Beavers return to Northamptonshire after 400-year absence

Rushden Lakes shopping centre is welcoming the first beavers to be seen in Northamptonshire for four centuries. 

Boudicca, Alan and their six kits - I don't know if there is a class system among beavers, but I can't shake off the suspicion that Boudicca married beneath herself - will be living in a 42-acre fenced enclosure there.

But if it's true that, following escapes from such enclosures, there are now hundreds of beavers living wild in Kent, it won't be long until Boudicca and Alan, or their friends and relations, turn up on the River Jordan here.

Anyway, Katie King-Hurst, education and communities manager for the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, told the BBC:

"They're incredible. "They ... create other habitats that the other animals thrive in. There's been a few beaver releases around England, but these beavers share their fences with a shopping centre with millions of visitors a year, so it really is an opportunity to see an inspirational species right on people's doorsteps."

The Joy of Six 1295

"Any pleasure I may take in the distinction of the honour of an FRS is diminished by the fact it is shared with someone who appears to be modeling himself on a Bond villain, a man who has immeasurable wealth and power which he will use to threaten scientists who disagree with him." Dorothy Bishop explains her decision to resign as a Fellow of the Royal Society - she's talking about Elon Musk, of course.

Jim Sleeper uncovers the Classical roots of the US Constitution: "The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was hot off the presses in the 1770s. We should read Gibbon now, too, paying close attention to his account of how the Roman republic slipped into tyranny when powerful men had seduced or intimidated its citizens so that they became a stampeding mob, hungry for bread and circuses."

Amy-Jane Beer is excited by the rewilding project at Castle Howard: "While most authorised beaver reintroductions in the UK have been in small enclosures, here the plan is to give them 450 acres to work with, alongside pigs and large grazers that will churn and prune and trample and further invigorate ecological processes. I cannot wait to see it."

During the Cold War, philosophers worked together to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. Cheryl Misak was part of a movement that included both Jacques Derrida and Roger Scruton.

 "Wicked makes its cinematic premiere at an awkward time, so soon after so many American voters acted against virtually every moral idea the production unsubtly espouses," says Luke Buckmaster.

Tim Rolls on the day in 1966 that Bobby Tambling scored five goals at Villa Park: "Looking at the TV footage a couple of things strike home. The quality of Chelsea’s accurate, incisive passing (particularly Osgood and Cooke) and speedy breaks, and the sheer inability of the home players to shut down their breaking opponents."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: As the deer graze beyond my ha-ha

We come to the end of a beaver-stuffed (and latterly badger-stuffed) week at Bonkers Hall. As far as I'm concerned, the new political season can't begin soon enough.

And don't forget to download the Conference issue of Liberator.

Sunday

On my way home from Divine Service at St Asquith’s, I called at the beavers’ lodge. I casually broached the subject of my family’s long feud with the Dukes of Rutland, emphasising what rotters they have been over the centuries. “Sounds like we’d all be better off without ‘em,” remarked the elected spokesbeaver. 

At this point I dropped the King of the Badgers’ theory about Belvoir Castle originally being Beaver Castle into the conversation. Just as I had hoped, this gets him properly riled. “I’m calling a meeting and shall recommend immediate direct action,” he said, the light catching his sharp front teeth. He must have got the required two-thirds majority, because later in the afternoon I saw the entire colony marching north, armed and looking Terribly Fierce. 

So I write these words in their jacuzzi as the deer graze beyond my ha-ha. I don’t know whether the beavers will succeed in retaking Belvoir Castle and drive out the Dukes of Rutland – though I did pass on to them a map showing secret ways into the cellars of the old pile that the King of the Badgers found in his library – but they will be out of my hair for a while. 

As for the lake… Well, it is rather pretty and I have never been that fond of croquet.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• The only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills
• My hereditary peer peers
• In case they get peckish during Lent
• The maintenance of the Rutland Union Canal
• Conservative members are now attacking their real enemy... each other
• My new friends with the webbed back feet and scaly tails

Conservationists say beaver bombing is the fault of government

Why are there now so many beavers living on rivers across the south of England? Patrick Barkham will tell you:

"Beaver bombing", covertly releasing beavers into the countryside, is increasing in England because successive governments have not fulfilled promises to permit some planned wild releases, conservationists are warning.

