Beavers are working wonders across Europe. Is the UK finally realising their potential?
A family of beavers made global headlines earlier this year when they built a dam exactly where authorities had been planning one in Czechia, saving taxpayers around CZK 30 million (€1.2 million).
Officials in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, 30km southwest of Prague, got the permit for the project on a former army training site years ago. Their aim? To stop acidic water from two ponds spilling over into the Klabava River, which carries critically endangered crayfish.
It was bogged down in bureaucracy as military and Vltava River Basin authorities wrestled over land ownership. But the beaver colony cut through that red tape almost overnight in January, damming the river and turning the area into a wetland with pools and canals.
People everywhere from Europe to America were impressed by the industrious rodents. For Elliot McCandless, communications manager at the UK’s Beaver Trust charity, “it was a brilliant story, but to anybody who works in the beaver world, it’s not really surprising.”
A beaver’s instinct – how do they know where to build?
“Beavers always know best. The places where they build dams are always chosen just right – better than when we design it on paper,” Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency (AOPK) told Prague Radio International.
These dam-building behaviours are innate, explains McCandless, with young beavers (kits) lending a paw to construction early on. But the underlying motivation remains something of a mystery.
A key theory is that the sound of running water stirs beavers into action. They build dams to create a deeper pool of water around their lodges, as they are much more nimble in water than on land.
But there are some holes in that theory; the leakiness of dams for one. Individual cases suggest other factors at play too. One internet-famous rescue animal, Justin Beaver, has been filmed creating a ‘dam’ with various objects inside a house, even though there’s no water present.
Beavers certainly have an innate knack of finding the best spots for their dams in the wild, however. McCandless points to the example of a nature reserve in Scotland where they made a dam at the exact right ‘pinch point’ to manage water levels. It was better situated than a sluice that had been put in at a less ideal place to keep costs down.
Where else are beavers coming to our rescue in Europe?
Another remarkable instance of beavers lightening the bureaucratic load and saving taxpayer money occurred in the German town of Winzer.
After suffering from severe flooding for many years, particularly in 2013, the local government decided to build a dam in the waterway flowing into the small Bavarian town. But before they could get to work, a beaver family moved into the forest at the head of the waterway.
By building dams in the forest creeks, they slowed the flow of water to such an extent that the government didn’t need to proceed with some of the hard-engineering work. Just one beaver family saved Winzer an estimated €30,000.
The overall value of ecosystem services provided by beavers across the Northern Hemisphere is immense. A 2020 study puts it at $133 million (€128m) in habitat and biodiversity provision, $32 million (€31m) in moderating extreme weather events, $28 million (€27m) in water purification and more.
The UK, which McCandless says is “generationally behind” on restoring the keystone species, is also taking stock of the manifold benefits that beavers bring.
In Essex, for example, a beaver family released into a 40,000 square metre enclosure on an estate in 2019 has stored roughly 3 million litres of water in ponds. This has helped reduce the impact of drought and flooding, including for the downstream town of Finchingfield.
It is one of numerous positive examples that resulted in beavers being included in the Environment Agency’s Natural Flood Management plan for the first time last month.
Wild beaver releases approved in England
The UK took an even bigger step for beavers yesterday (28 February), as the government announced that the reintroduction of these animals to the wild will be allowed in England.
Wildlife groups have welcomed the news that Natural England will grant licences, with wild releases expected as early as autumn this year. Rob Stoneman, director of landscape recovery at The Wildlife Trusts, looks forward to the time when Brits “can all experience the magic of seeing beavers back in rivers that will be wilder as a result.”
McCandless is keen to see ambitious plans for river catchment scale releases. Speaking to Euronews on Thursday, he says the devil will be in the details of the policy, which needs buy-in from all stakeholders.
But for one thing, this official channel will “hopefully see an end to any episodes of beaver bombing” – a rogue rewilding tactic that the Beaver Trust does not endorse.
These secret releases have contributed to a wild beaver population of around 500 in England.
Until their reintroduction 20 years ago, the native species had been extinct in Britain for 400 years. They were hunted away for their meat, fur and scent oil. An array of historical records speaks to their widespread presence across England, Scotland and Wales: drawings, place names (like Beverley in Yorkshire), archeological items and, latterly, vermin lists – according to which hunters were paid per beaver head.
“We have a responsibility to restore the species not just because of the benefits that they can bring us, but because we pushed them to extinction,” argues McCandless. This ethical case is enshrined in the EU Habitats Regulations.
“You speak to other European counterparts and nobody can understand why we struggle with beavers in Britain,” he says. “They find them a very easy species to live alongside and exist with in a modern day environment.”
The Brdy beavers in Czechia have the advantage of being far away from any farmland. But McCandless contests that beavers are significantly more space-limited in the UK, compared to bigger European countries.
Bavaria, for example, is around 70,000 square kilometres in size, with 60 per cent of that area categorised as prime agricultural land. This arable area supports a population of 30 million people and some 23,000 beavers.
Scotland has a comparable land area of 79,000 square kilometres, of which 10 per cent is prime agricultural land, but only 1,500 beavers live amid a population of 5.5 million people. The animals occupy only 10-15 per cent of suitable habitats.
“There’s this perception in Britain that we’ve changed the land so much that there’s no space for beavers. And the reality is that there’s plenty of space to live alongside these animals and it’s not a case of if we can live alongside them – it’s whether we choose to or not,” says McCandless.
From the cities of Stockholm and Vienna, to the arable lands of Germany and the Netherlands, and national parks in Poland and the Carpathians, Europe provides plenty of examples of happy coexistence with these ecosystem engineers.
