EDGES OF EXISTENCE

Riverside habitats are coming under scrutiny as the next big prospect on the rewilding landscape.

- Andrew Griffiths

I am talking to James Wallace, CEO of the Beaver Trust, but we are not talking about beavers, we are talking about buffer strips. Wallace is quite animated about them, so much so that beavers hardly get a mention.

The Beaver Trust is all about the large-scale restoration of our river system. The Trust is so named, Wallace tells me, because the beaver is a “highly productive, hard-working, communal, familial organism” – all qualities that Wallace clearly admires. But the buffer strip is as integral to his vision for rivers as the charismatic little ‘ecosystem engineer’ that has so caught the public’s imagination.

Buffer strips are areas along riverbanks that are left to go wild – free from farming, intensive livestock grazing, or any other interference. On a map, think of them as making two ‘green’ strips alongside the ‘blue’ length of the river corridor.

Wallace has a dream: he wants to create 10,000ha of river buffer strips – that is a 20m-wide strip along both sides of 2,500km of river – within two years. What’s more, with the Beaver Trust and partners, he thinks he has assembled the team to do it.

“That might sound like an insanely huge idea, but that is what we are thinking about at the moment.” says Wallace, of a concept that could completely change the look of our landscape. “There’s no point going at things half-hearted, is there?”