Dam Engineers | The Beavers of Holnicote | Revisited - Wild Tales | Nature Podcast

Episode Transcript
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KATE MARTIN (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.
I'm Kate Martin Lead Ranger atFormby in Liverpool. And today
I'm revisiting the HolnicoteEstate in Exmoor National Park.
I was last there two years backto explore a habitat that hasn't
been seen in the UK for over 400years.
And today, I'll be finding outhow the charismatic inhabitants

(00:29):
have been getting on andlearning about a heart warming
surprise just in time forChristmas.
Exmoor National Park occupiesalmost 700 square kilometres of
rugged Moorland and shinglebeaches to the north of this
area is the Holnicote estate, a32 square kilometre National

(00:53):
Trust managed segment of thisparkland, its coastline, ancient
woodland and network of rivers,make it a wonderland for the
outdoor enthusiast.
The area that I'm walkingthrough at the moment is sort of
a natural bowl where you've gotthese rolling hills. So there's
a real sort of abundance ofnatural features here. But
ironically, it's some of thesenatural features that contribute

(01:14):
to the climate concerns thathave plagued this area for
decades.

NIGEL HESTER (01:22):
I'm Nigel Hester and I live within the Holnicote
estate near Allerford. It's atiny Hamlet of about six
buildings, lovely cottages asyou can see and it's a, a
perfect place to live.
There are two river catchmentshere. The Horner rises high on
the moor and the Aller comesdown the vale behind us and they

(01:43):
both meet. Today, actually,they're flying nice and gently
and it's all very lovely.
Get a heavy downfall of rain andthe water just comes off these
steep hills. You just get atorrent coming down. It's
looking to spill out and itspills out into the villages,
flooding the cottages.

(02:05):
The worst one I remember wasback in 2000 when most of the
cottages in Allerford andBossington got flooded out.
But I remember one cottage,literally that the sewer burst
and all the effluent came upinto the house completely ruined
the whole house. It's theuncertainty of knowing when it's
gonna happen and then the totaldisruption to your life.

I can see a group of stone buildings which I
assume is the estate office.Hopefully someone there will be
able to point me in thedirection of Ben Eardley, the
estate's project manager and thedriving force behind the flood
management scheme that hebelieves will be able to help
solve some of the area's watermanagement issues.

BEN EARDLEY (02:54):
Hey, is it Kate?

It is!

Hey, how you doing?

I believe you've got some issues with flooding.

Obviously, with climate change, we're seeing
more frequent and more extremeweather, but some of the issues
are also to do with how therivers and streams here have
been managed that in itself hascaused and does cause issues as
well.
Now, we're learning how we canwork with nature to benefit
those downstream communities.

It would be good to see some of the work you're
doing. So any chance we can goand have a look?

Yeah, it does get a bit muddy up there. So the only
way we're going to get therereally is in the gator.

This vehicle's fantastic. Go off road, but
we're going on the road as well.
Seems to do absolutelyeverything.
It's a great place to appreciatethe landscape. Cos it's all sort
of open sided. You can see thevillages, you can see people's
houses, obviously, these are thepeople who are affected by the

(03:55):
flooding, but there's also afantastic landscape and I
imagine a real abundance ofwildlife. So what effect do
these flooding events have onthe wildlife?

This landscape looks beautiful, but it's
actually suffered significantdeclines in biodiversity.
So what we'd like to do is tohelp increase biodiversity,
bring some of that lost wildlifeback. Ironically, what we'd like
to see in certain areas of thelandscape is more water,

(04:25):
creating space for waterupstream. We can help to reduce
flooding downstream.

And I also believe that you are doing something...
a little bit special?!

Yeah, we've got our own flood engineers if you like.
So why don't we drive on a bitfurther and I'll show you what
I'm talking about.

This is a gorgeous spot.

Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it? Whiteman's
wood.

You can see sort of woodlands around us in a field
in front of us.

If I take you over there, I can talk through some
of those issues that we, wediscussed earlier on.

We're looking out now over rolling green fields.

It's a lovely landscape, but it's not a
natural landscape before thiswas floodplain. So the water
would move through this field.You'd have had wetlands, streams
and ponds flowing down into themain floodplain itself. What
we've done to graze these areasis drain that catchment and you
can hear the sound of sort offlowing water.
You've got that drainage ditchbehind you, but that drainage
ditch is there to drain thisland so that it can be managed

(05:30):
in a certain way.
The drawback from that is thatthat water just moves through
the landscape very, very quicklynow. So rather than it being
soaked up by the field, it justshoots through that drainage
channel straight through thecatchment and out into the
Bristol Channel.

