Drought resistance boosted by beavers

RESTORING rivers to a natural state and introducing beavers can help make landscapes resilient to the increasing risk of drought, conservationists said.

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The UK is facing increasing extremes such as drought and heavy downpours as the climate changes, with England weathering the driest spring for 132 years this year and two regions in the north of the country already in drought. But in the South West of England, after the region saw around half the average rainfall in spring, river restoration work maintained lush vegetation and wetlands at the National Trust's Holnicote estate on Exmoor.

The National Trust embarked on its “riverlands” project on the estate in 2020, releasing beavers into two enclosures and working to restore the River Aller to a “stage zero” state with multiple channels, pools and shallow riffles as it would have had before human interference.

The approach has been pioneered in Oregon in the US, and the UK's first attempt at scale on a main river landscape involved diggers moving more than 4,000 tonnes of earth to fill the river channel and laying hundreds of logs within the floodplain.

Thousands of wetland trees were planted and wildflower seeds sown to attract pollinators.