My beavers have been kidnapped. A few months ago there were five of them living on my family’s farm on Bodmin Moor. Now there are none. I know where they are and I have received proof of life from their kidnapper, but he will not release them back to me or allow me to collect them and bring them home. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye.
I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye
I was quite early to the beaver game. Back in 2018 it was still hotly debated among the UK farming community as to whether beavers, if reintroduced, would a) eat all the fish in our rivers; b) destroy all the trees along our rivers; c) clog the rivers with partially eaten logs; or d) flood thousands of acres of profitable high-yield farmland. I read a fair bit of evidence that contradicted these fears and a great deal more that expounded the benefit of these ecosystem engineers.
So began my first foray into the byzantine and sclerotic world of Natural England species reintroduction licensing. I applied for an A37 licence to release a non-native species into a large enclosure (even though beavers are a native species to Britain), an A03 licence to hold a wild animal in a cage or trap while carrying out health checks, and a European trapping licence so that I would be officially allowed to wear a Davy Crockett-style hat as I went about my business on the farm.
After two years of exhaustive inspections, stakeholder meetings, electro fish surveys, small mammal surveys and endless phone calls and meetings with anyone who decided they wanted to have a say, I was finally granted the licences. Then came the enclosure construction. The fencers I spoke to on the moor, far more accustomed to sheep and cattle enclosures, quoted hideous sums for a five-acre perimeter fence that not only went a foot underground and skirted into the enclosure, but also had overhangs, an electric wire, small steel mesh and complex grille systems at the in-flow and out-flow of the river (called ‘beaver deceivers’, I don’t jest). Fortunately, we weren’t quite at the final stage of saying goodbye to all that delightful EU money that farmers have been benefiting from for decades, so I was able to claim the last shipment from Brussels and the fence was partly funded by our friends over the Channel.
With the licence triple-checked and stamped, fences constructed and grilles installed, we were ready for our beaver family to arrive. First through the gate was our matriarch, Sigourney. She waddled into the valley straight from her overcrowded home on the river Tay. She built a dam in a matter of weeks. A male, Jean Claude Van Dam, arrived a few months later and built his own dam and lodge at the far end of the enclosure from her. A few months later the first baby beaver footprints for possibly as much as a thousand years were spotted on the riverbank. Twins (Beavie Nicks and Beavie Wonder) were followed a year later by another kit, Chewbarka. There can be few things more delightful than sitting in the gathering gloom of a riverbank during a Cornish summer while watching a beaver family in the shallows of the dam they have constructed. I felt proud and content.
Not long after this the first escapes began. Signs of fence climbing, tunnelling and grille excavating became all too evident. Five escapes resulted in five re-trapping missions on neighbours’ farms. I became quite good at capturing and returning errant beavers and patching up any obvious breach points in their fence line. After each escape I would wait for the inevitable phone call telling me that a chewed willow twig or the beginnings of a dam had been spotted on another section of one of Bodmin Moor’s many rivers. Trapping operations were quick and slick and everyone was happy when the beavers were once again home.
Now to the kidnapping. Upon the sixth escape I waited to see where my fugitives had ended up. After a week, I was phoned by a neighbour who I didn’t know as well as the others. He said he thought there might be some beaver evidence on his pond and asked if I could come and have a look. A few days later, I drove through a storm to the coordinates he’d sent me but was halted by him a few hundred metres short of the boundary of his property. My neighbour was standing at the cattlegrid that marked the start of his land and had closed the gate to stop me from coming in. I parked and walked to meet him. After the usual pleasantries, he informed me that since calling he’d looked beavers up online. He’d seen that they were generally thought to be very good for the environment but it took a lot of time and cost a fair bit of money to get the licences and to acquire them. Therefore he’d decided that he wasn’t going to allow me access to his land and was simply going to keep my beavers as his.
I was baffled. Usually people were happy for me to come and retrieve my wards. We’d have a cup of tea and a chat about how wonderful beavers were and I’d promise to try my hardest not to let them escape again. There’d never been any thought before of anyone refusing to let me retrieve them.
I explained that, yes, it did take time and cost money but that I would be delighted to help him along on this journey if he’d only allow me to collect my beavers. He responded that there was no way I could prove that they were mine. I countered that, aside from the fact they were the only family on the catchment, they were all micro-chipped and I had a scanner in my pocket that would prove their provenance. ‘Only if I let you on to my land,’ he said. He’d got me there. I tried another tack, hoping to appeal to his better nature, and explained that I was licensed by Natural England to recapture my beavers whenever they escaped and that if I didn’t bring them home I was breaking the law. His response will live with me always: ‘That sounds like a “you” problem.’
So I am now a criminal with a beaver licence but no beavers. I have pleaded with Natural England not to prosecute me and it is considering the situation. The enclosure is growing over and the dams are beginning to silt up and break down. I can only hope that Sigourney, Jean Claude and their kits are happy in their new home and that one day the sight of beavers on a stretch of river or a pond will be so commonplace that neighbours won’t feel that beaver kidnapping is worth it.
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