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The long silence was broken by an almighty thwack. A beaver swimming nearby had suddenly realised it was being watched from the bank and done a tail slap to warn the rest of the family. It was a dramatic end to my first ever sight of wild beavers.
Hunting wiped out all the beavers in Britain around four centuries ago. They were first reintroduced without permission sometime in the 2000s. Official releases are now under way, but the pace is slow. Campaigners want to see a much wider and faster reintroduction, while many landowners are fiercely opposed.
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In September, I got the chance to visit some beaver sites in Scotland, and I was stunned by what I saw. I knew beavers were ecosystem engineers, but I had no idea either of the scale or the diversity of the changes they can make. I鈥檝e come away convinced that beavers can not only help restore Britain鈥檚 greatly depleted wildlife, but they can also help protect us from both flooding and droughts as the climate hots up. But it is also clear that they can and will cause serious problems in some places.
My trip was organised and funded by and , groups that want to see beavers return to their former ranges. One place we visited was a farm near Inverness belonging to Fred Swift, where beavers were released into a large enclosure in 2008. They have turned a little valley with a small stream into a gorgeous wetland.
Some of the dams there are a few metres long, as I was expecting. But others are much longer 鈥� the longest stretches for 70 metres, Swift says 鈥� and have created large areas of water and marshland. This enriched habitat is attracting many animals, from dragonflies and toads to herons and otters, Swift says. Shortly before our visit, 20 rare Highland great crested newts 鈥� likely a subspecies found only in this part of Scotland 鈥撀犅燾reated by the beavers.
Some large trees have been felled by the beavers along the valley, but plenty remain standing. And the trees that have fallen into water provide both shelter and food for many aquatic animals. 鈥淲hat they create is incredibly complex and incredibly beautiful, both visually and ecologically,鈥� says Swift.
At another site we visited, Mill Dam near Dunkeld, beavers have also made some dramatic changes in the nearly two decades they have been there. The beavers have built a series of dams connecting bits of higher ground above the human-made dam, flooding an area more than a hundred metres across. From water level, it looks like a bit of a wasteland, as the flooding has killed some birch trees. But the view from above reveals a green wetland criss-crossed with wide, deep channels along which the beavers swim and drag vegetation.
In places, there are small beaver-width canals dug from the edge of the water out towards the trees the beavers fell. Little piles of stripped branches reveal where they have been feeding.
We also saw lots of floating vegetation near the beaver lodge. This is a floating food cache created by the beavers for winter, says聽聽at the UK鈥檚 Beaver Trust, one of our guides 鈥� yet another way in which beavers create habitats that other animals can take advantage of.
I鈥檓 far from the first to be amazed by the richness of beaver-made habitats. Tom Bowser, on whose farm we saw the beaver tail-slap, was similarly struck after visiting a beaver site a few years ago.
鈥淚 left there feeling both quite inspired but also kind of angry, because I thought that the countryside was as it was supposed to be and I鈥檇 just been shaken from that completely,鈥� says Bowser. 鈥淔rom that point onwards, I was convinced that we鈥檇 lost something really valuable when the last of the beavers had been killed off in Scotland and that we needed them back all across the country as quickly as we could.鈥�
Not so eager
But many farmers and landowners are fiercely opposed. Besides the flooding that comes with their dams, beavers also raid crops and burrow into riverbanks. These burrows can breach flood defences built right next to rivers, says McCandless, potentially inundating crops.
Much depends on the nature of the site and what the land is used for. Where the flood barriers are set back from the rivers, burrowing is not an issue, for instance. Swift, who farms sheep and cattle, says he has not had any problems.
Others are objecting because they think beaver dams block the movement of fish like trout and salmon 鈥� river fishing is a big business in Scotland. But studies in Norway, where the beaver numbers have bounced back to around 80,000, have concluded this is not a major issue.
鈥淭hey can generally find their way through,鈥� fishing guide聽聽tells me.
On his farm, Swift points out how water has overflowed down a bank near a high beaver dam, creating a tiny gravel stream. It鈥檚 easy for fish to swim up or down, and also perfect for spawning, Pepper says.
What鈥檚 more, the richer habitat means more fish food. A study done here found young聽聽of those in a nearby one untouched by beavers. And another as-yet unpublished study found that beaver dams keep water temperatures cooler 鈥� which is important given some rivers are close to getting too hot for salmon.
Because of the opposition, however, beavers are still largely restricted to a small area around the river Tay. What鈥檚 more,聽, though some beavers are now being trapped and relocated to England instead.
Bowser is one of the few landowners in Scotland to take trapped beavers. He says they鈥檝e made a big difference in just a couple of years. During the hot summer of 2022, all the ponds on his farm dried out except for the beaver dams, he says. As water levels fell, the beavers dug channels in the bottom of their dams, creating areas of deeper water that helped many other species survive the drought.
These water stores聽help maintain the flow of rivers in dry periods, studies in the US show. And beaver wetlands are also聽, creating natural firebreaks and refuges.
That鈥檚 not all. Bowser says the beavers have also reduced the flooding that was happening every winter and washing out vehicle tracks, requiring costly repairs.
In fact, in some places in the UK people have been聽, but it鈥檚 expensive and they don鈥檛 last long. Beavers do it for free, and their on-site teams typically repair a damaged dam within 48 hours.
鈥淭hey do create this fantastic network of wetlands and channels and it鈥檚 just something that humans can鈥檛 do,鈥� says Jonathan Willet at the Cairngorms National Park Authority, which has just applied for permission to release beavers in the park for the first time. If they get the go-ahead, beavers could return to the heart of Scotland as early as this December.
Having seen what beavers can do, I understand better why some don鈥檛 want them back. But the fact is that maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. The world is about to zoom past warming of 1.5掳C, meaning it is going to become impossible to keep the British countryside in its current state.
A beaver-transformed landscape is going to be far less affected by the ever more extreme heat, droughts and floods heading our way. The bottom line is, we need beavers a lot more than they need us.
