This will help flooding........

[Joe Winstanley]

It's all a bit bonkers if you ask me, trying to establish beaver populations in a country as populated as ours , where almost every corner of it resided on or least farmed.
It would be great to turn back the clocks to a time when blah, blah, blah, but some just seem to be forgetting the small matter of millions of people!

Both Belgium and the Netherlands have a higher population density than the UK and beaver reintroduction appears to have been successful over there. Germany isn't far behind either in terms of population density either.

It may may well be that there are parts of UK where beavers aren't appropriate (Fens, Levels, SE) - that's why we need well designed trials and a suitable exit strategy.

Beavers have now been reintroduced to 24 European countries and the only western European countries not to have reintroduced or restored beavers the species are Lichtenstein, Montenegro, Italy and the UK.

Area and population of European countries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Damian Kimmins]

I was referring to England, Joe, not the UK.

 

[Joe Winstanley]

I was referring to England, Joe, not the UK.

Fair enough, but England (407km/2) on its own still has a lower population density then the Netherlands and of course that figure includes Greater London (5200km/2) which massively inflates the figure for England.

And of course any future Beaver reintroduction in Wales would obviously have implications for England when you think about the Wye and the Dee catchments.

I would argue that as increasing population density places yet more pressure on our rivers then all the more reason to consider all available methods to mitigate against these pressures.

 

[Damian Kimmins]

I thought the density figure actually larger than that of the Netherlands, second only to Malta in some articles.
And yes quite, mitigate against existing pressures eg. the flooding of areas lower down in catchments, but whilst most of us live in these areas, the areas in which we don't, invariably where these beavers will be reintroduced, are used for agriculture!

 

[Graham Young]

If these Beaver dams help alleviate flooding further down the river what happens during times when flooding is not a problem?

It might be a little simplistic but I can only see water still being held back by the dams (its why they build them isn't it?) causing low flows further down on some rivers that already suffer with pitiful flow made worse by abstraction.

 

[Joe Winstanley]

If these Beaver dams help alleviate flooding further down the river what happens during times when flooding is not a problem?

It might be a little simplistic but I can only see water still being held back by the dams (its why they build them isn't it?) causing low flows further down on some rivers that already suffer with pitiful flow made worse by abstraction.

I can see where your coming from Graham, I did wonder myself. The key point is that Beaver dams don't extract water from the river, it's just held back in the headwaters and slowly released - this has the effect of stabilising water flow and the steady release of water from the dams can help to mitigate against low flow in summer.