Bringing Back The Beaver
Beaver reintroductions are bringing huge benefits, alleviating both flooding and drought. So, what’s the hold up?
After reaching the end of the lake, we follow an increasingly muddy path, our eyes firmly fixed on the floor. We’re looking for poo. Beaver poo, to be precise. It looks like a mini version of horse poo, my host Henry Richards of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, tells me. He stops suddenly at the bankside by a patch of reeds and willow. “This is one of their favourite spots,” he whispers. He points to willow that has been chewed through and the bark stripped. So far, so sedate, perhaps. Except that this is one of the first times anyone has seen this in Central England for 800 years.
When I grew up in the Midlands, barely 20 miles away from the Willington Wetlands where I walked with Henry, wild beavers in England were unthinkable. They were exotic creatures, the stuff of North American storybooks. However, unbeknownst to me and most British schoolchildren, the Eurasian beaver hadn’t gone extinct — though, it very nearly did. At the end of the nineteenth century, just 200 remained in Germany and a smattering across Eastern Europe and Russia. Slightly bigger than the North American beaver (yes, U.S. readers, my beaver is bigger than your beaver), it was always easy to hunt, with large…