Beavers now live freely on river systems across swaths of southern England, and conservationists are calling on Labour to allow official releases of free-living beavers and produce a national strategy to maximise the biodiversity and flood alleviation benefits delivered by the industrious mammals.

Eva Bishop, of the Beaver Trust, said: "Beavers are a native species with lots to offer in terms of landscape resilience, boosting biodiversity and climate change adaptation and mitigation. It would be crazy not to look at wild release as a key tool for the government."

When, a couple of weeks ago, I discovered there are hundreds of beavers living wild on the rivers of Kent, I was astounded. But Patrick Barkham confirms those reports here:

An established population has been living freely and largely unnoticed in lowland Kent for years and now numbers 51 territories – more than 200 animals.

And, he says, beavers have turned up on river systems across Devon and spread through Somerset to Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

There are hundreds of beavers living wild in Kent

A striking story from the BBC News Kent pages:

Residents and visitors to Canterbury have been treated to the unusual sight of baby beavers swimming in the River Stour.

The babies, called kits, are thought to be the first to be born in a wild urban setting in England for centuries.

The semi-aquatic rodents are known as a keystone species because of the enormous impact they have on the wildlife around them.

Sandra King, chief executive officer of the Beaver Trust, said: "It's so exciting to see them here."

Even more striking, though, is a story from May that this report links to:

A new survey suggests the number of wild beavers now living in Kent runs into the hundreds.

The animals, which were extinct in the UK for centuries, can even be spotted in the centre of Canterbury.

There have been increasing reports of beaver signs along the River Stour in East Kent and the data indicates that an established beaver population has been present for more than 10 years.

One of the report’s authors said Kent hosted the biggest population of beavers in England.

I had no idea that beavers had returned on anything like this scale. But then I think of the words of Isabella Tree in the trailer for the film rewilding:

"As soon as the conditions are right, these species will find you somehow."

That's why I am prepared to entertain the idea that there are big cats living wild in the English countryside. We have a vacancy for an apex predator and a plentiful supply of deer, which is the sort of species these cats have evolved to predate.

Pippa Heylings and the reintroduction of beavers

Politics Home has an article on Pippa Heylings, the newly elected Liberal Democrat MP for South Cambridgeshire:

Heylings was recognised on the first ever ENDS Power List of political environmental champions earlier this year, alongside London Mayor Sadiq Khan and former Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. 

The Power List recognised her career negotiating between national and local governments on climate issues, attending UN Climate and Nature summits, and spearheading the creation of the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve. She also acted as a key mediator in the successful reintroduction of beavers to the UK.

This confirms my impression that our new parliamentary party is now positively dripping with talent. And my eye was, of course, caught by her role in the reintroduction of beavers.

To learn about that, go to the website of Pippa's company Talking Transformation:

Beavers became extinct in England 400 years ago as a result of overhunting for meat, fur and making perfume.

Re-introducing the beaver into areas of the English countryside after all this time is now possible but controversial. Is it possible for co-existence between beavers and humans in a much altered landscape? ...

Talking Transformation was contracted by Natural England to design and facilitate workshops to understand the conflicting perspectives and find ways to enable reintroduction in a way that maximises the benefits but minimises the risks, and to give stakeholders a voice in decision-making for a national framework for beaver reintroduction.  

It's worth reading the whole article, which is a reminder that rewilding and the reintroduction of species require widespread support if they are to work, not just a romantic impulse.

The Joy of Six 1248

"Travelling to Russia to meet the head of a government under EU sanctions, which has disregarded the territorial integrity of another state, is unprecedented. Doing so in the week Hungary has taken over the rotating Council presidency is bulldozing the norms of the presidency as set out by the EU treaties." Armida van Rij says Viktor Orbán is using Hungary’s EU Council presidency to bulldoze EU norms.

