Beaver updates

Beaver tails

Following our last update where we shared some amazing footage of one of our beavers walking on its hind legs to carry piles of branches and mud to maintain its lodge, we wanted to share some more information on a key beaver adaptation that helped enable it to balance in this way. 

Summer wetlands

This summer we experienced severe warm, dry weather across the county, with many ponds, rivers and wetlands experiencing extremely low water levels or drying up completely. 

At the Dorset Beaver Project wetland site, we were lucky to have no such problem. In fact, the water there has never been at such high levels!

Since the project began in 2020, we have been carrying out water surface area monitoring each year to study the effects the beavers are having on the hydrology and amount of water held in the landscape. This year has seen extremely dry, and hot drought conditions. Whilst across the county, and nationwide, we were seeing rivers at extremely low levels or completely dried up with many habitats facing wildfires and increased risk, yet our beaver wetland remained…wet! 

The depth of the main pond on site has remained at an average of 8.1–8.2 metres throughout the summer months and, much to our amazement given the conditions, this year’s water surface area measurements revealed that the site is holding a record amount of water. Before the beavers were introduced, in 2020, the water surface area was approximately 3,319 m². Since their arrival in 2021, the water covering the site has more than tripled, now extending to 9,666 m². This measurement, taken in mid-August, is a fantastic example of how these ecosystem engineers not only create valuable wetland habitat but also provide an essential lifeline in hot, dry conditions, helping to make the landscape more resilient.

This is a remarkable record and highlights just how incredible these animals are at transforming wetlands and helping to retain water in the land during drought conditions, which we are likely to see more frequently as a result of climate change. It is hugely valuable to be able to study and promote the positive impact that beaver dams and wetland creation can have, not only on our site but also in slowing water and retaining it across the wider landscape for longer.

With beavers in the landscape, we may be able to face the future challenges of such hot dry weather with more resilience and hope. 

The beaver wetland provides an essential lifeline for nature under the increasing threat of drought, with lots of wildlife making the most of the water the beavers have accumulated onsite. Just look at these kingfishers taking advantage of the watery oasis this summer. 

Lodge maintenance 

Other wildlife using the lodge

Beaver lodges act as an important structure within an ecosystem, between land and water, utilised by a multitude of species. These piles of woody material provide foraging opportunities, warmth, shelter, and nesting material for other animals, particularly a variety of birds. We captured a number of species making use of the valuable habitat that the beaver lodge offers. 

Species seen in the video by appearance: 

1. Canadian geese
2. Male and female mallard
3. Canadian geese
4. Blackbird
5. Female chaffinch
6. Blackbird
7. Wren dust bathing
8. Eurasian jay
9. Grey heron
10. Mallard
11. Emperor dragonfly and damselflies
12. Grey heron
13. Chiff chaff
14. Juvenile moorhen 

Main beaver pond 

On our journey to retrieve the trail camera we got to enjoy the beauty and serenity of the main pond. We had a lovely close-up view of the broad-leaved pond weed (Potamogeton natans), which is now in flower, spotted all sorts of aquatic insects such as water fleas, and damselflies, and were treated to a stunning show of clashing dragonflies. We were lucky enough to spot a male emperor dragonfly defending its territory from a brown hawker dragonfly – a species we have never recorded at this site. As well as this we also witnessed a female emperor dragonfly laying eggs. Studies have shown that beaver territories have significantly more dragonflies and damselflies than areas without beavers.

We have captured a couple of shots of our adult female beaver in recent weeks with prominent nipples – a sign she is either pregnant or nursing kits! Beaver kits are born around May/June and spend the first few weeks inside their lodge before emerging for the first time in late June/July. We will be keeping an eye out for some new kits in the next few weeks and will keep you updated! 