And that's all moving really quickly through
the lands. That's when you thenget those sort of flooding
events in the villages andpeople's properties?

Yeah.

So is the flood management scheme that you're
working at the moment aiming toreverse management that's
happened to you in the past.

In certain areas we are looking to reconnect those
rivers and streams with thesurrounding landscape. We've got
some little engineers helping uswith that at the moment on the
project. If you come with me,I'll take you over to the
enclosure where we'reimplementing a big part of our
flood management scheme.

Fascinating!
This is quite a serious fence.

It looks quite severe but it does let the
wildlife in and out.

But the workers can't, they're locked in?

No, we want them to stay on the job.

That's quite concerning in now. I want to see
them.

Yeah. Ok! Let's pop in the easiest way to walk
through the site is up throughthe stream itself.

It's like Narnia, there is something otherworldly
about it, isn't it?

I think it's been untouched and unmanaged for so
long.

Yeah. If you suddenly came across like a
woodland elf or a nymph-

You wouldn't be surprised!
So you can actually hear some ofthe work that the guys have been
doing up here, actually.

Yeah. It's definitely getting louder, isn't
it that water?

So, that's some of the work they've been doing.

A lot of sticks.

Yeah. And that's where they live over there in
the hole in the bank.

I'm getting the idea. These aren't people.

No, they aren't people. No, this is a Beaver
created dam. We've actually gotBeaver living and working in
here.

CHRYSSA BROWN (07:27):
Beavers were quite widespread across much of
Europe and also in the UK duringthe 1600s/1700s they were
hunted. There were stillconcentrations of them in
Germany, France and Norway. Butat their lowest, we were at the
point of almost losing them.
My name is Chryssa Brown and Iam a PHD researcher looking at

(07:50):
how reintroduced Beavers affectrivers and streams.
We've seen in the UK, this realinterest in Beaver
reintroduction and how theycould assist in natural flood
management.
As a rodent who lives in waterfor majority of their life,
they're interested in creatingand extending their territories

(08:13):
to do that. They create dams
By doing so this water thenspreads out, as soon as you're
able to increase and extend thatarea of water. You attract all
of these other species andanimals that thrive on that
environment flies beetles, bugs,fish, amphibians as well and

(08:38):
they create life and throughtheir modifications, they
encourage that life to continueto use that environment.

So this is where they're starting to dam this
area. But you can see all theboulders, stones, all the woody
material, all the earth, that'sall material that they've moved.

They built all that, all the difference between
the sort of stream and the topis what about 4 ft, 5 ft maybe?
And how long has it taken themto build up?

They've only done this in the last few months.

Really?!

So, yeah. Yeah. So it hasn't taken them very long
at all. And you can see we'restarting to create wet woodland
over there to the right beforeyou just have one channel. Now
you've got a variety ofdifferent water habitats.

That's absolutely amazing.

They are incredible creatures. Yeah. I mean, if, if
we walk around there a sectionyou can get a better view of the
house.
I think we can just trackstraight to this bit.

Just walked up through this holly bush and i'm
stood in a pond.
Around me there are trees thatare now surrounded by water.
It's so different from that kindof rushy-tumbly stream that
we've just walked past. TheBeavers have done this in a
relatively short space of time.Only a matter of months. So what
are you expecting this area tolook like in a year's time?

The guys they will take on bigger trees and they
will affect bigger change.There's somewhere else that I
can take you and show you thatreally sort of highlight that
for you. It's a very differentsite to this one, but more
exciting in some ways.

Right. Let's go

Cool.
So this is paddock's wood for adifferent look and feel.

Wow.
The first enclosure that we wentto the Beavers had created the
pool that was tens of metressquared across compared to where
we are now, it does look likesomething that you would expect
to see like the Everglades.
This pool stretches hundreds ofsquare meters pretty much as far

(10:54):
as I can see.

This was all dry before, this woodland. This was
just a small channel. And nowessentially you've got a wetland
and you can see, you know, moresigns of them felling trees.
It's a habitat we've lost inthis country. You know, we've
lost 90% of our wetlands sinceRoman time.
It's a missing component of thelandscape and a super important
one.

