It was an exciting day for me and the humans that decided this was to be my new home. Derbyshire Wildlife Trust had worked very hard to see the first release of my kind in the county for 800 years – given we beavers live to around 12-14 years old, that is a lot of generations that had missed out on making this beautiful place their home.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust bought the land that forms the nature reserve on the outskirts of Willington in 2005. It used to be a major sand and gravel pit, supplying tonnes of material to the building trade for many years before it closed in the 1960’s. Left alone the land soon greened back up – rewilding in action! – a diverse range of wetland habitats developed and species that were rare or struggling elsewhere found a haven to thrive. The Trust bought the land because it was such a great place for wildlife, with birds such as kingfisher, lapwing and bittern calling it home, water vole trying to survive and many dragonflies, plants and insects.

For the last 16 years the humans have beavered away, trying to control the spread of the willow trees that would love to take over. It’s hard to imagine a tree having world domination issues but all species of willow just love to spread and despite their best efforts the humans despaired that they would ever be able to keep the rich mosaic of wetland habitats with willow spreading throughout the reedbeds, causing them to dry out and starting to create such thick, dense woodland that the plants growing on the woodland floor were being lost.

However staff at DWT are smart and they knew this was a case for the experts – the B team – yes, that’s right – beavers!! Many people questioned this decision but let’s look at the evidence and see why the UK’s largest rodent could be the natural solution. Firstly our favourite food is willow – we don’t mind what species, age or size, we just love to eat it. Being totally vegetarian (that’s right, plants only for us, not even a little fish or two – we leave those to our otter friends) we adore eating all the things the humans were trying to manage with their carbon emitting power tools – we create zero emissions, no fossil fuels consumed, we do it all for free and we don’t run out of energy at 5pm unlike the humans. Being strong swimmers we can access all parts of the nature reserve, from the wettest reed beds, through open water and marsh to the deepest parts of the woodland without sinking or losing our equipment!

So most people were reassured that we wouldn’t eat the fish or other wildlife but some still had concerns – wouldn’t we eat all the trees or worse still, build big dams and cause flooding?! Yes, we like to eat trees but actually the bit we are really keen on is just underneath the bark, where the nutrients and sugars the tree makes in the leaves run down to the roots and where the water the roots absorb is moved back up the tree. This is the really tasty bit and for large creatures (we weigh around 30kg as adults) we need to maximise the effort involved in finding food to avoid wasting calories. Thankfully our 3 inch long chisel-like teeth are perfect for the job of taking off the bark and then carefully chipping away at the good bits. The core wood, that holds the tree up, is of less interest to us so we only bother to fell the entire tree when there is something very tasty higher up or some timber for building our lodges or dams. Willow trees are very hard to kill off (something those silly humans found when their horrible chemicals failed to work and were a waste of money) and our nibbling actually generates more growth in response, so you could say we are farming the trees, encouraging them to grow and recover and of course young growth captures far more carbon from the atmosphere than mature trees that are in a more sedate time of growing.

And that brings me on to the issue of dams. Dam it - we beavers like a quiet life and it’s fair to say nature has equipped us for aquatic life rather than building us for speed or agility on land! Our powerful webbed feet are designed for swimming but moving on land is like you humans trying to walk around in diving flippers! Our wonderful and unique tails act as paddles when swimming and store fat in the winter but they don’t half drag on the floor and slow us down out of the water. So you can see why we like deep, slow water to move around in – damming streams achieves this and makes us very happy. What’s interesting is how many other plants and animals seem to prefer it too.

We see water vole and water shrew benefiting from fast streams being slowed down and by holding back water when the rainfall is high we help prevent areas downstream from being flooded, easing the movement of the water through the landscape and preventing streams scouring deep, narrow channels, which of course only speeds rivers up and causes soil to be washed away too. Our little dams have the added benefit of keeping water back in the summer – water is the life source of so much wildlife so preventing localised droughts allows fish to breed and their fry to grow. Amphibians such as newts and frogs can spawn and this brings in grass snakes, herons and kingfishers, a whole circle of life that some may say we are the engineers of, a keystone species if you will – our effects are like a pebble in the pond – the ripples we cast by our daily actions have a wide and profound effect on the larger landscape.

However enough of this deep and meaningful stuff, my main ambition in life is to eat, sleep and eat some more. When I came to Willington I had been living on my own and let’s be honest, grooming all the way round my rather rotund body with my small front legs was an effort. Those lovely humans brought me a girlfriend and within minutes of meeting up I knew she was the one for me. We now spend nearly all our time together; its quicker work felling small trees and dragging them back to the lodge we have made when there’s two of you and when I’m feeling a little lazy she will pop out and find me some young reed roots or those crab apples I’m rather partial to. Of course I share the work too – I am a modern man and there is nothing more I like than to help her keep her coat in top condition and water repellent by grooming and rubbing oil into her coat before having a bit of tail slap and tickle.

I bet all this has made you want to come and see me now? I mostly come out at dusk and am very comfortable in the dark. My eyesight isn’t great but my sense of smell and hearing is excellent so you’ll have to be clever to creep up on me. Daytime is for sleeping but occasionally we take a swim across the big lake so you might spot me from the hide or viewing platforms. My girlfriend and I are thinking it’s time to start a family, who knows you might even see my kits this summer on a warm, dry evening!