Beavers in the daylight

Now that the days are longer, and beavers have less time to do their necessary foraging under the cover of darkness, we have been catching lots of clips of the beavers in the daylight hours. It’s lovely to see them a bit more clearly and have a chance to appreciate their charismatic faces and chestnut brown fur. Here’s a peek at the beavers going about their business in the sunshine. If you look closely at the last clip, you will notice a bubble trail in the water as the beaver swims underwater out to the main pond – a key sign to look out for when looking for beavers beneath the surface!  

Hands and feet

When looking at the adaptations that beavers have, their paws are probably not the first things you would think of. In fact, beaver's hind and fore feet are highly specialized and adapted to help them thrive in their watery environments. Firstly, a beaver's front and rear feet are noticeably different, they also use them in very different ways.  

A beaver’s fore paws are used for manipulating objects such as carrying twigs, and rocks and digging. They are fairly small and handlike. They have five toes on both their fore and hind feet but on their front paws they have a semi opposable little finger, instead of a thumb that we humans have, making them highly adapted to manipulating and lifting objects, important for feeding, digging and building their lodges and dams.  

A beaver's hind feet are much longer than their smaller front feet and are less dexterous. The main use of their hind feet is to aid in swimming. Their hind feet have almost no hair on them to minimize water resistance and are webbed to help them maneuver and propel through the water. They do not use their hind feet to hold or interact with objects, instead they are designed to help with movement, only their back feet are webbed, allowing for a greater range of movement in their fore feet to help them pick up objects. Beavers tend to keep their front feet tucked up when swimming rather than using them to paddle.  

Beavers have claws on both their front and rear feet, but these are generally sharper and more pointed on their front feet to help with digging and grooming. As mentioned previously, beaver's claws are further adapted to help with grooming their important fur with a unique ‘split nail’ claw which helps remove dirt and spread oily ‘castoreum’ to help keep their fur waterproof.  

Coppicing regrowth  

This time of year is a great time to highlight the coppicing work that the beavers carry out through their natural foraging behaviour. As the beavers fell trees such as willow, rather than killing the tree, they bring and encourage new life and build dynamic habitats with a variety of features. The stump of the foraged tree begins producing numerous shoots in the spring following being coppiced by the beavers. This regrowth overtime creates an abundance of food, cover and nesting places for herbivorous and small mammals such as voles and dormice, and a wide variety of invertebrates and birds.  

This coppicing also enables the tree to live a healthier and longer life with more opportunity for growth through its multiple shoots. Felling the trees also creates space for light to reach the ground, encouraging a flush of new ground flora species that cannot thrive in shade to grow. This is a key stage in natural processes as part of the succession that takes place in natural, healthy ecosystems – the changing dynamics of the habitat over time and allowing for a cycle of different species to develop and exist. Willow, and other tree species growing in or near water, have evolved alongside beavers for millions of years and it may be due to this tree foraging by beavers that has given rise to them reacting in such a way when felled.  

People have long understood the benefits of coppicing; it is an old traditional practice that still happens today in order to provide woody materials for human use, as well as its benefits for biodiversity. This is just another way that beavers have positive effects on the environment around them that may also save us humans some work!   

Sights and sounds of a beaver wetland

We'd like to end this latest update with a moment of mindfulness. We have put together a compilation of clips from the beaver site collected throughout the spring for you to enjoy.

The water surface area at the Dorset Beaver Project site has more than tripled since the beavers arrived in 2021, highlighting their impressive ability to create wetlands. The beavers have kept us very busy recently with their efforts to retain even more water on site, meticulously extending one of their dams at the lower end of the area.

We normally allow the beavers to carry out their natural behaviour without interference, including dam building. However, they’re currently extending a dam towards the outer enclosure fence, causing water to pool and submerge part of it. As part of our licence to operate an enclosed beaver project, we must maintain the integrity of the fencing to ensure the beavers remain safely on site. Submerged fencing is harder to monitor, risks damage, and prevents us from spotting and repairing any holes or weaknesses. We're closely monitoring the dam in this area and may need to make minor, careful adjustments—or remove the new extensions—to protect the fence and meet our licence conditions.

