8 ms·

Reintroductions of beavers into the wild in several parts of England

193 points by thinkingemote 2y ago

Zaloog 2y ago
https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/ https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/ Also worth a watch
patrick451 2y ago
>Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported. What a bunch of dissimulating bullshit. If they actually wanted to support landowners, they wouldn't be re-introducing this destructive species.
- hmmokidk 2y ago
  Man someone has gotta say it. Thank you. This is not acceptable and does not solve the root problem. If anything it creates so many more. Stupid government. They have to get rid of the destructive species once and for all. Let the Beavers have the human houses, whatever it takes, just get the humans away from earth before they make the place uninhabitable for all.
  - foobarian 2y ago
    > does not solve the root problem It kind of does! :-) There is a stream behind our yard and one year beavers built a dam. They were hard to spot in the daytime but we caught them at night with trailcams. They are very cute but surprisingly big and round. Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. We enjoyed the process of watching the nature unfold.
    - sophacles 2y ago
      Read it again - they aren't ranting about beavers.
    - hmmokidk 2y ago
      If you’re arguing for untouched by wildlife perfect trails just go to Disneyland. If we are in agreement then please accept my humble high five.
      - dboreham 2y ago
        There are cats living in Disneyland, and many ducks.
        hmmokidk 2y ago
        Nuke em
    - II2II 2y ago
      > Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. I've encountered relatively few people who were concerned about the damage to trees. The typical concern is over damage to land. Any animal than engineers their environment, including both beavers and humans, has a disproportionate ability to alter land use. That includes humancentric development and natural ecosystems. I am not going to claim that beavers are either good or bad. I am going to point out that humans are as much a part of nature as beavers, so preserving natural ecosystems is almost always in our favour. Yet there are circumstances where managing is likely a better approach than preserving, simply because nature can throw nasty things our way too. (We are, for example, not to eager to let rats thrive in our cities.)
  - michaelhoney 2y ago
    maybe humans aren't the only species on the planet
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Oi! You got a loicense for that beaver?!
  - bozhark 2y ago
    Works in the Netherlands https://business.gov.nl/regulation/sex-business-permit/ https://business.gov.nl/regulation/sex-business-permit/
- Angostura 2y ago
  There are farmers who are more than happy to work alongside them: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/28/ultimate-bringers-of-life-cornwall-farmer-beavers-stop-flooding https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/28/ultimate...
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    And if you’re a farmer that’s working against nature not with it then you’re part of the problem.
onychomys 2y ago
For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  I appreciate the rec! The extended phenotype (Dawkins) also highlights this phenomenon.
- selykg 2y ago
  This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting. REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it! Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.
  - krunck 2y ago
    Isle Royale is amazing. Just filter your water... because beavers.
    - selykg 2y ago
      Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad. it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol
      - rickandmortyy 2y ago
        free folk activities fascinate pets as much as pets fascinate free folk
brianbest101 2y ago
[dead]
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Reminds me of the (supposed) benefits of reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone; they reduced and got the elk population moving, reducing overgrazing, helping beavers recover, and helping rivers and biodiversity to recover. https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/ https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/, https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/ https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/ Of course, that's Yellowstone which is a lot bigger and not populated by people. Wolves are returning (or, being allowed to return) to the Netherlands as well where they end up decimating sheep populations for the fun of it, much to the chagrin of farmers.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Of the 800,000 sheep in the Netherlands, dogs kill 13,000 every year. There's quite a smaller wolf population than dogs.
- world2vec 2y ago
  Slightly off-topic but it's related to wolves. My parents' neighbours have a huge number of goats in their property. It really is in the middle of nowhere Northern Portugal and for decades everyone always said "oh the wolves are gone, they used to be such a menace to our animals but not anymore. Barely any need for guard dogs". However, there is a small (200~300) population of wolves and since Covid it seems they got less scared of people, or more brave and desperate because the intense forest fires have ravaged their turf. Last year they attacked the goats and killed dozens of them. It was, according to my dad, one of the goriest things he ever saw. Guess what, the guard dogs are back, nobody says it's all a thing in the past. On one hand it's great news that wolves are making a comeback but there's always the other side.
  - loandbehold 2y ago
    Is your parents' property fenced off? How does using guard dogs compare to having an electric fence?
    - world2vec 2y ago
thinkingemote 2y ago
The beavers were released yesterday in the UK: "the National Trust has legally released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset. " https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-release-in-england/ https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo
hedora 2y ago
Related: While Government Officials Spent 5 Years Planning, Beavers Built their Dam for Free in 48 Hours: https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials-spent-5-years-planning-beavers-built-their-dam-for-free-in-48-hours.html https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials... Now, if we could just train beavers to build affordable housing...
