Devon Wildlife Trust is crowdfunding for the reintroduction of beavers

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In 2020 the fate of Devon's River Otter wild beavers will be decided. With Chris Packham backing the campaign to save the species and the protection of beavers into Scotland recently getting the go-ahead, the outlook is bright for the species.

 

In 2020 the fate of Devon's River Otter wild beavers will be decided. With Chris Packham backing the campaign to save the species and the protection of beavers into Scotland recently getting the go-ahead, the outlook is bright for the species.

After an absence of 400 years, beavers in Scotland have been formally recognised as a native species, and the same is hoped for the Devon beavers, with Devon Wildlife Trust and Rewilding Britain two of the campaigning organisations hoping the English beavers will get the same treatment.

Mark Elliott, leading the Devon Beaver Project said: "Beavers are incredible animals for creating and managing wetland habitats - and a wide variety of species benefit from them inclding amphibians, birds, fish, bats, dragonflies in particular, water quality.

The species is also very important for reducing flooding impacts, and the University of Exeter has just published some of its initial findings from our work in Devon in the academic journal Science of the Total Environment on this very subject."

Read more at The Ecologist

Photo credit: American Beaver by Steve from Washington, DC, USA via Wikimedia Commons