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Chris Jones, a beef farmer, is very proud of his beavers. “They are just extraordinary,” he says.
Since releasing a couple into an enclosure on his Cornwall farm in 2017, he says they have saved it from drought, prevented flooding in the nearby village, boosted the local economy and even improved oyster beds in Falmouth Bay.
The rodents, which were hunted to extinction in England hundreds of years ago for their fur and oil, were once a common feature of our rivers. They may soon be again, after the government announced on Friday it would approve the first wild beaver releases in England for hundreds of years.
Walking to the edge of Jones’s farm, you can feel the soil start to get damper. Lush blades of grass – perfect for his cattle – grow around fat splodges of frogspawn as pasture slowly gives way to wetland.
That, along with the half-munched willow branches strewn across the ground, is a sure sign you are entering the realm of the beaver.
Walk further on and you can hear the gentle trickling of the water moving through the series of dams built by the industrious rodents, and see glassy pools around lichen-covered trees. At the very top of the enclosure is a magnificent pond, featuring two beaver lodges. This furry couple clearly decided it needed two homes. “I’m not sure what the council tax situation is for them,” Jones jokes.
The beaver enclosure was once wet pasture and became a wildlife area with the pond – though before its rodent inhabitants moved in it was about a third of its current size. “I still bring the animals in to graze sometimes, particularly when it’s dry,” Jones said. “There is no conflict between livestock and beaver.”
The habitat is stunning, with wetland areas of various depths and rivulets of water flowing at different speeds. There are shallow areas lined with gravel which make perfect fish nurseries, and lush vegetation that will be humming with invertebrate life come spring. The birds clearly like it – as we walk past, woodcock stir from the bushes and fly off.
But Jones is not satisfied with this awe-inspiring habitat. He yearns to free his beavers. “This really is a postage stamp,” he sighs. “If we could let them out, we could have this landscape all the way down to the sea. The water companies and the Environment Agency should be all over it.”
This is because beavers operate a free water treatment facility. Our rivers are deluged with nitrates and other pollutants from human and animal waste. Researchers from the University of Cambridge studied Jones’s farm and found that the river fed from the beaver enclosure had 80% lower levels of nitrates compared to farther upstream.
Though farmers like Jones can have beavers in enclosures on their land, and there have been some illegally released in England, it has not – until now – been lawful to release them into the wild.
Jones has been on the farm all his life. Initially it was beef and dairy, and now he just rears beef cattle. The farm has always been organic, which he credits to his father’s old-fashioned prewar farming methods, before pesticides became prevalent. Since taking over the farm 20 years ago, Jones has moved from organic to grass-only – and begun rewilding in earnest.
“I’ve doubled the soil carbon since I started this rewilding thing,” he says proudly. “I don’t trim my hedges, and 60% of the farm is now agroforestry – cows grazing around trees. This leaves grass undisturbed which gives habitat for small mammals, like voles and mice. These in turn have brought birds of prey, which feed on them, to the farm. As a result I’ve seen barn owls come to the farm for the first time in my lifetime – 65 years.”
He says his farm is as economically productive as t was before he started bringing nature back “I am trying to be as productive as possible while seeing how far we can go with rewilding. We need to eat but we also need lots and lots of wildlife. I think we can achieve both these aims.”
Most farmers will tell you nature has disappeared from the countryside in recent decades. Jones has seen it on his land since childhood. “I’m very aware of the wildlife we have lost over the years, particularly bird species which have just gone, curlews and grey partridge, for example,” he says. “It’s bloody distressing. But this feels like bringing something back and making a small difference.”
Introducing beavers was a natural progression. Jones started researching what other farmers were doing and came across some writing by the UK’s leading beaver guru Derek Gow. “It sounded like getting beavers was a total no-brainer. It makes the river more interesting, increases biodiversity, is good for fish and it reduces flooding. It sounded like we could really turbocharge what we were already doing.”
