This rare footage of a Eurasian beaver felling a tree was filmed last month in North Yorkshire. The beaver, a female, took just 15 minutes to gnaw through the trunk.
It was taken by a camera trap at a secret location in the North York Moors National Park where two beavers were released in April.
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Some 500 years ago beavers were hunted to extinction for their fur, meat and scent glands in Britain. Now beavers are making a comeback 鈥� at least in small pockets in England, Scotland and as part of a conservation project in Wales.
Read more: Should the UK bring back beavers to help manage floods?
Another project, the five-year Yorkshire Beaver Enclosed Release Trial, will see whether putting beavers onto the headwaters of a flood-prone river system will slow down the river鈥檚 flow and reduce flooding in the nearby town of Pickering.
The two beavers 鈥� a 4-year-old female and a 3-year-old male 鈥� were brought in from an estate in Tayside, Scotland, when the landowner decided he no longer wanted them. They are the first in Britain to be used explicitly for flood control. Their heavily fenced plot covers 10 hectares, large enough for many more beavers. The female seen in the video is now pregnant.
