All About Beavers

We had a fantastic evening with two short films by the Beaver Trust and a wonderful talk from Alicia Leow-Dyke, the Welsh Beaver Project Officer with the Wildlife Trusts Wales.  Alicia is hugely knowledgeable and has over 10 years of experience working with beavers.

Her talk took us through the history of beavers in the UK – its incredible to realise that beavers would have been present on every river in the UK - how different our rivers were and could be again. 

Beavers help rivers flow more slowly, their dams recreate wetland habitats, enabling rivers to meander, cleanign the river and preventing and reducing flooding.  It was astonishing to see how much cleaner rivers are after flowing through beaver dams. 

Both short films by the Beaver Trust Restoring Beavers To Regenerate Our Landscapes and Beavers without Borders were very powerful and informative, and served as an excellent introduction to Alicia’s talk.

Thanks to Hugh and James Rattray for their work filming and editing Alicia’s talk, now you can watch and enjoy Alicia’s talk on the Wye Valley Wilding You Tube channel. The ecology of beavers was fascinating and the case studies on how to live with beavers from countries with beavers was inspiring and hopeful.  The images below, taken from Alicia’s presentation show the shocking difference between the historic and current distribution of Beavers in Europe.

We, and our rivers, need the return of the beavers! WVW is planning a project to help us get ready for their arrival, so watch this space.  If you are interested in supporting the return of beavers or feel your land could be suitable for beaver reintroduction, please contact Louise to get involved with our Return of the Natives project.