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  What do we do about the nimbyi beavers?
  - Zigurd 2y ago
    Nimbeavers went extinct for obvious reasons.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  I think you need an apex predator / mammal to solve affordable housing... Contractors' quotes 5x higher than for private buildings? Send a brown bear to talk to 'em. Limited government funding? Send a wild boar to budget meetings. Restrictive zoning laws? Put a mountain lion in the room at the next zoning review. NIMBYs don't want affordable housing? Wolves roam their neighborhood until NIMBYs agree to allow new housing. Lengthy approval process? A honey badger asks for approval. Economic disparity between rising housing costs and stagnant wages? Moose roams around in businesses until wages raise.
  - hyperion2010 2y ago
    I love the idea of pricing all externalities as time required to be around dangerous animal. I think it would really help make the cost of externalities viscerally real in a way that helps stimulation the imagination :)
  - whyenot 2y ago
    I was afraid you would suggest giving all the regulators malaria.
zabzonk 2y ago
As my late Mum often said about hedgehogs - "I want one! Or two!". I've always planned to have back-garden pond, which might be nice for beavers, but I don't suppose I will now, due to age and not being able to look after it. Sniff. Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???
- justincormack 2y ago
  I knew someone with a pet albino hedgehog. I thought it wS a european hedgehog but maybe not?
- itishappy 2y ago
  > Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not??? They're protected species in much of Europe, so the law is to prevent people from grabbing them out of their backyard. You can have African Pygmy Hedgehogs! My girlfriend and I owned 3, and they're adorable little menaces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    Seems a bit silly, seeing as hedgehogs are somewhat endangered in the UK. If they were bred for pets, we'd surely have more of them!
    - jimnotgym 2y ago
      I find it funny that its top predator, the badger, is also protected, despite being very common.
      - zabzonk 2y ago
        I came across both on the same day back in the early 1970s. I was hitching up the A1 to Edinburgh and got stuck, then I came across a hog trying to cross the very busy road, so I grabbed it and ran across and dumped it in the verge. A little later, still with thumb stuck out, I heard rustling in the undergrowth, and this black and white critter waddled past me as if I wasn't there. Kind of sad that people don't hitch anymore. You come across all sorts of stuff and people. My little brother was in a garage band and wrote a song called "Stick Out Your Thumb And Have Some Fun", which I liked.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
My mother lived in a gated community, in Maryland. They had a small lake. Beavers used to come up from the nearby park, and dam up the lake. They'd chew down the decorative cherry trees (boo), and Bradford Pear trees (yay). I was reading (maybe here), that beavers basically obviated a multimillion-dollar dam project, somewhere out West.
- perdomon 2y ago
  Yes, beavers. They're very efficient an building dams but awful at following engineering instructions, often ignoring them altogether. They make for a very untrustworthy workforce and we should keep an eye on their behaviors especially around critical architecture.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    :) This was the story: https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-planifikonte-prej-7-vitesh-kastoret-ndertojne-brenda-dy--i84652 https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-plani...
  - throwup238 2y ago
    The Beaver union has always had too much power.
  - teamonkey 2y ago
    Unironically, I believe the success of reintroducing beavers to the UK will be determined by how well they manage to follow planning legislature
pawpatrolmumu 2y ago
Beavers are horrible creatures that tease, provoke and bait reactive dogs into attacking them. Some dogs may even get injured while killing them! Beavers should be banned!
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  My goodness! Please, give us your source, I always suspected those flat tails and buck teeth were a vicissitude of some type.
  - throw949494jfj 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - Timon3 2y ago
    I believe I've seen such behavior in the documentary film "Hundreds of Beavers".
perdomon 2y ago
Castoreum is back on the menu, boys.
- standardUser 2y ago
  From Wikipedia: "About 140 kilograms of castoreum are harvested a year. An average beaver has 100 - 200 grams of castor sacs. So less than 2000 wild beavers are trapped and killed each year for castoreum, mostly in Canada - Eurasian beaver population levels are still too low for trapping to be effective."
acomjean 2y ago
My brother had some beavers move back into the stream near his house. I’m sure he’d happily ship them over to the UK. Knowing they’ll be more next year means he’d probably give you an annual subscription. He doesn’t really hate the beavers, just doesn’t want them going after his pair tree, though he found a way to defend it. They’re fascinating animals.
- rickandmortyy 2y ago
  what is a pair tree?
  - jorgen123 2y ago
    When you have a pair of programmers sitting around the same tree. Could also be a pear tree.
    - rickandmortyy 2y ago
      is that like the bodhi tree but instead of buddhism it is basic
  - louthy 2y ago
    There’s two of them. Very tasty
- edm0nd 2y ago
  They also can be pests and a nuisance. We have some beavers that dam up parts of our property every few years which stops water from flowing to certain areas we need water in. We just throw smoke in them to make sure they abandon it and then stick some Tannerite in their dams and blow em up. Honestly, it's a pretty fun way to deal with it.
shanecleveland 2y ago
A stream in my community that had been rerouted and straightened in the name of both farming and development was recently restored to a more natural course, including its flood plains. Beavers came back quickly. Most obvious sign, beyond the dams and ponds created, are the signature pointed stumps and felled trees. Some are significant in size, and have actually fallen across trails and roads. They have fenced around some trees bordering roads, and have gone in to do see preventative trimming. Pretty cool.
