EDGES OF EXISTENCE

I am talking to James Wallace, CEO of the Beaver Trust, but we are not talking about beavers, we are talking about buffer strips. Wallace is quite animated about them, so much so that beavers hardly get a mention. The Beaver Trust is all about the large-scale restoration of our river system. The Trust is so named, Wallace tells me, because the beaver is a “highly productive, hard-working, communal, familial organism” – all qualities that Wallace clearly admires. But the buffer strip is as integral to his vision for rivers as the charismatic little ‘ecosystem engineer’ that has so caught the public’s imagination.

Buffer strips are areas along riverbanks that are left to go wild – free from farming, intensive livestock grazing, or any other interference. On a map, think of them as making two ‘green’ strips alongside the ‘blue’ length of the river corridor.

Wallace has a dream: he wants