Is England Beaver Ready?

So where we're standing now, just to give us a bit of an update on NEP, and I know you've just been giving a workshop, so you'll have seen much of this, but we introduced our beavers, as you say, in 2020, our first pair of beavers, which then went AWOL.

And we were one of the only licenses, the only license, I think, to be allowed to have them in a sort of a looser enclosure, which was basically this whole of the southern block with some reinforced fencing and revetments across culverts and all that kind of thing.

But these two beavers did manage to escape that year in 2020.

We had to catch them up again and then they kept escaping.

So ultimately, we decided to build an actual pen, reintroduce beavers in 2022.

And that's the pair we have now that have successfully bred now for three years running.

So we now have, I think we had three kits this year.

So we, in theory, have nine beavers.

But we have seen this.

This was a pen that was only ever intended to exist for three or four years.

It was a temporary pen because we thought by now the government would have worked out a plan to be able to release these animals into the wider landscape.

But that was always the plan.

And what's been happening is that this beaver pen has been failing with age, as I know lots of similar beaver pens are.

The beavers obviously are burrowers, so they go underneath and they've managed to get out.

So here we have some beavers who have got out of the pen.

They're still coming and going into the pen.

I think they're still probably using that major lodge quite a lot with their parents.

But they're beginning to explore and build their own kingdoms outside.

They're still within the curtilage of the original license.

So we're feeling quite relaxed about that.

And natural England are aware and being very pragmatic and helpful.

But we do have a problem.

What are we going to do in the future if we still don't have a beaver management plan? We don't have a plan to let these beavers out into the wider landscape.

Beavers that haven't escaped from pens have now into their third or fourth generation.

There's presumably a health risk about interbreeding and stress from animals, you know, a family fighting together in an enclosure that is now too small for them.