time0ut 2y ago
I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive. We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  It's nice to live on a property which accommodates wildife. That would be very rare in Europe. Most larger properties would be agricultural land.
  - fennecfoxy 2y ago
    It's not rare in Europe at all...
- tcptomato 2y ago
  They weren't. They were reintroduced in Scotland in 2009.
  - time0ut 2y ago
    Right. I took the article to mean they were extinct before then. I did not know that they had ever lived there.
jimnotgym 2y ago
On several UK rivers, most notably the River Wye on the Welsh/English border, there exists a powerful river trust that has raised millions to remove 'barriers to salmon migration'. They took down and bypassed weirs on tributaries. They pulled out dead trees. Then other bodies started felling trees into their river to create habitat for juvenile fish. As an angler you might forgive me for thinking one of those bodies was in the wrong. Either way their conservation efforts have not mitigated the collapsing stocks of salmon over the two decades of their management. I for one am happy for the beavers to have a go instead
- lukas099 2y ago
  I believe that the group pulling out the dead trees was wrong. A good search term for this topic, btw, is "large woody debris".
  - throwup238 2y ago
    Depending on the tree and local conditions it can take tens or hundreds of years for them to decay. That’s why old growth forests take so long to restore, they require several generations of dead trees in different states of decay. This allows everything to fungi and insects get established. They definitely shouldn’t have removed dead trees. Worst case scenario if they were ugly and someone politically powerful wanted them gone they should have been broken up or ground into large mulch.
    - jimnotgym 2y ago
      They also removed a lot of living trees to 'let in more light'. I always felt that let in more heat too. Other river trusts were planting more trees at the same time! I always felt that varied habitat was better.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    I was once at a conservation event with the Wye and Usk foundation and the Wild trout Trust. WUF presented first on removing obstructions, then WTT presented on large woody debris! WUF, however, was rich and could push out other people and groups and push their vision. Another group were working on a novel way to stock salmon (semi natural rearing, pioneered successfuly on the Tyne) and WUF campaigned successfully to have it banned! It was a lesson to me as a young man that not all conservation groups were net good. The rod salmon catch on the Wye was 188 last year, down from 6,000 in the 1960s.
TriangleEdge 2y ago
"Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported." I don't understand what a stakeholder is in this context. Also, why are licenses involved? What does this even mean?
- vjk800 2y ago
  A license is needed to be a beaver in England. Beavers not carrying license cards will be considered illegal aliens and returned to their country of citizenship.
- seanw444 2y ago
  > Also, why are licenses involved? It's the UK. (Sorry, had to.)
  - fiftyacorn 2y ago
    I imagine there is an impact on downstream water so needs to be considered before granting a licence
    - Litost 2y ago
      I'm not sure of the licence specifics related to downstream water, but in general: The impact on downstream water is almost entirely positive, the leaky dams they build filter sediment and excess nutrients (often from fertiliser run off). They also smooth out peak water flow to help alleviate downstream flooding. Obviously this comes at the cost of flooding areas behind their dams, but this can also be positive, because in the increasingly dry summers, the ponds they create help keep the land upstream cooler and wetter. The beaver site in Ealing, London was mostly funded because it was a cheaper solution to help with downstream flooding than equivalent hard infrastructure and a significant cost of that project was the fence to keep them in. Even fish which need to navigate upstream, can leap these dams because they have co-evolved with the beaver, and also beavers are vegetarian so don't predate the fish. Obviously the main problem, is because in the UK we wiped them out, we've not co-evolved with them, hence the problems of them flooding land that would regularly have flooded, but we have decided to use for other purposes. I highly recommend anyone who's interested in ecosystems go visit an established beaver site, the mosaic of habitats they create can support large amounts of biodiversity.
fdb345 2y ago
Stupid idea. We're already having to kill them because of rising numbers. England is a nation of floodplains. Its also overcrowded. Another STUPID green fallacy.
- michaelhoney 2y ago
  calm down mate
- standardUser 2y ago
  Did a free-flowing river write this comment?
  - artursapek 2y ago
    lmfao
- lukas099 2y ago
  With beaver, flooding is more common but the severity of the worst floods is lessened.
  - fdb345 2y ago
    LOL tell that to the farmer who loses his entire field you wazzick
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  Exon mibile sponsors this idiicy and the pocahontas crowd happily self destructs. Idealization of reality is a retardation.
ashoeafoot 2y ago
brought to you by exon mobile
mngnt 2y ago
I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated. In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess. Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity. I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
- pancakemouse 2y ago
  The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.
  - HdS84 2y ago
    Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs. There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...
    - hulitu 2y ago
      Wolf is an unfortunate animal. Since one ate vdL's poney, the whole EU is after him. /s
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
garyclarke27 2y ago
Rewilding the UK is a great idea, especially considering that we have so little boring wildlife. Why is it so painstakingly slow, Lynx should be introduced urgently, the countryside is overrun with deer causing an unbalanced eco-system and many road traffic accidents.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Vote for bears here. They're so cute.

