Dorset Wildlife Trust launches ground-breaking beaver project - Dorset Wildlife Trust
On Monday 8th February 2021, Dorset Wildlife Trust released two beavers into an enclosed site in west Dorset. This landmark project led by Dorset Wildlife Trust is the first of its kind for the county and welcomes beavers back to Dorset for the first time in over 400 years.
Following several years of preparation, including installing a specialist fence to enclose the site and recording baseline data with experts from University of Exeter and Wessex Water, the pair of Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber), an adult male and female, are now settling in.
The beavers were relocated from Scotland to Dorset under licence from NatureScot. Their new home, a suitably large site of freshwater habitat, is not accessible to the public. However, monitoring of the enclosure will provide rare, close-up video and photo footage of the charismatic creatures as they explore, make themselves at home and start to influence the landscape.
Dorset Wildlife Trust Rivers Conservation Officer, Steve Oliver, said: "It’s fantastic to be welcoming beavers back to Dorset. Beavers are magnificent creatures in their own right, but they are extra special because their engineering activities have the potential to bring even more life to a landscape and enable other species to flourish. We are extremely excited to host this project, working alongside our lead partners University of Exeter and Wessex Water to study all the impacts beavers bring to a local Dorset site, adding to the growing scientific evidence gathered from other reintroduction projects around the country."
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Posted On: 10/02/2021