At Woodland Valley Farm in Cornwall, England, the handiwork of beavers is evident: Dams made of sticks and logs tower several feet high. Farmer Chris Jones welcomed the animals to his land to help mitigate annual flooding of the nearby town.
Centuries after beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain, efforts are now underway by environmentalists to reintroduce the creature. As the rodents’ return becomes increasingly widespread – in many parts of Britain, Europe, and North America – the debate is shifting from whether to bring beavers back to a question of how to manage them once they start popping up in waterways.
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Beaver populations are rebounding in Europe and North America. Communities are seeking balance between valuing the rodents’ benefits and managing conflicts with humans.
Beaver dams can calm the onslaught of floods and boost biodiversity. Some scientists caution that the beavers’ effects can vary substantially. The most prevalent problems associated with beavers have to do with the flooding they can cause, rather than mitigate.
“Sometimes they can really be a nuisance, they can [mess] everything up, they can flood fields, even houses,” says Christof Angst, beaver management coordinator for Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment. “But if you look at it on the whole, the positive impact of this species is so huge, that we must deal with the conflicts.”
There’s a site in Cornwall, in southern England, called Woodland Valley Farm. Here, farmer Chris Jones allows beavers to roam in an enclosed five-acre plot. Their natural dams, he says, have helped control repeated flooding of the downstream village.
Centuries after beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain, efforts are now underway by environmentalists to reintroduce the creature. As the rodents’ return becomes increasingly widespread – not only in this corner of England, but in many parts of Britain, Europe, and North America – the debate is shifting from whether to bring them back to a question of how to manage them once they start popping up in waterways.
“Sometimes they can really be a nuisance, they can [mess] everything up, they can flood fields, even houses,” says Christof Angst, consultant and beaver management coordinator at Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment. “But if you look at it on the whole, the positive impact of this species is so huge, that we must deal with the conflicts.”
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Beaver populations are rebounding in Europe and North America. Communities are seeking balance between valuing the rodents’ benefits and managing conflicts with humans.
This idea of beaver dams calming the onslaught of floods is widely documented, but some scientists caution that the effects can vary substantially. The most prevalent problems associated with beavers have to do with the flooding they can cause, rather than mitigate.
A beaver project in Cornwall
Woodland Valley Farm is accessed through a gate rimmed by trees. It is immediately clear that this is no ordinary patch of forest; rather, it is a kind of wooded wetland.
There are myriad bubbling brooks darting between patches of standing water. The cause of this transformation: Dams constructed of branches, logs, and other materials. Behind the highest dam lies a huge pond, a reservoir kept in place by this feat of natural engineering.
Jason Thomson
It is this ability of an ecosystem adapted by beavers to hold water that first inspired Mr. Jones to welcome them into his world. He was convinced that if the flow of water could be slowed, then the severity of the recurring floods in the nearby village of Ladock could be drastically reduced.
To describe the ecosystem’s fragile balance, Mr. Jones uses the analogy of a battery that uses water pressure to stay charged. “Before the beavers came … it would charge up but discharge immediately,’’ he says. “But the beavers came back, and [now] it charge[s] up just as fast, but it discharges much more slowly.”
Some of the benefits experienced when this keystone species gets to work on a landscape include a boost to biodiversity, drought resilience, and improvement of water quality by sifting out pollutants.
But the consequences of bringing beavers back are not all positive. Since they were hunted to extinction in Britain, and to near-extinction in Europe and North America, the landscape has changed from one dominated by nature to one harnessed by humans. As beavers begin to spread, they inevitably come into contact with the agriculture and infrastructure that now predominates.
In addition to flooding caused by the dams, critics point to the high costs of beaver-felled lumber and beaver reintroduction programs.
To avoid clashes, organizers have fenced in projects like Woodland Valley Farm. The beavers are not permitted to wander freely beyond the fences (although they have escaped a couple of times, requiring Mr. Jones and others to chase and return them).
Even in England, however, this is not always the case. Back in 2014, on the River Otter in Devon, a wild beaver population was discovered. They were captured and given a health check, and then, after a local campaign to let them go again, they were released under a five-year trial. At the trial’s end, the English government allowed the beavers to remain, citing environmental benefits.
Jason Thomson
“We’ve got to be pragmatic,” says Peter Burgess, director of nature recovery at Devon Wildlife Trust, who oversaw the River Otter trial. “There are places where they are going to come into conflict with people and with rural businesses, and in those situations there’s a whole range of tools to be able to ensure that that conflict’s managed really carefully.”
Mr. Burgess and his colleagues put together a beaver management strategy framework, which advises communication and listening, in an effort to dispel misunderstandings and assuage concerns. When beavers do cause issues, available options include modifying the dams, reducing water levels, or relocating the animals.
National protection
In Scotland, the beaver was protected in 2019, and any interventions – which can include lethal control – now require a license. That permission has been granted, sometimes controversially. In 2021, for instance, 87 beavers living near the River Tay were permitted to be legally killed.
In England, however, there currently is no national strategy, so although beavers became a protected species in late 2022, any problems that may arise from beaver activity are dealt with on an ad hoc basis.
“What happens when they end up in places where they’re going to cause problems?” asks Richard Bramley, a farmer from the York area and chair of the environment forum of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales. “Who’s going to pick up the cost, who’s going to do the repairs, who’s going to cover crop loss? There’s no plan.”
The risk of beaver-induced flooding is particularly acute in large areas of flat land.
In some places – parts of the Tay valley in Scotland, for example – this has already created problems for farmers, drowning their crops and causing damage to river banks. In other places, such as low-lying areas of the Netherlands, where people themselves are at risk of flooding, citizens worry that beavers could pose a threat if they begin to dig through the dikes that have been erected to hold the rivers back.
Creating zones of coexistence
One answer may be to proactively determine where beavers are likely to live or cause problems. In Switzerland, a system of this very kind is almost up and running. The aim is to identify potential conflicts before they arise and create a traffic-light system designating where beavers can roam free (green zones), where that’s debatable (amber zones), and where they should be removed (red zones).
In areas where the animals remain but also run into conflict with human activity, some people advocate for paid compensation, such as for farmers’ spoiled crops. Others say it’s better to reward landowners for setting areas aside for the beavers, creating buffer zones alongside waterways.
“What we want to steer people towards … is coexistence with wildlife and nature,” says Eva Bishop, head of communications and education at the Beaver Trust, a nonprofit that seeks to restore beavers to Britain. “We need to incentivize people to give space for nature to function.”