Jess Brown-Fuller, the new Liberal Democrat MP for Chichester, describes her first week at Westminister: "The parliamentary estate consists of more than 3 miles of corridors, 1,000 rooms and 100 staircases. Any MPs wanting to escape the 'Westminster bubble' first need to be able to find the exits."

Mick Channon looks at the causes of an environmental crisis that people are beginning to notice: "Over the past 50 years, the global insect population has plummeted by an alarming estimate of 75 per cent. This drastic reduction is the result of a multitude of human activities that continue to wreak havoc on natural ecosystems."

The number of children's homes is soaring as the number of foster parents children falls, reports Mithran Samuel.

"The Channel 4 team accepts that the eye-catching “superhuman” branding of its 2012 and 2016 coverage was controversial, to say the least, and that many disabled people felt it did more harm than good." Lucy Webster on the channel's decision to rip up its approach to the Paralympics.

"[Paul] Hewitt said the dam-building work of the beavers had helped to create ponds, pools and mudscapes covering an area half the size of a football pitch. All of it was positive, he said. The new ecosystems are attracting so much more wildlife, including kingfishers, grey herons and Daubenton’s bats, which feed in the ponds and pools. He added of the beavers: 'They have been gone for 400 years and you soon realise what we have been missing as a result.'" Mark Brown helps the National Trust celebrates the birth of baby beaver on the Wallington estate in Northumberland.

The Joy of Six 1116

"It is the year 2049, and residents of the UK city of Oxford are unable to leave their neighborhoods. If they do, a network of cameras - installed years earlier under the guise of easing traffic congestion — track their movements. If they stray too far from their registered addresses, a £100 fine is automatically removed from their bank accounts. The only cars now allowed on the streets belong to representatives of the world government, who relentlessly patrol the city for anyone breaking the rules." The 15-minute city freak-out is a case study in conspiracy paranoia, argue Feargus O'Sullivan and Daniel Zuidijk.

Elizabeth de Luna reports that Google, Facebook and online pharmacies can be required to turn data over to law enforcement in US states where abortion is illegal.

Peter Simons reads a new study that questions the existing assumptions of neuropsychology and provides new ways of understanding the complexity of the brain and mind that might help psychological science move forward.

"It’s easy to see why many proponents of Blue Labour earn a living bemoaning whatever woke liberalism they have dreamt up that day for a column in Unherd, Spiked, or if they’re lucky The Times when the person Michael Gove regards as 'one of the outstanding conservative thinkers of our times' is this short for ideas." Will Barber-Taylor is not impressed by Maurice Glasman's new book.

Matthew Carey on Harry Belafonte, who is still fighting for social justice at the age of 96.

Wetlands are being revived by beavers, says the Natural World Fund: "Beavers have been reintroduced in Canada and several US states over the past 50 years. After being nearly wiped out in the 19th century for their fur and meat, this was initially done to restore beaver populations. However, numerous species of frogs, fish, and invertebrates have returned as a result of the restoration of wetland ecosystems."

The Joy of Six 1050

"Those that claim to be the party of clever economics and fiscal responsibility would do well to remember this simple truth: the square root of fuck all is always going to be absolutely fuck all, no matter how creatively you’re told to to dice it." Jack Monroe asks why elected representatives and salaried journalists and presenters are trying to undermine the ten-year career and credibility of a food blogger.

Andrew Adonis reviews Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper: "In place of Kuper’s plan, I would instead introduce a different 'levelling-up' reform challenge for Oxford. It needs to radically broaden the social intake of its state school recruitment, which today is too largely drawn from grammar schools, sixth-form colleges and academies in London and the southeast".

Helena Horton on ambitious plans to rewild London.

Neal Ascherson is always worth reading: here he discusses the history of the extraordinary Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

"Tragically, he was discovered, captured, and deported during a raid in Toulouse in 1944 - first to Drancy, then to Auschwitz, and finally Kaunas-Reval in Lithuania. Of hundreds of people captured in Toulouse that day, only a handful survived. They perished without a trace." Janet Horvath says we should not forget the cellist and composer Pál Hermann.

