Gates and fencing at Paradise Fields! Why? A question we get asked again and again. If we had our way, we’d love to see Beavers living free, uncontained lives in the wild as the native, protected species they are, but it’s a curious legal and political hot potato topic now that’s a little more complex than it needs to be.
We recognise that the beaver enclosure infrastructure at Paradise Fields is a big change and it looked quite stark newly installed, but there’s a good reason for it: animal welfare!
Ealing Beaver Project has reintroduced a family of beavers on site in a pioneering project to study their effects on an urban river catchment, including how they can alleviate flooding in urban Greenford, and how urban communities feel about nature and nature based solutions to man-made problems.
The fencing is to protect the beavers’ welfare ensuring they don’t escape onto busy roads for example and come to harm. We’re giving them a huge area of good habitat, 8 hectares in total. Beaver Trust recommends a minimum of 2 hectares. Under current legislation on Beaver reintroductions, Natural England would only issue us a license for an enclosed 5 year urban Beaver trial. Maybe in time (and with this new government at the reins) we’ll live in a world where nature can be truly wild and free, but for now we have to play by the rules and prove the model that beavers can be part of the solution to help get our rivers and ecosystems healthy again!
And on the fencing, although it looked pretty harsh and attracted some criticism when installed, right now it has been enveloped and softened by lush summer plant growth and has become softened so in time you’ll barely even notice it’s there.
What we would love you to do on this political hot potato is write to your new or continuing MP and ask them what they are doing in Parliament to advance the nature restoration agenda, specifically when it comes to allowing Beavers, a hugely beneficial keystone species back to the wild in Britain where it belongs. You can find their email address here, please let them know you think this is important. If they don’t hear from you, they won’t know:
https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/