193 points by thinkingemote 2y ago

https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/ https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/ Also worth a watch

>Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported. What a bunch of dissimulating bullshit. If they actually wanted to support landowners, they wouldn't be re-introducing this destructive species.

hmmokidk 2y ago
Man someone has gotta say it. Thank you. This is not acceptable and does not solve the root problem. If anything it creates so many more. Stupid government. They have to get rid of the destructive species once and for all. Let the Beavers have the human houses, whatever it takes, just get the humans away from earth before they make the place uninhabitable for all.
- foobarian 2y ago
  > does not solve the root problem It kind of does! :-) There is a stream behind our yard and one year beavers built a dam. They were hard to spot in the daytime but we caught them at night with trailcams. They are very cute but surprisingly big and round. Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. We enjoyed the process of watching the nature unfold.
  - sophacles 2y ago
    Read it again - they aren't ranting about beavers.
  - hmmokidk 2y ago
    If you’re arguing for untouched by wildlife perfect trails just go to Disneyland. If we are in agreement then please accept my humble high five.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      There are cats living in Disneyland, and many ducks.
      - hmmokidk 2y ago
        Nuke em
  - II2II 2y ago
    > Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. I've encountered relatively few people who were concerned about the damage to trees. The typical concern is over damage to land. Any animal than engineers their environment, including both beavers and humans, has a disproportionate ability to alter land use. That includes humancentric development and natural ecosystems. I am not going to claim that beavers are either good or bad. I am going to point out that humans are as much a part of nature as beavers, so preserving natural ecosystems is almost always in our favour. Yet there are circumstances where managing is likely a better approach than preserving, simply because nature can throw nasty things our way too. (We are, for example, not to eager to let rats thrive in our cities.)
- michaelhoney 2y ago
  maybe humans aren't the only species on the planet
mystified5016 2y ago
Oi! You got a loicense for that beaver?!
- bozhark 2y ago
  Works in the Netherlands https://business.gov.nl/regulation/sex-business-permit/ https://business.gov.nl/regulation/sex-business-permit/
Angostura 2y ago
There are farmers who are more than happy to work alongside them: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/28/ultimate-bringers-of-life-cornwall-farmer-beavers-stop-flooding https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/28/ultimate...
- barbazoo 2y ago
  And if you’re a farmer that’s working against nature not with it then you’re part of the problem.

