Reintroductions of beavers into the wild in several parts of England

[time0ut]

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.

[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.

[tcptomato]

They weren't. They were reintroduced in Scotland in 2009.

[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.

[iechoz6H]

Amusing you disparage a scientifically mandated effort to incrementally pull back from an environmental precipice as "protection of the 'cute' species".

[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.

[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.

[seanw444]

> Also, why are licenses involved?

It's the UK.

(Sorry, had to.)

[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.

[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".

[onychomys]

For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.

[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?

[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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog

[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.

[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.

[0xbadcafebee]

Of the 800,000 sheep in the Netherlands, dogs kill 13,000 every year. There's quite a smaller wolf population than dogs.

[shanecleveland]

A stream in my community that had been rerouted and straightened in the name of both farming and development was recently restored to a more natural course, including its flood plains. Beavers came back quickly. Most obvious sign, beyond the dams and ponds created, are the signature pointed stumps and felled trees. Some are significant in size, and have actually fallen across trails and roads. They have fenced around some trees bordering roads, and have gone in to do see preventative trimming. Pretty cool.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

My mother lived in a gated community, in Maryland. They had a small lake.

Beavers used to come up from the nearby park, and dam up the lake. They'd chew down the decorative cherry trees (boo), and Bradford Pear trees (yay).

I was reading (maybe here), that beavers basically obviated a multimillion-dollar dam project, somewhere out West.

[ashoeafoot]

brought to you by exon mobile

[hedora]

Related: While Government Officials Spent 5 Years Planning, Beavers Built their Dam for Free in 48 Hours:

https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials...

Now, if we could just train beavers to build affordable housing...

[0xbadcafebee]

I think you need an apex predator / mammal to solve affordable housing...

Contractors' quotes 5x higher than for private buildings? Send a brown bear to talk to 'em.

Limited government funding? Send a wild boar to budget meetings.

Restrictive zoning laws? Put a mountain lion in the room at the next zoning review.

NIMBYs don't want affordable housing? Wolves roam their neighborhood until NIMBYs agree to allow new housing.

Lengthy approval process? A honey badger asks for approval.

Economic disparity between rising housing costs and stagnant wages? Moose roams around in businesses until wages raise.

[grg0]

This is absolutely hilarious. Original story: https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-plani...

[trhway]

well, you can imagine that happens to the beaver who instead of building a dam insists on calling meetings and getting approvals... Natural selection so to speak.

In the human population though the natural selection (i.e. whose children are going to be more successful?) seems in the current environment to favor the strategy of hoarding resources to yourself and denying them to the others.

[patrick451]

>Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported.

What a bunch of dissimulating bullshit. If they actually wanted to support landowners, they wouldn't be re-introducing this destructive species.

[fdb345]

Stupid idea. We're already having to kill them because of rising numbers.

England is a nation of floodplains. Its also overcrowded.

Another STUPID green fallacy.

[standardUser]

Did a free-flowing river write this comment?

[lukas099]

With beaver, flooding is more common but the severity of the worst floods is lessened.

[michaelhoney]

calm down mate

[ashoeafoot]

Exon mibile sponsors this idiicy and the pocahontas crowd happily self destructs. Idealization of reality is a retardation.

[pawpatrolmumu]

Beavers are horrible creatures that tease, provoke and bait reactive dogs into attacking them. Some dogs may even get injured while killing them! Beavers should be banned!

[bloomingeek]

My goodness! Please, give us your source, I always suspected those flat tails and buck teeth were a vicissitude of some type.