Meet the beaver heroes

A tree stump glows with fungi. A dragonfly hovers over a still pool. Birds dart in, snatching insects… Seeing the ecological wonderland that beavers create makes you realise why people work so hard for them.

For 30 years, pressure has grown from conservationists to restore this keystone species, whose dams are also a barrier against flooding. Now, it seems, the beavers’ time has come again.

Wiped out in the UK by fur hunters 500 years ago, beavers reappeared in Scotland’s River Tay catchment 20 years ago. Where they came from is moot – but there are now more than 1,000 there and in the neighbouring River Forth. This unregulated release has brought problems as well as benefits, but following their appearance in Tayside, Kent Wildlife Trust began the first o cial UK beaver trial, releasing 30 beavers into fenland enclosure near Sandwich. Then came the o cial Scottish trial, in Knapdale, Argyll in 2009.

In England and Wales, there are at