Watch as beavers return to Bedfordshire for the first time in more than 400 years
Beavers have returned to Bedfordshire for the first time in over 400 years – and are settling in to their Southill Estate home.
The family of Eurasian beavers has been released into a purpose-built enclosure in the estate, following two years of careful preparation.
An adult male and two kits – who moved all the way from Scotland – were the first to take up their new home, with an adult female joining them a few days later.
Charles Whitbread, owner of the estate said: "This has been a long and complex journey, with challenges we didn't always know we would overcome and there were moments when we genuinely wondered whether this day would ever come. To finally see the beavers released and swimming in the landscape was truly wonderful, and something I will not forget. We hope the return of beavers will be the first of many lost species to find a home at Southill, and that what we are building here will continue to grow in ambition for years to come."
The Scottish beavers were humanely trapped under licence as part of a NatureScot mitigation scheme before being health screened at Five Sisters Zoo – while the female had spent the past 14 months at Wildwood Trust being rehabilitated and carefully prepared for independent living.
The painstaking process included securing a licence from Natural England in partnership with Beaver Trust – which led on the licence application, co-designed the main release pond, coordinated trapping operations and oversaw the safe transfer of animals to site.
The groundwork was carried out by the estate’s team under the leadership of Paul Dunn alongside a range of specialist contractors – and included building a securely fenced enclosure, pond creation, willow planting, and the rewiggling of an existing ditch to restore more natural hydrological flow and habitat complexity.
RESTORE, a specialist nature restoration company, provided strategic advice and management planning throughout.
The estate says the beaver release reflects its commitment to managing the land differently – and creating space for nature to recover alongside productive land use.
And the work is already paying off – the recovering habitats have already begun to support species such as grey partridge in greater numbers, alongside increases in wading and songbird populations and invertebrate communities.
The beavers’ dam-building is expected to continue altering the environment to create the perfect home for amphibians and a host of other aquatic species, including many rare and scarce invertebrates, along with nesting and foraging spaces for birds and bats.
Meanwhile, the dams also slow water flow, helping to retain water in the landscape, a critical function in Bedfordshire, one of the driest counties in the country, and contributing to natural flood mitigation within the River Ivel chalk stream catchment.
The beaver family will be closely monitored, and as the population grows, it is expected that future offspring may be trapped by the Beaver Trust and translocated to further government-licensed reintroduction projects across mainland Britain, helping to accelerate the species' national recovery.