Beavers lived in Britain until they were hunted to extinction approximately 500 years ago. They have recently been reintroduced to Scotland and England and the Welsh Beaver Project, led by North Wales Wildlife Trust, is seeking to re-establish beavers in Wales.
The Welsh Beaver Project has been investigating the feasibility of reintroducing beavers to Wales since 2005, and this also involves finding out what people think about beavers in Wales. Lots of public engagement work has been undertaken, but this is the first time that an all-Wales online survey has been conducted.
The opinion survey was commissioned by North Wales Wildlife Trust but independently led by a team of experts from the University of Exeter. The team from Exeter were also involved with a peer-reviewed survey in 2017 that investigated the attitudes and perception towards beaver reintroductions across Great Britain.
Over 4,000 responses were received in this latest survey, of which over 3,000 responses were from residents in Wales. North Wales Wildlife Trust believe the results were positive with 88.7% of participants in Wales supporting beavers living in Wales. Benefits to biodiversity and wetland habitats, waterway management and recognising beavers as a native species were the main reasons given for supporting beavers in Wales. A majority of participants (over 83%) were also in favour of legal protection for beavers in Wales with enabling time for beavers to establish and helping to ensure populations survive as the main reasons for legal protection. Participants in favour of either limited legal protection (11.16% of participants) or no legal protection (5.13% of participants) was mainly due to being able to manage conflicts. Just under 7% of participants in Wales were opposed to beavers living in Wales with the most common reason being concerns of negative impacts on river systems.
Whilst beavers can bring many benefits there are times when local issues may arise, but management techniques have been developed and are used in many European countries, including closer to home in England and Scotland. The Welsh Beaver Project is also establishing a Beaver Management Network to ensure there is management support in Wales as well and the project has entered a new phase, through their new Living With Beavers In The Dyfi Catchment Project. The project will continue with their discussions about beavers and will be meeting with landholders and communities to re-assure and advise them about the activities of beavers, as well as raise awareness about the importance of beavers and how we can live side-by-side with them. This work is funded by the Nature Networks Fund (round two), which is delivered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, on behalf of the Welsh Government and in partnership with Natural Resources Wales.
The survey report can be found here
For more information about the Welsh Beaver Project, please visit www.welshbeaverproject.org.