onychomys 2y ago

For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.

the__alchemist 2y ago
I appreciate the rec! The extended phenotype (Dawkins) also highlights this phenomenon.
selykg 2y ago
This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting. REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it! Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.
- krunck 2y ago
  Isle Royale is amazing. Just filter your water... because beavers.
  - selykg 2y ago
    Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad. it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol
    - rickandmortyy 2y ago
      free folk activities fascinate pets as much as pets fascinate free folk

brianbest101 2y ago

[dead]

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Reminds me of the (supposed) benefits of reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone; they reduced and got the elk population moving, reducing overgrazing, helping beavers recover, and helping rivers and biodiversity to recover. https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/ https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/, https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/ https://rewilding.academy/how-wolves-change-rivers/ Of course, that's Yellowstone which is a lot bigger and not populated by people. Wolves are returning (or, being allowed to return) to the Netherlands as well where they end up decimating sheep populations for the fun of it, much to the chagrin of farmers.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Of the 800,000 sheep in the Netherlands, dogs kill 13,000 every year. There's quite a smaller wolf population than dogs.
world2vec 2y ago
Slightly off-topic but it's related to wolves. My parents' neighbours have a huge number of goats in their property. It really is in the middle of nowhere Northern Portugal and for decades everyone always said "oh the wolves are gone, they used to be such a menace to our animals but not anymore. Barely any need for guard dogs". However, there is a small (200~300) population of wolves and since Covid it seems they got less scared of people, or more brave and desperate because the intense forest fires have ravaged their turf. Last year they attacked the goats and killed dozens of them. It was, according to my dad, one of the goriest things he ever saw. Guess what, the guard dogs are back, nobody says it's all a thing in the past. On one hand it's great news that wolves are making a comeback but there's always the other side.
- loandbehold 2y ago
  Is your parents' property fenced off? How does using guard dogs compare to having an electric fence?
  - world2vec 2y ago

thinkingemote 2y ago

The beavers were released yesterday in the UK: "the National Trust has legally released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset. " https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-release-in-england/ https://beavertrust.org/historic-first-official-wild-beaver-... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygxvzpkevo

hedora 2y ago

Related: While Government Officials Spent 5 Years Planning, Beavers Built their Dam for Free in 48 Hours: https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials-spent-5-years-planning-beavers-built-their-dam-for-free-in-48-hours.html https://boingboing.net/2025/02/05/while-government-officials... Now, if we could just train beavers to build affordable housing...

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
What do we do about the nimbyi beavers?
- Zigurd 2y ago
  Nimbeavers went extinct for obvious reasons.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I think you need an apex predator / mammal to solve affordable housing... Contractors' quotes 5x higher than for private buildings? Send a brown bear to talk to 'em. Limited government funding? Send a wild boar to budget meetings. Restrictive zoning laws? Put a mountain lion in the room at the next zoning review. NIMBYs don't want affordable housing? Wolves roam their neighborhood until NIMBYs agree to allow new housing. Lengthy approval process? A honey badger asks for approval. Economic disparity between rising housing costs and stagnant wages? Moose roams around in businesses until wages raise.
- hyperion2010 2y ago
  I love the idea of pricing all externalities as time required to be around dangerous animal. I think it would really help make the cost of externalities viscerally real in a way that helps stimulation the imagination :)
- whyenot 2y ago
  I was afraid you would suggest giving all the regulators malaria.

zabzonk 2y ago

As my late Mum often said about hedgehogs - "I want one! Or two!". I've always planned to have back-garden pond, which might be nice for beavers, but I don't suppose I will now, due to age and not being able to look after it. Sniff. Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not???

justincormack 2y ago
I knew someone with a pet albino hedgehog. I thought it wS a european hedgehog but maybe not?
itishappy 2y ago
> Actually, you are not allowed to have pet European hedgehogs in the UK. Why not??? They're protected species in much of Europe, so the law is to prevent people from grabbing them out of their backyard. You can have African Pygmy Hedgehogs! My girlfriend and I owned 3, and they're adorable little menaces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-toed_hedgehog
- zabzonk 2y ago
  Seems a bit silly, seeing as hedgehogs are somewhat endangered in the UK. If they were bred for pets, we'd surely have more of them!
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    I find it funny that its top predator, the badger, is also protected, despite being very common.
    - zabzonk 2y ago
      I came across both on the same day back in the early 1970s. I was hitching up the A1 to Edinburgh and got stuck, then I came across a hog trying to cross the very busy road, so I grabbed it and ran across and dumped it in the verge. A little later, still with thumb stuck out, I heard rustling in the undergrowth, and this black and white critter waddled past me as if I wasn't there. Kind of sad that people don't hitch anymore. You come across all sorts of stuff and people. My little brother was in a garage band and wrote a song called "Stick Out Your Thumb And Have Some Fun", which I liked.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

