After 400 years, baby beaver takes birth in London, gets photographed

For the first time in 400 years, a baby beaver was photographed in London, 18 months after an initiative for reintroducing the species was started in the capital.

The beaver reintroduction programme was started by Enfield Council in London last year as part of a wider natural flood management and rewilding project.

In the 16th century, at the time of the Elizabethan era, the semi-aquatic rodents were hunted to extinction as the people predominantly killed them for their fur and meat.

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Capel Manor College, which is a special environmental college, will follow the advice from the Beaver Trust and get the beaver's comprehensive health check done by an experienced exotic-animal vet. The gender of the animal is yet to be established.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Enfield council’s cabinet member for the environment Rick Jewell said, “The beavers’ hard work creating a natural wetland ecosystem will contribute to excellent flood defences, protecting the local area and hundreds of homes from flooding downstream to the south-east of the borough, while encouraging biodiversity.”

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Beaver safaris for residents of London

Meanwhile, Capel Manor College’s animal collections manager Meg Wilson said, “We are thrilled [about] this new arrival. We have seen the developments the beavers are [involved in] and the improvements they have made to the wetland area. We are now focusing our efforts on collecting data, which we hope will provide further evidence about the positive effects the beavers are having on the environment.”

During the project, the mammals were seen inhabiting a 10-acre area of parkland in Ealing, west London. The residents in London will now be able to go on “beaver safaris” to look at the creatures as part of the authorities' rewilding project.

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The experts reintroduced beaver several years ago within fenced enclosures in England and Wales, as part of a rewilding campaign.

It was reported in August that regions of a North Yorkshire estate grew into a young woodland which already had become a new home for birds of prey, rodents and insects.

The Broughton Sanctuary near Skipton is around halfway through the rewilding project which is aimed at restoring more than 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of bare hillside.

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