This summer marked a significant event in London as the first baby beaver in centuries was observed.
Believed to be the first offspring of London in hundreds of years, the baby beaver is a result of Enfield council’s beaver reintroduction program launched in 2022.
After a 400-year absence, this initiative aims to reintroduce beavers to the capital, contributing to a broader rewilding and natural flood management project.
Capel Manor College, in collaboration with the Beaver Trust, will undertake a comprehensive health check on the young beaver with an experienced exotic-animal vet.
The baby beaver’s gender, as of now, remains undetermined, highlighting the ongoing success of beaver reintroduction efforts across England.
Enfield council’s cabinet member for the environment, Rick Jewell, said: “The beavers’ hard work creating a natural wetland ecosystem will contribute to excellent flood defences, protecting the local area and hundreds of homes from flooding downstream to the south-east of the borough, while encouraging biodiversity.”
Capel Manor College’s animal collections manager, Meg Wilson, said: “We are thrilled [about] this new arrival. We have seen the developments the beavers are [involved in] and the improvements they have made to the wetland area. We are now focusing our efforts on collecting data, which we hope will provide further evidence about the positive effects the beavers are having on the environment.”
——————————————————————————
At Natural World Fund, we are passionate about stopping the decline in our wildlife.
The decline in our wildlife is shocking and frightening. Without much more support, many of the animals we know and love will continue in their decline towards extinction.
When you help to restore a patch of degraded land through rewilding to forests, meadows, or wetlands, you have a massive impact on the biodiversity at a local level. You give animals a home and food that they otherwise would not have had, and it has a positive snowball effect on the food chain.
We are convinced that this is much better for the UK than growing lots of fast-growing coniferous trees, solely to remove carbon, that don’t actually help our animals to thrive.
This is why we stand for restoring nature in the UK through responsible rewilding. For us, it is the right thing to do. Let’s do what’s right for nature!
Donate today at https://naturalworldfund.com/ and join in the solution!
