from one variety of snake. It was a very odd sensation to realize I didn't have to be vigilantly aware of my surroundings to prevent a wild animal encounter. People have lived with predators for all of our existence
tinyplanets
There have been a small number of cases where wolves attack humans, but the majority of attacks that do occur generally prey on cattle or sheep. With fencing and guard dogs, an equilibrium can be reached. Maybe have you kids wander with a protective dog. I don't want to see us continually destroy and suppress biodiversity because it's inconvenient for us.
world2vec
To be honest, that area is very hilly and rough. Even without wolf packs loitering around I wouldn't recommend young kids wandering by themselves outside of the fenced areas.
loandbehold
Is your parents' property fenced off? How does using guard dogs compare to having an electric fence?
kaikai
I have livestock in an area with mountain lions, bears, and coyotes. There’s no fence that I could build that will reliably keep out a mountain lion, because they can jump very high and climb trees. Electrified fences with a high enough hot line will keep out coyotes and bears, but no one I know fences entire pastures that way. It would be very expensive and require a lot of maintenance. Livestock Guardian Dogs bred to protect livestock will do a much better job of scaring off and fighting predators. They’re specific breeds like Anatolians and Maremmas, not regular farm dogs.
world2vec
My parent's neighbours, they're not my parents' goats (they only have a few to keep their property clean).
The neighbours have a big piece of land and electrifying the fences would be quite expensive, the guard dogs seem to be doing their jobs quite well, no attacks since then.
0xbadcafebee
Of the 800,000 sheep in the Netherlands, dogs kill 13,000 every year. There's quite a smaller wolf population than dogs.
null
I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive.
We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.