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Norfolk has welcomed its first wild beaver kits in 500 years.
Last year, the county’s first solitary free-living beaver was spotted on trail cameras. Further monitoring later revealed the presence of a second adult, and the recent appearance of two kits confirms that the original pair successfully bred in the wild.
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The family of beavers is living on River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a wildlife park near Fakenham, but it remains unclear how the two adults arrived in the area. It has been speculated that the animals may have been part of an unsanctioned release.
Richard Spowage, the reserve manager at Pensthorpe, said, “When that first beaver appeared last year, none of us really thought it would lead us to this announcement. We went from thinking we had one animal passing through, to discovering a settled pair, and now we have two kits growing up wild here in Norfolk.”
Spowage added, “For a native species that has been absent from this landscape for centuries, it’s an incredibly special moment.”
The new beaver kits are estimated to be around three months old, and speaking to the Guardian, Spowage described them as “very playful.” Pensthorpe is now crowdfunding for an application to legally introduce more wild beavers to the area.
Read more: Wildlife Cam Captures Norfolk’s First Wild Beaver In Over 500 Years
Extinction, drought, and the benefits of beavers
Beavers are semi-aquatic, nocturnal rodents. They are also a keystone species, and their presence in the wild benefits the entire local ecosystem, from wildlife to farmers.
In August, a Cornish farmer told the Guardian how a local beaver dam retained water even during the summer’s record-breaking heatwaves and droughts. Pensthorpe has documented blue tits, great tits, blackcaps, water rails, jays, mallards, ducklings, foxes, otters, and roe deer using the pool created by Norfolk’s wild beavers.
Beavers were hunted to extinction in England in the early 1500s, but after decades of enclosure releases, there are now more than 400 across eight areas in the UK. Unsanctioned releases, sometimes known as “beaver bombing,” have led to several well-established local populations, though the practice remains controversial.
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