The dam has broken. This morning’s Guardian reports that the Government is to grant nature groups a licence to release beavers into English waterways for the first time in centuries. Steve Reed – the Environment Secretary who received such a hearty reception at this week’s National Farmers’ Union conference – is to announce that the first releases could happen this autumn.
Once native to these shores, the beaver was hunted to extinction in Britain in the 16th century. They were hunted for their fur, their meat, and their scent oil, which was originally used in castor oil. But for the last twenty years, legally and illegally, the furry rodents have been making their gradual return to our rivers. They are now estimated to be around 500 living in the English wild.
When a rogue release occurred in the early 2010s, which led to beavers being spotted (somewhat ironically) on the River Otter in Devon, the then-government initially planned to trap them before a public backlash. Instead, a report was commissioned that found they brought considerable benefits, including reducing flooding risks and increasing biodiversity, including the size of fish.
Through all this, the beavers ended up being something of a Tory cause célèbre. Michael Gove announced a release trial in 2017. Not to be outdone in his beaver enthusiasm, Boris Johnson announced in 2021 he planned to “Build Back Beaver” post-Covid, and allow further licensed releases, having previously asked his father for permission to release them on his estate.
But – disaster! As with so much of the last fourteen years, for all our hearty pro-beaver rhetoric, we never got around to granting proper permission for conservationists to release beavers freely to dam, reproduce, and dam. Last month brought the news that Number 10 had now blocked the move, viewing it as, ahem, a ‘Tory legacy’ issue.
But this prompted a backlash. Natural England were naturally rather missed to discover their hard work drawing up reintroduction plans was to go to waste. The news made its way to the cover of His Majesty’s Daily Star – “Keep your filthy hands off Tory beavers” – which was covered for us by Kitty Thompson of the indomitable Conservative Environment Network.
Number 10’s change of heart should be considered a win for all those in the Conservative Party who have long been devoted to the beaver cause. But it cannot be said that the plans are not uncontroversial. While their supporters describe them as ‘Ecosystem Engineers’ for their positive impact, their detractors worry about flooding risks and costs.
Beaver critics have questioned many of the beaver’s benefits, suggesting that their ability to reduce floods was insufficient to justify the cost of their reintroduction. Then again, Reed has argued to Number 10 that the beavers could form part of the Government’s growth mission since their infrastructure-building recently saved the Czech government £1 million in flood defences.
Surely, however, a place for compromise exists. As Jamie Blackett writes for The Spectator, “science is showing that beavers are, on the whole, a very good thing upstream, where they create the habits for…creatures to thrive and reduce flooding by slowing down the water flow”. But they are “catastrophically bad downstream, where they can cause flooding”.
Blackett’s suggestion is a sensible one, and the same as that of the NFU. If widespread beaver releases cause disruption to our farmers, they must be shootable on site. They are cute. Their dams are impressive. They make the trout bigger. But if their industriousness is causing farmland to be flooded, farmers must have the freedom to do the same thing as those hunters.
Since 2022, beavers have been a legally protected species, meaning farmers require a licence even to start removing them. Such is our national tendresse for wildlife that one imagines a future beaver cull would produce the same opprobrium that the badger equivalent did a decade ago. But beaver backers must accept that the clock cannot be turned back five hundred years overnight.