All about beavers

This was the day our first beaver pair were released into Willington Wetlands. 

Drone footage from our second beaver release day, we now have four beavers at Willington Wetlands.

The beavers have been familiarising themselves with their new habitat, our camera traps picked up this fantastic footage of the beavers searching about on land.

It has been fantastic to see beavers alongside our iconic species at Willington Wetlands via our camera traps.

Willington Wetlands just got a dam lot cuter!

Two kits (baby beavers) have been born in Derbyshire for the first time in 800 years thanks to successful beaver reintroduction programme. 

During the months running up to the kits sighting, staff and volunteers at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust observed the beavers settling down in a lodge (a beaver’s family home made from sticks and mud), grooming one another and caching extra food, which were all positive signs of them being a well-established pair. 

Volunteers at the reserve have now managed to captured the new kits on film. These little balls of fluff cannot yet dive for themselves, so for now their parents have to literally jump on them to help them get under the water due to the buoyancy of their fur!

Take a peek at the footage above!

Take a look at the latest footage we have of our beautiful beaver kits as they explore their new home - We've spotted them swimming around at Willington Wetlands!

Notice how the bodies of the kits are much higher in the water due to their natural buoyancy!  This can make it hard for them to dive initially, though this video shows them learning to dive quite nicely.  The close, playful interactions between all the family members is wonderful to witness!

Our first set of beavers  came from the River Tay in Scotland.  The second set came from a temporary reserve in Devon.  

There are two species of beaver; the European/Eurasian (Castor Fiber) and the Canadian/North American (Castor Canadensis). The European beaver was native to Britain so this is the species we have re-introduced.

Don't worry!  They will stay near their families and we’re trained in re-capturing them so we will be able to rescue them quickly.  The fence will be checked by our staff daily to make sure there is no damage.

The beaver fencing that is being installed is to an exact specification from Natural England that has been agreed following a full site survey with the anticipated flood risk and levels appropriately considered, making sure we keep the beavers safe and that they don't escape.

All pedestrian and stock gates are designed to an approved beaver proof specification.

Contrary to what many people believe, beavers only eat plants!  Not just trees but they’ll be eating brambles and other plants too. They’re big fans of Himalayan balsam, which is an invasive non-native species that can spread easily and become problematic for our native wildflowers.

No, they don’t kill trees, they coppice them.  These grow back and provide more spaces for wildlife.  Beavers are often known as eco-engineers, they are only doing what our team of rangers would be doing on our wetland reserves to provide the best habitat for wildlife, but they will be doing it far better than we can!

We are not sure if they will build dams but it is a possibility. Beavers build dams to create lagoons in which they can better protect themselves from predators and in which they often build their family lodges which are accessed from underwater. The ideal depth of water a beaver seems to seek behind these dams is around 70cm (28”). The average depth of Willington isn’t far off this so beavers initially may feel no need to dam. In fact in other areas of the world such as Telemark in Norway where studies have been carried out, no damming activity has taken place at all in similar circumstances. They could of course choose to create new lagoons by damming Egginton Brook but this is by no means a given.

Yes, we’ll have to make them a temporary lodge, but they’ll build their own pretty quickly.

Beaver create a mosaic of habitats, from small and large ponds, canals, vegetated margins, wet meadows and areas of mud and silt trapped behind dams. They are ecosystem engineers, and experts in wetland management, creating more diverse habitat for inhabitants, from the smallest invertebrates to large mammals.

We want to show people how great beavers are for wildlife, habitats and us humans as well.  Our dream is that soon beavers will be allowed to live wild across the country, as they are in most of Europe, and we won’t need to fence them in.