My mother lived in a gated community, in Maryland. They had a small lake. Beavers used to come up from the nearby park, and dam up the lake. They'd chew down the decorative cherry trees (boo), and Bradford Pear trees (yay). I was reading (maybe here), that beavers basically obviated a multimillion-dollar dam project, somewhere out West.

perdomon 2y ago
Yes, beavers. They're very efficient an building dams but awful at following engineering instructions, often ignoring them altogether. They make for a very untrustworthy workforce and we should keep an eye on their behaviors especially around critical architecture.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  :) This was the story: https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-planifikonte-prej-7-vitesh-kastoret-ndertojne-brenda-dy--i84652 https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/qeveria-po-e-plani...
- throwup238 2y ago
  The Beaver union has always had too much power.
- teamonkey 2y ago
  Unironically, I believe the success of reintroducing beavers to the UK will be determined by how well they manage to follow planning legislature

pawpatrolmumu 2y ago

Beavers are horrible creatures that tease, provoke and bait reactive dogs into attacking them. Some dogs may even get injured while killing them! Beavers should be banned!

bloomingeek 2y ago
My goodness! Please, give us your source, I always suspected those flat tails and buck teeth were a vicissitude of some type.
- throw949494jfj 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Timon3 2y ago
  I believe I've seen such behavior in the documentary film "Hundreds of Beavers".

perdomon 2y ago

Castoreum is back on the menu, boys.

standardUser 2y ago
From Wikipedia: "About 140 kilograms of castoreum are harvested a year. An average beaver has 100 - 200 grams of castor sacs. So less than 2000 wild beavers are trapped and killed each year for castoreum, mostly in Canada - Eurasian beaver population levels are still too low for trapping to be effective."

acomjean 2y ago

My brother had some beavers move back into the stream near his house. I’m sure he’d happily ship them over to the UK. Knowing they’ll be more next year means he’d probably give you an annual subscription. He doesn’t really hate the beavers, just doesn’t want them going after his pair tree, though he found a way to defend it. They’re fascinating animals.

rickandmortyy 2y ago
what is a pair tree?
- jorgen123 2y ago
  When you have a pair of programmers sitting around the same tree. Could also be a pear tree.
  - rickandmortyy 2y ago
    is that like the bodhi tree but instead of buddhism it is basic
- louthy 2y ago
  There’s two of them. Very tasty
edm0nd 2y ago
They also can be pests and a nuisance. We have some beavers that dam up parts of our property every few years which stops water from flowing to certain areas we need water in. We just throw smoke in them to make sure they abandon it and then stick some Tannerite in their dams and blow em up. Honestly, it's a pretty fun way to deal with it.

shanecleveland 2y ago

A stream in my community that had been rerouted and straightened in the name of both farming and development was recently restored to a more natural course, including its flood plains. Beavers came back quickly. Most obvious sign, beyond the dams and ponds created, are the signature pointed stumps and felled trees. Some are significant in size, and have actually fallen across trails and roads. They have fenced around some trees bordering roads, and have gone in to do see preventative trimming. Pretty cool.

time0ut 2y ago

I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive. We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.

DeathArrow 2y ago
It's nice to live on a property which accommodates wildife. That would be very rare in Europe. Most larger properties would be agricultural land.
- fennecfoxy 2y ago
  It's not rare in Europe at all...
tcptomato 2y ago
They weren't. They were reintroduced in Scotland in 2009.
- time0ut 2y ago
  Right. I took the article to mean they were extinct before then. I did not know that they had ever lived there.

