Life

The amusing skulduggery-filled tale of how beavers returned to Britain

From photocopying secret files to taking on the powerful lobby groups, activist Derek Gow's book Bringing Back the Beaver tells his side of the story of Britain's beaver reintroduction

By Graham Lawton

9 September 2020

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — Reintroducing the beaver has been glacially slow in English waters
Guy Edwardes/naturepl.com

Bringing Back the Beaver: The story of one man’s quest to rewild Britain’s waterways

Derek Gow

Chelsea Green Publishing Company

LAST month, the UK government made a long-anticipated ruling on the future of a colony of beavers that has been living freely on the River Otter in Devon since at least 2014. Against expectations, it decided they could stay – the first time an extinct native mammal has been legally reintroduced into the wild in England. Scotland’s government made a similar call in 2016, and in 2019…