It’s 6pm on a freezing evening in the south of England, and the remote, muddy track I am on is forbiddingly dark and quiet. Local farmers have ceased their ploughing for the day. The kingfishers that dart the nearby waters are in their nests. And there are no dog walkers out for a late stroll.
But there is a different, more furtive kind of activity about to take place. Soon, a dark Ford Transit pulls up and its driver – a man in his fifties dressed in thick coat and scarf – rolls down the window and greets me with a hesitant “evening”. He is not alone. In the back of his van, cocooned in a metal crate and somewhat grumpy from four hours of confinement, is the illicit cargo of a large beaver.
Transported that very same day from Cornwall, the industrious mammal is being released into this water catchment as part of a campaign known as “beaver bombing” – where the animals are covertly distributed throughout the country in a bid to boost the species’ numbers in the wild.
It is illegal to release the creatures without a licence, whether that be into the wild or an enclosure, and doing so is punishable by up to two years in prison. The Telegraph photographer and I have only been allowed to witness this evening’s activity after months of delicate negotiation, and there are understandable nerves.
The “beaver bomber”, a small cog in a wider network that has operated for decades reintroducing varying species, climbs out of his van and slides open its back door. Immediately, the strong smell of the animal inside wafts out. And then, sure enough, we see her, an adult female, nestled in straw inside the crate. She is the size of a small cockapoo, with trademark coarse brown fur and a broad, paddle-like tail.
“This is Ronnie,” the man says. “I name them all. She’s a clever bugger too. She whittled some wood in her crate and was poking it through the bars and waving it around the whole journey.
“She made such a racket at one point I thought she’d escaped. Bloody terrifying given that I was doing 70 [mph] on the motorway.”
These words are mostly a whisper; his manner is tense, and it soon becomes crystal clear that – despite the somewhat comical nature of our endeavour – we are to be deathly quiet. After all, the plan is to release this beaver in a brook situated close to private land, and any attention from lights or noise may attract the ire of a local farmer, who could presume we are lamping – where a spotlight is used to disorientate animals such as rabbits to make them easier to hunt.
It is pitch black, but we are ordered to turn off our phone lights. “Make no noise. Just one quick photo of the beaver. No flash light!” He nods to me, with a terrible cold. “And do stop coughing.” After a worrying moment where we all freeze, alerted by the sound of quad bikes in the distance, the man lifts the heavy crate from the boot, then carries it twenty metres along the track.
With some effort, it is hauled into the woods nearby. The man uses a small red LED torch to light his way, but I have no such tool and at one point, in calamitous scenes, I trip over a fallen tree and faceplant in some moss. Still, we make it to the edge of the trickling stream, where the front of the crate is jolted open – freedom – and the man bends down for one last glance.
“I always try to look them in the eye as they go,” he whispers. “Is that to… check for conjunctivitis?” I ask. “No! It’s to get a connection. I want it to know we are trying to save its species.”
Confused, at first the beaver clings to the inside of its crate before slowly waddling out. After a quick sniff of the air, long whiskers twitching, it darts into the brook. We watch as it swims in a circle, before there’s a loud splash – the noise of a tail hitting the water. “And that is the sound of a happy beaver,” the man says, relief in his voice. “Job done.”
As peculiar as this endeavour sounds, it is not unique. Over the past two decades, beaver bombers – frustrated by slow government progress on wild releases of the creatures – have freed up to 200 beavers across Britain in a bid to repopulate barren river catchments.
Once widespread, the rodents were hunted to extinction in the 16th century for their fur, meat and scent glands, which were used in perfume. Their demise also led to a loss of wetlands and bogs.
Activists believe that thanks to their actions, and subsequent breeding, there may now be roughly 4,500 of the semi-aquatic animals along Britain’s waterways, mainly in Scotland, Kent and the West Country, but also across swathes of southern England. Other parts of Europe have witnessed similar recoveries.
In 2022, as numbers continued to rebound, Beavers were acknowledged as a native species in England, paving the way for formal reintroductions. But no strategy has yet been announced. And in the absence of any plan for official releases into the wild, conservationists have taken matters into their own hands in a bid to give the creatures footholds.
Their return is not without its critics, however. Farmers often worry beaver dams and tunnels may create flooding in fields, or cause river banks to collapse. Trees may be felled by their magnificent teeth, and there have been concerns the beavers may eat fish (they don’t, they eat bark).
Eyebrows have also been raised over the illegality of the activists’ enterprise. Tim Bonner, chief executive of Countryside Alliance recently blasted the beaver bombing crowd as criminals, taking aim at their “increasingly blatant” releases.
“I have nothing against beavers. [But] the fact that some people believe that the current process [to release the creatures into the wild] is too lengthy… is not an excuse to carry out illegal activity,” he said. “The same activists would be the first to…condemn illegal pollution of rivers and other wildlife crime. [It] stinks of hypocrisy.”
Our particular beaver bomber is keen to defend his actions. After the release, we drive to the nearest pub where, warmed by a log fire and a pint of ale each, he explains his motives. “The people who do this are normal, law-abiding citizens,” he says. “We are accountants, gardeners, shop-keepers.