jimnotgym 2y ago

On several UK rivers, most notably the River Wye on the Welsh/English border, there exists a powerful river trust that has raised millions to remove 'barriers to salmon migration'. They took down and bypassed weirs on tributaries. They pulled out dead trees. Then other bodies started felling trees into their river to create habitat for juvenile fish. As an angler you might forgive me for thinking one of those bodies was in the wrong. Either way their conservation efforts have not mitigated the collapsing stocks of salmon over the two decades of their management. I for one am happy for the beavers to have a go instead

lukas099 2y ago
I believe that the group pulling out the dead trees was wrong. A good search term for this topic, btw, is "large woody debris".
- throwup238 2y ago
  Depending on the tree and local conditions it can take tens or hundreds of years for them to decay. That’s why old growth forests take so long to restore, they require several generations of dead trees in different states of decay. This allows everything to fungi and insects get established. They definitely shouldn’t have removed dead trees. Worst case scenario if they were ugly and someone politically powerful wanted them gone they should have been broken up or ground into large mulch.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    They also removed a lot of living trees to 'let in more light'. I always felt that let in more heat too. Other river trusts were planting more trees at the same time! I always felt that varied habitat was better.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  I was once at a conservation event with the Wye and Usk foundation and the Wild trout Trust. WUF presented first on removing obstructions, then WTT presented on large woody debris! WUF, however, was rich and could push out other people and groups and push their vision. Another group were working on a novel way to stock salmon (semi natural rearing, pioneered successfuly on the Tyne) and WUF campaigned successfully to have it banned! It was a lesson to me as a young man that not all conservation groups were net good. The rod salmon catch on the Wye was 188 last year, down from 6,000 in the 1960s.

TriangleEdge 2y ago

"Natural England has developed a detailed licencing regime and application process to make sure that stakeholders are engaged and landowners are supported." I don't understand what a stakeholder is in this context. Also, why are licenses involved? What does this even mean?

vjk800 2y ago
A license is needed to be a beaver in England. Beavers not carrying license cards will be considered illegal aliens and returned to their country of citizenship.
seanw444 2y ago
> Also, why are licenses involved? It's the UK. (Sorry, had to.)
- fiftyacorn 2y ago
  I imagine there is an impact on downstream water so needs to be considered before granting a licence
  - Litost 2y ago
    I'm not sure of the licence specifics related to downstream water, but in general: The impact on downstream water is almost entirely positive, the leaky dams they build filter sediment and excess nutrients (often from fertiliser run off). They also smooth out peak water flow to help alleviate downstream flooding. Obviously this comes at the cost of flooding areas behind their dams, but this can also be positive, because in the increasingly dry summers, the ponds they create help keep the land upstream cooler and wetter. The beaver site in Ealing, London was mostly funded because it was a cheaper solution to help with downstream flooding than equivalent hard infrastructure and a significant cost of that project was the fence to keep them in. Even fish which need to navigate upstream, can leap these dams because they have co-evolved with the beaver, and also beavers are vegetarian so don't predate the fish. Obviously the main problem, is because in the UK we wiped them out, we've not co-evolved with them, hence the problems of them flooding land that would regularly have flooded, but we have decided to use for other purposes. I highly recommend anyone who's interested in ecosystems go visit an established beaver site, the mosaic of habitats they create can support large amounts of biodiversity.

fdb345 2y ago

Stupid idea. We're already having to kill them because of rising numbers. England is a nation of floodplains. Its also overcrowded. Another STUPID green fallacy.

michaelhoney 2y ago
calm down mate
standardUser 2y ago
Did a free-flowing river write this comment?
- artursapek 2y ago
  lmfao
lukas099 2y ago
With beaver, flooding is more common but the severity of the worst floods is lessened.
- fdb345 2y ago
  LOL tell that to the farmer who loses his entire field you wazzick
ashoeafoot 2y ago
Exon mibile sponsors this idiicy and the pocahontas crowd happily self destructs. Idealization of reality is a retardation.

ashoeafoot 2y ago

brought to you by exon mobile

mngnt 2y ago

I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated. In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess. Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity. I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.

pancakemouse 2y ago
The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.
- HdS84 2y ago
  Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs. There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...
  - hulitu 2y ago
    Wolf is an unfortunate animal. Since one ate vdL's poney, the whole EU is after him. /s
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

garyclarke27 2y ago

Rewilding the UK is a great idea, especially considering that we have so little boring wildlife. Why is it so painstakingly slow, Lynx should be introduced urgently, the countryside is overrun with deer causing an unbalanced eco-system and many road traffic accidents.

dboreham 2y ago
Vote for bears here. They're so cute.