For Londoners living around Greenford Tube station, tiptoeing through floodwaters to get to work was part of their daily routine. The ticket hall found itself flooded after heavy rain with neighborhoods flooded and sandbags routinely deployed to make room.The local council of Ealing, a borough in west London, has faced the horrific reality every year, yet has struggled to come up with a solution. Initially, they planned to spend millions on expensive engineering work to create an artificial reservoir to solve the problem. That was before environmentalists shared another idea. Until five beavers came and fixed the problem for free. “Why don’t we try to find a nature-based solution? Why don’t we bring back the beavers?” asked Sean McCormack, a vet and conservationist at the Ealing Beaver Project.
They were pushed out of their own world
In Henry IV Part I, Vernon refers to young Harry’s clothing, saying: “I saw young Harry, with his beaver…” There are many other references to large semi-aquatic rodents known as beavers in Shakespeare’s plays. This is because they were abundant in the country until his lifetime. Beavers were hunted for their fur, meat, and castoreum, a substance produced by the anal scent glands that was used in products such as perfume.
Once native to Britain, these animals were hunted to extinction during the 16th century and have only recently been reintroduced to the Earth. They were re-introduced to Paradise Fields, a 10-hectare former golf course in the Ealing area, in 2023.In order to demonstrate how “nature’s engineers” can make London more climate resilient and life easier, conservationists have been given a license to release five of the animals along the creek that runs through the 24-acre plot.
This was the beginning of the Ealing Beaver Project. The project is a collaboration between Ealing Wildlife Group, rewilding organization Citizen Zoo, Friends of Horsenden charity and Ealing Council with support from the Beaver Trust.
No more floods
Earlier, neighborhoods were regularly flooded and sandbags were routinely deployed to clear the way.
Beavers are amazing natural engineers. Their powerful teeth, fortified with iron that gives them a unique orange color, can carve through sticks and trees. They eat the bark and use the wood to build dams and create natural reservoirs.
At Paradise Fields, the rodents immediately went to work, re-engineering the landscape around Greenland with a series of dams that created a new lake almost overnight. They even dismantled an old dam built by volunteers and replaced it with a better dam.
Incredibly, they still had time to reproduce, producing litters within a year of their arrival.The project revealed that Greenford Station, located downstream from the animals’ wetland home at Paradise Fields, had not flooded for three consecutive years since they moved in.
Beavers slow the flow of water during heavy rains and create wetlands that impede the flow of water, relieving pressure on the sewer system downstream. These pools provide beavers with a refuge from predators. For humans, they provide natural flood control.Earlier, it would take minutes for river water to flow through the system to the MRT station, but now it seeps through a series of dams and the complex wetlands it has built.
“They slow the flow when we have heavy rainfall,” McCormack told the BBC. “They also sink the flow into the ground because the ground here is wetter, it even surrounds the river itself, and they create these complex wetlands that pull that water in and hold it for longer.”“I can’t believe how much they’ve done in a short space of time. They basically said, ‘Stand aside, humans,'” Shenez Mustafa, England’s first urban beaver officer, who witnessed the animals’ manual labor firsthand, told Positive News.
We make things a little difficult for ourselves. This shows that we don’t have to use heavy machinery or build infrastructure, nature can do it.
Improving biodiversity
The beavers not only mitigated flooding but also enhanced the biodiversity of the area. “We have four new species in just the past 11 months,” Mustafa said. “One of these species is the stickleback, which lives alongside dragonflies and insects. We also had the red pole, a bird that only stops when migrating.”Featured are 14 different species of butterflies, tadpoles, freshwater shrimp, frogs, two new species of bats, and more. “It will be interesting to see how other wildlife will colonize and return to space.”They also provide protection against harsh weather. The wetlands they create are useful during periods of drought, as water can seep into surrounding dry areas. Moreover, it also protects against forest fires because the ground is too wet to burn.
Ealing welcomes beavers
Beavers cannot be released anywhere. There must be enough food, water and space for them to build their home in the wetlands. Humans near the site must also be receptive to the animals and there must be an emergency plan in place in case they get too close to human infrastructure. They can create problems for farmers and landowners because the tunnels they dig can be large enough to trap livestock and machinery. But the Ealing community was receptive.According to a CNN report, dozens of people approached McCormack and asked about seeing the beavers while the men sat on benches enjoying drinks and watching the beavers. Wildlife lovers even embark on “beaver safaris.” “We’re showing here that living alongside beavers is not a wild idea,” McCormack added.
