As the rewilding movement continues to grow, species reintroductions are gathering pace. Furthermore, beavers are now high on the agenda of many conservation strategies. As ecosystem engineers, they breathe life into ecosystems, damming up streams to create wetland habitats where wildlife can thrive. In addition to this, the wetland habitats they create are excellent for flood prevention, sequestering carbon and providing water during periods of drought. Our London Beaver Working Group is working to return them to the Capital.

After centuries of persecution by humans, beaver numbers are on the rise again right across Europe and North America. While the majority of these are in rural settings, this incredible species is also bouncing back in towns and cities. The most famous example is throughout Bavaria, where an initial release in the 1960s and 1970s into the countryside, combined with years of dedicated work to overcome human-beaver conflict, has led to the population spreading into towns and cities, including Munich itself! Slightly further from home, in Vancouver in 2008, the city’s beaverless ‘Beaver Lake’ had purpose put back into its name when a solo beaver turned up. This individual was soon followed by a second in 2011. Since, a family has thrived in Stanley Park ever since, living happily alongside the city’s 2.5mn residents.

Goals of the London Beaver Working Group

As beaver reintroductions are on the rise across the UK, just one has taken place within an urban setting so far, namely in Plymouth and is run by their Council as part of a community engagement, habitat creation and flood management project. As the conversations around further reintroductions gather pace, we decided to accelerate the beaver agenda in London. We did this by starting the London Beaver Working Group, to facilitate collaborative discussion around two individual scenarios:

1. Beavers natural recolonisation of the Capital’s waterways. We know there are free-living beavers across the country which are expanding fast, and wild populations are as close to London as Kent. Estimates suggest they can travel from 8-12 kilometres to find a new territory! So the possibility of beavers’ natural recolonising London’s waterways is not out of the question. By bringing together different stakeholders, we started the conversation around a strategy for this scenario and how to prepare for it effectively.
2. A pro-active reintroduction of beavers to the Capital. At Citizen Zoo, we actively promote well-considered species reintroductions and are keen to progress this for beavers in London. Having identified potential sites, we were keen to hear from other organisations that own or manage other potentially viable sites. A key part of this is to assess both the ecological and political landscapes of each site.

Discussions to date

The London Beaver Working Group has met to discuss these two scenarios, as well as to learn from the Beaver Trust and Plymouth Council about their experiences with beaver reintroductions in rural and urban settings. Working with the Beaver Trust and their other projects, we put forward a format for a tiered working Group:

1. Core Group – Organisations with the agency and capacity to actively drive forward the London beaver agenda. This can also include those who are proactively investigating potential introductions.
2. Wider Working Group – An inclusive group of organisations and people interested in contributing to the beaver agenda in London. This will work to advise the direction of travel of the group, facilitating knowledge sharing and collaborative working.
3. Public Forum – This group is focused on community engagement to help raise awareness of beavers in London and to actively educate and engage with the public.

We are very excited about the project’s prospects in terms of its ecological and environmental benefits. We also believe it has huge potential in terms of community engagement and education.

Ealing Release

Since launching the London Beaver Working Group, we were keen to press ahead with scenario 2 for returning beavers to the capital through an enclosed reintroduction. Not only will this showcase these animals’ incredible abilities to create wetlands that support wildlife, reduce flooding, filter pollutants and sequester carbon, but also get Londoners used to living alongside these animals once again.

As part of this, working alongside the Beaver Trust we conducted 10 site visits across London to look for suitable reintroduction sites. After these surveys, we are absolutely delighted to have found and launched a collaborative project with Ealing Wildlife Group, Ealing Council and Friends of Horsenden Hill to press ahead with a reintroduction on a site called Paradise Fields in Ealing. As a publicly accessible urban site, this pioneering project will be the first of its kind in the UK.

Ahead of the proposed release, we have a lot of site preparation work to conduct, including removing trees around the perimeter to improve access for vehicles and prevent them being felled onto the fencing by the beavers. If you would like to get involved, head over to our volunteer webpage.

How can you get involved?

We are pushing forward the beaver agenda in London and are looking for any potential investors or philanthropists that would be interested in getting involved. If you were interested, then please email our Senior Urban Rewilding Officer Ben Stockwell directly at [email protected].

You could also contribute to this project by making a donation or becoming a member today!

Lastly, if you have any sites that could support beavers in London, then we’d also love to hear from you.