"It was a big car park, but it was in bad shape. So in 2010, the Trinity Square high rise car park, an iconic brutalist building that dominated Gateshead’s skyline in the 1970s, was demolished, and a part of British film history was gone. Though not before the canny council sold tinned lumps of rubble to film fans for £5.00 a go." Tim Pelan watches Mike Hodges' 1971 film Get Carter.

Rewilding the Somerset Levels

With things so grim at the moment, it's good to look for hope. And I find it in the Somerset Wildlands project:

The Somerset Levels were once England’s Okavango Delta. From pelicans to lynx, beavers to sturgeons, it would have teemed with wildlife. While what remains is wonderful, too much is now gone. We will buy land to create space for nature and natural processes, and support the reintroduction of lost species.

I had to look up the Okavango Delta and it turns out to be in Botswana.

A parallel closer to home might be Germany's lost Oderbruch, as described by Neal Ascherson:

Today, we would treasure the lost Oderbruch as one of the marvels of Europe. On its way to the Baltic, the river frayed into countless shallow channels and lagoons, into swamps, shoals and muddy islands. Twice a year, it flooded up to ten or twelve feet deep, nourishing a dense cover of waterlogged bushes. 

Here lived ‘an almost unimaginable range of insect, fish, bird and animal life’, including wolves and lynxes. Blackbourn has the sense to rely heavily on the travel writings of Theodor Fontane, the most lovable and observant of German writers, who explored the drained Oderbruch in the 1850s and collected memories of pre-reclamation times. 

Fontane was told of the enormous shoals of countless species of fish, of pike hordes so dense that they could be scooped up in buckets, of crayfish which escaped the hot summer shallows to swarm in trees from which they could be shaken down like plums.

And he wrote also about the old inhabitants. They were not Germans but Wends, Slavs who had survived in the marshes since the Germans colonised the fertile land almost a thousand years before. The Wends lived on mounds hidden in the swamp, their huts encircled by ramparts of cow-dung which kept out the floods and served as pumpkin beds.

Six of the Best 954

"The Liberal Democrats have a poor quality of internal democracy because there are no well-organised factions acting as intermediaries between the membership and the internal elected bodies. If they’re even aware that they exist, most members have no real idea what the internal party bodies do because no one is explaining it to them in practical terms that make sense to them." Nick Barlow argues that the Lib Dems need to understand and embrace factions.

Jane Dodds says it's time for the Lib Dems to back a universal basic income.

"As more and more Englishmen landed on the Caribbean, cut down the trees, ploughed the land and began sugar production, the countryside back home in England also began to change. The slave traders and colonialists were making quick money in the Caribbean and heading home to translate this wealth into landed property." Nick Hayes explains how the English countryside was taken from the public using profits from slavery.

Nonie Coulthard makes the case for the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland.

"Women don’t attend cricket matches as an accessory to their male associates; they go because they want to watch cricket. Women watch cricket. Women understand and enjoy cricket." Abbie Rhodes discusses the sexist and anachronistic attitudes prevalent at every level of English cricket and what this means for female cricket fans.

Helen Lewis says Sherlock was the first drama series to recognise the implications of smartphones.

New rewilding network launched

British politicians have been talking about 'the environment' for longer as I have been politically aware, yet there has been a shocking degradation in the number and diversity of species over that period.

So new and radical thinking is needed and here the rewilding movement offers hope.

Today The Ecologist reports:

At least 300,000 acres of land could be "rewilded" in the next three years with the help of a project being launched to tackle the nature and climate crisis, its backers said.

Campaign group Rewilding Britain is launching a network later this year to support and connect people including landowners, farmers, community groups and local authorities who are rewilding land or considering doing so.

Rewilding involves the large-scale restoration of natural habitats and systems to help wildlife thrive, and can include bringing back missing species such as beavers to naturally manage the landscape.

Rewilding is a recognition of the importance of contact with the natural world to human flourishing, which is something that the environmental movement can lose sight of in its emphasis on survival.

The concept can also be applied more widely to take in the need for freedom and re-enchantment - see the Twitter account Rewild the Child for an example.

