Meet the Beaver Heroes

Extinct in the UK for four centuries, beavers are now returning to rivers around the UK, thanks to the work of dedicated conservationists. Richard Baynes profiles four people who are doing their bit for the beaver

- By Richard Baynes. Photographs by Mark Hamblin, Alamy, Jim Bliss, Lowther Estate 

A tree stump glows with fungi. A dragonfly hovers over a still pool. Birds dart in, snatching insects... Seeing the ecological wonderland that beavers create makes you realise why people work so hard for them.

For 30 years, pressure has grown from conservationists to restore this keystone species, whose dams are also a barrier against flooding. Now, it seems, the beavers’ time has come again.

Wiped out in the UK by fur hunters 500 years ago, beavers reappeared in Scotland’s River Tay catchment 20 years ago. Where they came from is moot – but there are now more than 1,000 there and in the neighbouring River Forth. This unregulated release has brought problems as well as benefits, but following their appearance in Tayside, Kent Wildlife Trust began the first official UK beaver trial, releasing 30 beavers into fenland enclosure near Sandwich. Then came the official Scottish trial, in Knapdale, Argyll in 2009.

In England and Wales, there are at least 14 enclosed beaver populations. Wild beavers also live on Devon’s River Otter, on the Wye along the Welsh border, in Cornwall and in Kent, and the Scottish Government late last year sanctioned their further spread with unfenced releases across the country.

Four people are well placed to tell the beavers’ story. At the centre is Roisin Campbell-Palmer, who ran the Knapdale trial and now saves Scotland’s problem beavers from shooting and populates new schemes. Chloe Edwards runs our most beaver-altered landscape in Kent. Alex Poynter from the University of Cumbria oversees the scientific monitoring of beaver impacts; while in Cornwall, Merlin Hanbury- Tenison welcomes beavers on to his farm.

THE PIONEER, PERTHSHIRE