Great care is taken to ensure any interventions do not negatively impact the beavers. For our team, this is also a valuable learning experience in managing future interventions—something that may occasionally be necessary as these industrious mammals return to the wider landscape through controlled reintroduction in England. All staff involved in beaver management, including at our enclosed site, have received appropriate training and hold the necessary licences to intervene when a dam causes problems. In the UK, no licence is required to remove a beaver dam that is less than two weeks old.

The beavers have been busy attempting to extend their dam to the fence several times between our weekly site visits. We set up a camera to capture them in action and managed to film the dam being built from start to finish. We’ve put together a few clips—sped up slightly in the middle—so you can watch the full construction process. In the video, you’ll see the beavers start by pushing up mud and silt and placing large rocks to form a base. They then drag branches and woody material of various sizes, layering them precisely to create an intricate, functional dam. Mud, silt, and rocks are added throughout to strengthen the structure. As the dam takes shape, more water is retained. The water spreads closer to the fence, and as the level rises, the beavers become more submerged—eventually diving once the water is deep enough!

On this occasion, we captured at least three members of the beaver family working together to build the dam. Over six nights, they spent nearly 15 hours constructing it—pausing now and then for snacks and a bit of grooming. Since the footage was recorded, the beavers have been deterred and appear to have turned their attention to other activities in their wetland home. However, our team is keeping a close eye on this spot in case they decide to continue their dam-building efforts.

Newt expansion

As part of our amphibian monitoring, we've recently found that newts have expanded their breeding range into several new ponds within the beaver wetland.

Female newts lay their eggs on the leaves of aquatic plants in shallow pond margins, carefully folding the leaves to hide them. Since the beavers arrived, the wetland habitat has grown and improved, creating more suitable vegetation for breeding. As a result, newt eggs are now being recorded across a wider area.

These are brilliant signs—and yet another example of how beavers’ ecosystem engineering is benefiting other species.

Feathered friends

In spring, the beaver-modified wetland provides ideal breeding habitat for water-loving birds like mallards and moorhens. The increased aquatic vegetation and invertebrate life offer plenty of food, while the dense habitat gives their nests and young the cover they need to stay safe.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve captured plenty of footage of these feathered youngsters and wanted to share a few clips of our adorable new residents.  

The beavers

The beavers have been captured on our cameras indulging in a lot of mutual grooming in the last couple of weeks. This behaviour is really important to strengthen their family bonds and maintain their thick fur, which is extremely important to them and one of the many adaptations' beavers have that make them so well suited to their watery home environment. The beavers can be seen here in one of their favourite spots where they feel safe grooming together as a family. It is obviously a good spot for grooming as the mallards have been seen enjoying it for the very same thing! 

Beaver fur

An important adaptation that beavers have which makes them suited to their aquatic habitat is their dense, thick fur, which is incredibly important to keep them warm and dry in their wet and often cold environment. A beaver’s fur is made up of two layers; a softer dense underfur which traps air against the beaver’s skin to keep them warm and longer darker guard hairs that are stiffer and more protective and help to keep water away from the softer fur underneath. The fine hairs in the undercoat also have tiny hooks on them which can bind together, enmeshing and forming a barrier that helps to keep more water out. Beavers further enhance their fur by making their coats waterproof by covering the hairs in a layer of ‘castoreum’ (an oily secretion from their castor glands which they use during scent communication) which stops the water from passing through to the skin. A beaver’s fur acts almost like a wetsuit for the beaver and enable them to live happily in and around water. 

As well as cuckoo flowers a variety of other wildflowers have created scatterings of colour across the site and can be seen across the wetland and wet woodland floor at the moment. These include carpets of bluebells, mixed with wood anemone, greater celandine, purple violet, yellow pimpernel, carpet bugle, and marsh marigold.  

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.

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.

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.