insects where beavers are, so bats, non-aquatic birds, otters and water voles all benefit.” Once the Wild Ken Hill team had the idea and identified a perfect piece of land, they applied to Natural England for a licence to reintroduce beavers. “The piece of land we’re putting the beavers in is a very wet area of woodland,” says Dominic. “It was probably drained in the 1940s or 50s. On maps from 250 years ago it’s just called ‘The Fen’, so we’re returning it to what it used to be. We had leading experts in from Exeter University and they’ve done some modelling and said it’s the perfect habitat for beavers. We’ve talked to our parish councils, other landowners and farmers and local residents, and they’re all really
happy with our choice.” The next step was to construct an enclosure to keep the beavers safe. “The experts we consulted gave us a ‘beaver-proof’ specification,” says Dominic. “It’s about a 2km perimeter fence, buried about a foot into the ground, with significant metal grilles on any culvert that’s going in or out of the enclosure. It took us about a month.” After being trapped by a licensed professional in Scotland where they live successfully outside of enclosures, two families of beavers will be released into this newly-built habitat. Two family groups of two adults and up to four offspring will live in the enclosure about 300m apart. “Once they’re released into the enclosure we don’t expect to see them that often, because they’re quite elusive animals,” says Dominic. “But we’ll have motion-detecting cameras set up, and the beavers could be radio-tagged, and several times a week we’ll do a walk of the perimeter to check on their welfare.” And what does the future hold for beavers at Wild Ken Hill? “We hope our project, along with others across England, can help beavers live wild and be reclassified as a native species,” says Dominic. “They’re currently listed as non-native species, which is crazy. In the short term, we want this project to open up this piece of land to the local community – that’s a really exciting part of it.” You can find out more about Wild Ken Hill at www.wildkenhill.co.uk
ABOVE: Making every way in or out of the enclosure completely secure and ‘beaver-proof’ took about a month
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KLmagazine March 2020