“All humans do is take, but at least I know that when I die, I’ll have made some effort to redress the balance of nature. It’s ridiculous that we have to do this, scrabbling around the woods at night. But that’s where we’re at. And I suppose it does add some excitement to our lives.
“You have to be very spontaneous,” he adds. “I got a text yesterday morning from a landowner, saying he had caught a beaver and did I want it.
“So I drove to Cornwall, put it in the van and drove straight back – an eight hour round trip. My only break was a quick tea stop at an old friend’s house.”
“And did you tell him you had a beaver in your boot?” I ask. “No, of course not. He thought I was moving furniture.”
He explains he has been involved for three years after being recruited by a friend, and has “lost count” of the number of beavers he has released. There is, he says, a small network of people who share the load; some do the driving, others find the best spots to free the creatures.
The beavers come from Scotland, the north of England and increasingly Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Kent, where in some places they are abundant. They are often gifted by the larger landowners and farmers who have the animals on their grounds.
The “bombing” mostly takes place in the autumn, due to the fact beavers have young kits during March to July. And to catch them, the beavers are trapped in fake warrens on rivers, enticed in by bits of carrot or apple. Often they are caught in groups and released on the same waterway together.
But it is not without risk, to the bomber or beaver. “I’m always panicked that my van will break down, or that I’ll get caught speeding,” the man says. “How will I explain a beaver in my boot?”
The beavers, for their part, typically “put up” with the journey, occasionally banging their tails in protest. “We had one that died, which was awful, but we think it was ill already. We buried it in a hedge. And we had another who played dead the whole way. I got to the other end, poked and poked him, and then one eye just opened. I called him Lazurus. It was such a relief.”
Once in their new home, the beavers first find shelter along the water bank and then begin to feed off bark. They then start to explore their areas and river network and can swim for miles to find a mate.
Each one is placed where there are no other beavers to spare the prospect of territorial conflict, and their locations are carefully logged and mapped. The bombers don’t come back to check on them, but have a sense of what the landscape might look like with their work. “These are nature’s engineers,” the man tells me. “In ten years’ time, they will have changed the landscape. There will be subtle signs that nature is recovering. They are a catalyst for regrowth and renewal.”
Beavers are, in fact, a keystone species, meaning they play a vital role in the structure and productivity of an ecosystem. By felling trees, damming smaller water courses and digging canal systems, they increase water retention, helping avoid drought and reducing flooding downstream. They also clean water by storing sediments in the ponds their dams create, and bring benefits to other species such as otters, birds and insects.
Following similar schemes in Europe, they were first reintroduced back to the UK in the early noughties in two projects at fenced off sites: one at Ham Fen in Kent, the other in the Bamff eco estate in the Scottish highlands, from which some escaped.
The Scottish government has since supported and sanctioned further releases, with NatureScot – the body which advises the government on nature – estimating numbers may reach 10,000 by 2030.
But in England, action has been slower. A public consultation on sanctioned releases formally closed in 2021, the same year then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson riffed he wanted to “build back beaver”. But since then there have only been a handful of schemes across England that have seen beavers released into enclosed sites.
Today, there is only one “official” population of beavers in England, on the river Otter, in Devon. It is made up of creatures that were escapees, now given permission to stay.
Defra told The Telegraph it is “committed to restoring and protecting nature and … will continue to work with Natural England to develop our approach to beaver reintroductions in England.”
Amid a lack of clarity on when such reintroductions might take place, the illegal releases continue.
Some warn such illicit action is counter-productive, threatening backing for the reintroduction of the species. Eva Bishop, Head of Communications for the Beaver Trust, recently told The Guardian that the unauthorised releases by renegade rewilders could “jeopardise the 69 per cent public support for their wild release”.
Still, the bombers are unfazed. When I speak to another over the phone, he tells me Britain is full of “wildlife rebels”.
“These creatures should be here. They belong here and our landscapes need them,” he says. “We are extremely diligent and the places we put them are so out of the way no one even notices.”
He points out that the illegal reintroduction of beavers echoes that of other species – the iconic wild boar in the Forest of Dean and pine martens and goshawks in the New Forest.
“Everyone is overjoyed to see goshawks back. No one mentions that they were illegally released. And this is similar to what happened with otters in the 1990s. They were nearly wiped out and then made a miraculous recovery from their stronghold in the far north-west of Scotland.
“They made it to every English county – even Kent – in under a decade, often released by the same people who are now doing the beavers. It’s the same people, decade after decade, species after species. But we keep quiet as we don’t want a criminal record.”
Back in the pub, I ask the beaver bomber if he is worried about being caught. “I have thought about it,” he says. “But then I imagine any possible trial and think it would be thrown out.”
We drain our pints and head back out into the freezing night, our minds drawn to the furry rodent we left in the stream.
“Will she be okay?” I ask. “Ronnie? Yes. Beavers are resilient. They can’t walk hundreds of miles up and down the motorway to repopulate, but they can do everything else. Given a chance, nature always comes back.”
EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel
