Beaver updates

Beavers are known for their accolades as ecosystem engineers. But do you know the key features that make a beaver so well suited to its job and how they actually transform the environment around them to benefit other species?

Over the coming months, we will be highlighting the beaver adaptations that make them so well suited to their watery environment, and allow them to carry out their great engineering feats. We will also be sharing an exclusive glimpse into the Dorset Beaver Project site as it transforms, and the wildlife benefitting from these changes.

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30.4.25 Spring's in full swing

Spring has officially sprung at our enclosed beaver site and the site is once again coming to life. Throughout the spring and summer, our beavers will be more active during daylight hours, will change their diet to include the abundance of vegetation shooting up, and we may get to see signs of breeding. And it’s not just the beavers that are busy this spring, lots of other species are thriving in our beaver wetland at this time of year.

The beavers

The beavers are as busy as ever this spring and have been spotted on our cameras across the site carrying out a variety of their favourite pastimes. We were lucky enough to have a lovely close-up of one of our beavers inspecting our trail camera. As well as the usual grooming and transporting and gnawing of sticks and branches, the beavers have been tucking into the new spring vegetation. They are still eating the cambium layer (outer bark) of branches, but now have the added nutrients and variety of food sources from the spring growth including leaves, buds, and various plants across the ponds and water’s edge.

Beaver sniffing the trail cam (https://youtu.be/RVXrY-87Stk)

Beaver sniffing the trail cam

Beaver behaviour (https://youtu.be/QXo1xzh1aKs)

Beaver behaviours

Frogspawn clumps at the Dorset Beaver Project site

Amphibians emerging

At the start of spring, we carried out our annual frogspawn surveys and mapped where we found spawn across the site. The abundance and spread of frog spawn has been increasing year-on-year at the site, and this year we have for the first time found frog spawn in a new, entirely beaver-created pond, one that did not exist prior to the beaver's arrival and where no frogspawn had been recorded previously. The beavers seem to have slowly created and expanded the ideal habitat for frogs to breed since their arrival in 2021. The spawn is progressing nicely in the warm weather and the water is now buzzing with movement from the clumps of tiny tadpoles wiggling around. We also carried out refugia surveys (where an artificial refuge such as a corrugated tin or felt mat is placed in suitable habitat to attract reptiles), beginning in April, and during our pre-survey checks encountered a smooth newt sheltering under one of the refugia, which was great to see.

Smooth newt at the Dorset Beaver Project site

New species visiting the site

We have also had a new bird visitor to the site – the cormorant. These aquatic birds have been seen on nearby rivers but have never been recorded on site until now. As they are almost always found around coasts, rivers and lakes, and have a diet made up almost entirely of fish, having these birds on site is amazing news and suggests that the beaver created habitat is becoming a thriving wetland capable of supporting such specialist aquatic-based species. The presence of cormorants indicates that there is an abundance of fish for them to prey upon, while the complex habitat created by beavers provides ample hiding places for fish. This suggests a balanced predator-prey interaction and a healthy, dynamic ecosystem.

Cormorant at the Dorset Beaver Project site (https://youtu.be/GNV1ZQ4lKDc)

Cormorant at the Dorset Beaver Project site

9.4.25 Beaver teeth

Beaver teeth at night (https://youtu.be/IoDF8IzMOaA)

Footage showcasing a beaver's teeth and its tree gnawing capabilities at the Dorset Beaver Project site.

This week we are starting with something most rodents are well known for, and which are especially important for beavers - their teeth!

Beavers have twenty teeth in total, including four large incisors at the front. A beaver’s teeth are unique in the animal kingdom due to one obvious feature – their colour. A beaver’s teeth are a rusty orange colour due to the high iron levels in the tooth's structure, giving them particularly tough enamel, making them exceptionally strong and durable. In fact, beaver teeth are made mainly of two components – iron and dentine. This structure also gives the beavers another advantage for munching on wood. The dentine is found at the back of the teeth, with the iron at the front. This dentine is softer than the iron front and therefore wears down quicker. This gives beavers' teeth their distinctive and extremely effective chisel-like sharp cutting edge.

Having so much iron in their teeth also makes them resistant against tooth decay – which is vital to beavers given how much they use their teeth. These adaptations give beavers teeth which are unrivalled in shape and strength, just what’s needed when you're chewing on wood all day. Beavers' teeth, like other rodents, are continuously growing so they need to gnaw on wood to keep them the right length and in good condition.

Did you know? A beaver can fell an eight-foot tree in just five minutes!

Beaver teeth - daytime clip (https://youtu.be/43x8a60_DbU)

Footage of a beaver at the Dorset Beaver Project site.

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More about the Dorset Beaver Project

On 8 February 2021, following years of preparation, a pair of beavers (an adult male and female) were released into an enclosed site in west Dorset, having been relocated from Scotland under licence from NatureScot. Since then, the pair have settled well into their new home, having multiple generations of kits, transforming the project site into a wonderful wetland world.

This is a scientific study site and in partnership with the University of Exeter and Wessex Water, we are gathering information on biodiversity and hydrology (water quality and flow) and studying the behaviour and activities of the beavers. We will be making comparisons to the baseline data gathered before they arrived to see how beavers can improve the habitat they occupy and the wider benefits they can potentially bring to the environment in terms of biodiversity, water quality and beneficial effects on river catchments.

Throughout the project, animal welfare has been an absolute priority, so we have ensured that the 4-hectare enclosed site offers enough complex habitat to support the newly expanded beaver family.