So he got in touch with Gow and decided to build a beaver enclosure on his land with the help of Cornwall Wildlife Trust and some scientists at the University of Exeter. The beavers were released in 2017. “We released them on the Friday and by Sunday they’d already started damming,” Jones says.
The beavers have helped Jones a lot in recent years. In 2022, England was hit by a severe drought meaning the grass dried up and many farmers had to give winter feed to their livestock as there was nothing for them to graze. Jones did not have this problem. “We pumped water from the beaver pond, and in that bad drought we actually had more water in our pond than at any other time – the beavers built the dam up higher because they were able to work with the lighter flow of the stream.”
It’s not just Jones and other beaver fanatics who make this claim about the rodents’ ability to create anti-flood infrastructure; a recent report by the government body the Environment Agency into ways to prevent flooding recommended the release of beavers. They can save the government money, too – in the Czech Republic, a family of beavers recently built a dam themselves. This infrastructure was due to cost the government £1m – and the beavers did it for free.
Jones says more farmers need to get on board with beavers. “Some farmers really have their head in the sand. We really need to adapt to climate breakdown, and make our land more resilient. Storing water is part of that – we can’t keep carrying on like before.”
Gesturing to the margins of his field that have been flooded by the beavers, he said: “There are some farmers who would see this and have a heart attack. They would think I was nuts. But firstly, this is the land of least agricultural value, and secondly during a drought they would all be jealous as this is the best grazing in town.”
The idea of a farmer bringing beavers to the quiet countryside perturbed some neighbours and incensed others. But most have come around. Jones has calculated that 10,000 people have come to visit his beavers since 2017 – and they all need places to stay, and pubs to eat and drink in.
“We’ve brought business to the pub and the village. We aren’t making anyone millionaires, but there is definitely a gentle uptick in the economy,” Jones said. “Some people absolutely loathe my beavers, there are a few very serious dairy farmers who are enraged by them, as they take the occasional tree down. Also, to begin with our neighbour who runs a riding stables hated the beavers but then realised their clients were so overjoyed when they saw a beaver on their ride, that they realised beavers are actually good for business.”
Another benefit Jones’s beavers have brought to the local area is an alleviation of flooding. “Our beaver area holds a huge amount of water, and their leaky dams slow the flow and stop the village from flooding. In 2013, before we got the beavers, it flooded twice in two months. It really should only flood once a decade.” Poor river management – straightening watercourses so water drains off the land and sluices down into the village below – has exacerbated the problem.
Fans of Falmouth oysters should also thank Jones and his beavers. “Going into the enclosure you see just how much silt they have stored here,” Jones says. “That silt would normally have gone down the river into the oyster beds on Falmouth bay.”
They make Jones happy, too. “I go down to the enclosure by myself sometimes, it is a very nice thing to sit there in the evening and I’ve had some extraordinarily close encounters – the beavers get very curious when it’s just me and come straight up to me. It’s been very fulfilling.
“The first time I saw a beaver was when it was in a cage in the back of Derek Gow’s van, ready to be introduced on to my farm,” he reminisces. “It was just extraordinary.”
When they were released, Jones felt elated. “It just felt like the most incredibly positive thing to be doing.”
And the beavers made quick work of bringing nature back to his farm. “I had no idea how fast they’d work but we have had 11 or 12 bird records, we now have 11 species of bats, 17 of dragonflies, the fish have all increased in size. When you see it happen in front of your face, it is just extraordinary. They are the ultimate bringers of life.”
After this initial excitement, progress to return the beaver to Cornwall has been a lot slower than Jones hoped for. “We wanted to end up starting something that ends up with beavers across Cornwall. But it has taken longer than we thought because Defra has sat on it for so long.”
Jones isn’t stopping at beavers. He wants to bring storks back to Cornwall next. “I’m part of something called the Cornwall Stork Project and we are trying to get some stork colonies set up across the country. They are utterly fascinating and we have lots of food for them here – frogs, toads, grasshoppers and worms.”