Some snippets of Lib Dem gossip from the new Liberator

The November issue of Liberator has arrived, which means I can share with you some snippets of gossip from Radical Bulletin.

There you can read about:

• the increasingly desperate arguments used to try to prevent the Liberal Democrat Conference amending the motion on social security
• Lib Dem peers getting restive about money
• the regional conference that is to be held at the stately home of a Ukip supporter who pays people to kill beavers

To read the full stories - and some excellent articles - you will have to subscribe to Liberator.

Six of the Best 555

"The key to reducing the risk of more floods like those in Carlisle is to realise that conventional 'flood defence' can never provide security against the ever more extreme weather events that global warming will bring. We must embrace natural solutions to holding back flood waters: more trees; and bring back the beavers!" Oliver Tickell is right.

Dawud Islam looks at the lessons of Oldham West: "All of us from Tim downwards need to hasten the roll out of our new direction and messages. Only when we finally give people something to vote for will the strains of the ‘lost deposits’ songs start to fade into the distance."

Ben Schiller explains how Finland's basic income scheme will work.

"To understand the complexities of the ongoing eurozone crisis, we need to analyze culture, since culture and history shape how policies are accepted, rejected, or modified," says Séamus Power looking at Ireland.

The inventor of Blue Peter has been forgotten because of the glorious, if tyrannical reign of Biddy Baxter. Andrew Martin introduces us to John Hunter Blair.

A London Inheritance goes in search of Park Row - a lost Knightsbridge street.

Take your hands off our beavers

A beaver yesterday

Good news from the River Otter in Devon: one of the wild beavers living on it has given birth to three young.

When the beavers were discovered at the start of the month, it was announced that they would be trapped and rehomed in a wildlife park. The appeared to be an attempt by the Tory minister George Eustice to placate fishing interests.

A petition against this move was launched and, reading today's press coverage, there are hopes that the government will back down.

The mystery of the Tamar beaver

In December 2008 I reported the escape of a beaver from a farm in Devon. Two females who escaped with him were soon recaptured, but Igor got clean away. He was last heard of felling trees beside the Tamar near Gunnislake in Cornwall.

So when a beaver was found at Gunnislake last week, it was naturally assumed that Igor had finally been caught.

Except, says the Daily Telegraph, that this beaver is a younger, smaller male and therefore cannot be Igor. Which may mean that there may be more beavers living wild in the area and breeding.

No doubt the Department of Cryptozoology, University of Rutland at Belvoir, has been called in. In the mean time, Cornish Liberal Democrats are collecting signatures against George Osborne's plan to impose VAT on beavers.

Jonathan Meades has a YouTube channel devoted to him

Tonight's Magnetic North was a classic. A prolonged joke about eating beavers long before the watershed and while he described a battle in the Middle Ages we were shown pictures of small boys fighting with plastic swords, solemnly labelled "Reconstruction".

No doubt it will turn up soon at the MeadesShrine.

Nice beavers in Scotland

Writing on the Guardian's Comment is Free site, Mike Small excitedly reports that it was announced earlier this week that beavers are to be reintroduced into Scotland.

If you follow the link to the Scottish Wildlife Trust site you came across a press release (pdf format) that shows the position is not quite so clear cut:

Nearly two years after the first proposal by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) for a trial reintroduction of beavers to Scotland was rejected, two leading Scottish conservation bodies; the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) welcomed the news that Mike Russell MSP, Environment Minister, is considering returning beavers to Scotland.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Out of Doors programme, the Minister revealed that he would like to “make a decision this year and if at all possible, I’d like to make sure it [a trial beaver reintroduction] happens.”

Still, I hope that Russell does come down in favour of beavers. Small quotes the Trust's chief executive, Simon Milne, as saying:

"The beaver is a keystone species whose reintroduction can bring benefits to the countryside including improving the ecology of wetland habitats and associated birds, insets fish, reducing downstream flooding and improving water quality."

Small also decribes the possible reintroduction as "another example of a post-Labour change of mood music".