Beaver Town

Adrian has a big idea. His home of Braunton, a village in North Devon, has a problem with flooding. Over the last decade he has seen it get worse. The village flooded badly in 2012 just after a million pound flood defence scheme was completed, and there was more flooding in 2016. Braunton has since had those defences upgraded, but more work is needed further up the valley. Instead of more expensive schemes, Adrian has an alternative solution - bringing back beavers to do the work for them.

Beavers are nature’s engineers, their dams prevent flooding by holding water upstream and slowing the flow in rivers, while simultaneously creating new wetland habitats for species of insects, amphibians, birds, fish and plants to flourish in. These industrious rodents were hunted to extinction in Britain about 400 years ago, and are now beginning to make a comeback. A record number of beavers will be released by the Wildlife Trusts this year, but so far pretty much all licensed beaver reintroductions have been on individual private estates or within fenced enclosures.

What Adrian is proposing would be the first community-led reintroduction of beavers on a landscape scale, and if successful in gaining permission, the project could provide a model for others. Working together with the Beaver Trust, Adrian now has nearly 50 local landowners on board and the project is gaining momentum. However there are many obstacles to overcome, not least that not everyone is in favour of beavers flooding their land. We visit Braunton as it begins its beaver journey and hear what can be learnt about managing the species from the River Otter Beaver Trial in South Devon, and from Scotland where there is a wild population in Tayside causing problems for farming. Can we move beyond keeping beavers in enclosures and learn to live alongside them?

Presented by Lindsey Chapman and produced by Sophie Anton