Journal

We’re excited as children just before a birthday party is about to start. Are they here yet? In our small team we’ve been bouncing from foot to foot for several days, waiting for the green light. Everything is set. The metal fence surrounding the small area of woodland is in place, with strong grilles over the watercourses. The estate maintenance crew have built dams (as best as they can, being human not beaver) to create deeper water for release ponds, as well as makeshift lodges on the banks. These will, we hope, make an inviting space for the newly arrived beavers – somewhere to hide and sleep out the daytimes, until they are ready to create their own much better versions.

We sit around, drinking coffee and exchanging stories, and then the news comes. The van is here! We go out to meet Sheelagh from the Beaver Trust, still fresh after many hours of driving from Five Sisters Zoo near Edinburgh, a specialist zoo where the beavers have been comfortably housed for the last few weeks. They are, in the lingo, an “unbonded” pair. Captured from two different places in the Tay catchment (where there is a healthy population of wild beavers) these youngsters would have been dispersing away from their family groups to find their own territories. They just ended up being a bit further away than they expected…

They’ve been housed near to each other at the Zoo, with bedding shared between their cages so they get used to each other’s smell. Travelling down in the back of Sheelagh’s van, their crates side by side, with haybales tucked round to keep them steady and secure, they’ve had a shared experience that may filter through to a lasting connection. We have fingers and everything crossed that they will take to each other and flourish.

We watch with bated breath as the hay bales are removed, and at last we can see the huge crates – or at least their shape. Each is covered with a dark sheet, to keep light and noise to a minimum, and stop our eager faces adding to the animals’ stress. We whisper our welcomes, our hearts already melting, just that little bit. Loaded on to the back of a pickup, the crates are driven slowly down to the enclosure, while the rest of our small group walk behind, excitement mounting. And now here we are, standing behind one of the new lodges, jostling ourselves into place but keeping very quiet. We have a view of a small patch of water, and are poised to see a head swim across it. Our official photographers have a prime view from across the bank. Two of the team carry the female’s crate down to the water, and have a polite, silent tussle about who gets to pull back the flap (you should get to do it, no you…). And then she is out, a huge splash in the water, ripples, another splash and silence. We have seen nothing of her, but it doesn’t matter. We know she is there, and she’s made her presence felt – taking possession of her strip of water, that will soon become so much more.

The male is released further upstream, with only a handful of the team in attendance. He has his own lodge and pool too, and paddles serenely around it for a while. Releasing the beavers separately means that they can meet each other in their own time and hopefully become a pair ready to breed by next year.

We leave in silence, awed and a little teary-eyed, knowing that this patch of unlovely woodland will be transformed. Beavers feel safest in deep, wide waters, where they can swim to find food rather than walk, so they will soon start to build their own dams – perhaps experimentally at first (they are only young after all). Once the small beck begins to be held back sufficiently, its waters will rise, easing out across the woodland floor, gradually filling the little valley that it runs through.

As the water expands and deepens, life will expand with it. The mini-beasts of the beck – mayfly and stonefly larvae, nymphs and freshwater shrimps – will multiply, along with their amphibian predators. Trees and branches, felled and stripped of bark, will create eddies and sheltered places for young bullheads and stickleback fish, as well as perfect spots for kingfishers and heron to perch. More light will come in as the canopy above opens up, and dragonflies will hunt over the long stretches of water.

These wonders are yet to come of course, and for now we stand well back, soaking up the tantalising images on the night-time trail cams, and waiting for our new residents to do what they do so well. Ancestral memory stirs and we know that this is right – that they should be here, back where they belong, quietly doing their magical beavery thing.

Jessica Penrose
Nature Recovery Team

Watch a short video documenting the release below, please make sure to visit our Rewilding Channel on Youtube for more informative content.