It's amazing what relatively small animals can
actually do, the changes theycan make in their environment.
It really is quite astounding.

I can show you some more further down in the site if
you want to follow me down.
That's the, the original BeaverDam in the site. So that's,
that's what's holding back allthat water.

That's unbelievable. So that is a
essentially a pile of sticks,holding that huge pond.

They literally constructed this over the course
of just a few days. You know, wedid a site check one week and
the site was just a couple ofspring fed streams and then came
in the next week and did oursite checks and there was a dam
here and a- you know, a bigwetland.

I can obviously see the physical changes that have
happened here, obviously withthe, the dam and the pond and
then the stream. But what's thesort of environmental impact of
this.

When we have sort of more extreme weather, water
is flowing more slowly throughthis environment, so that
protects communities downstreamat drier times when you've got
hotter dry weather and perhapsthe risk of drought, you've held
more water in the landscapethat's released more slowly. So
you've reduced the impact ofthat drought on the local area
as well.

All the stuff that we've seen so far from a sort of
environmental point of view andalso from a natural flood
management point of view is, isfantastic.
But I know myself, any sort ofchange, you're trying to do any
sort of environmental workyou're trying to do. There were
always people who are less keen,have you had a lot of sort of
complaints?

I'm of the firm opinion that they're easily
managed. It just needs to be aapproach. So if a farmer has
land and Beaver move in andstart building dams, he knows
who to call to come and sortthat problem out.
You can put in things calledBeaver deceivers or you can
relocate the Beaver to somewhereelse in that catchment. So it
just needs to be sensible andthought through. And I think the

(13:12):
positives far outweigh any ofthe inconvenience we have to
accept for that species being inthe wider landscape.

It's interesting. I think most people would probably
think of Beavers as kind of wildanimals that we don't really
have any sort of control over.But do you still see them a
little bit as a sort of- more ofa human connection than you
would do they have sort ofpersonalities?

The animals themselves, they've certainly
got personalities and one animalin particular, we sort of
nicknamed the Grylls. She hadsort of quite a hard start in
life.
Grylls is introduced with hermum. Beavers cachet food in the
pools and ponds to feed onduring the winter when times are
tough and construct dams.

(13:57):
They're big animals when they'refully grown. Well, over 30 kg.
Some of the bits of wood thatthey move would be a significant
branch for me to pick up. Butobviously, Grylls wasn't at that
stage. She was 2/3 months old,you know, a few kgs.
She wasn't gonna be carrying outany great feats of engineering.
They pick up a lot of thebehaviours that they need to
survive from other familymembers, but things didn't work

(14:20):
out like that for Grylls.
Unfortunately, her mum passedaway within a few weeks of being
introduced to the site. Peopledidn't give Grylls much chance
of surviving the rest of thewinter.
Beavers themselves have got nonatural predators anymore in

(14:41):
this country, but young Beaverwill, will still be taken by
fox.
We know there are a fox aroundand about in that habitat and
Grylls was small. So the fearwas that she would be eaten by a
fox or that she was simply toosmall to survive the harsh
weather conditions in thewinter. Spent a lot of time
putting vegetables and fruitinto the site to keep her going.

(15:05):
We were just checking the cameratraps, checking the site
regularly, fully expecting tofind her having passed away. We
were just on tenterhooks.
We've got several camera trapsin the site to check on the, the
Beaver. We have to go out to thecamera traps, download the
footage from an SD card, take itback to the office and check. We

(15:27):
all sort of hunk around thelaptop when we downloaded the
footage from the enclosure thatGrylls is in. We saw something
that surprised us all.
We saw footage of Grylls tryingto construct her own little dam.
You know, you'd be stretching itto call them dams. They were
sort of gatherings of twigs andbranches, but it was good just
to know that she was trying herbest. She had us in fits of

(15:48):
giggles a good few times. Shewas always trying to carry
sticks and branches that weretoo big for her.
She used to do funny littledances and things. She tried to
hold like two or three parsnipsin her mouth at once as well as
a branch and went nose to nosewith a fox on the trail cam.
That was quite funny.
Time went on and she survivedsort of week after week and
then, you know, more signs offeeding more signs of other

(16:10):
beaver behaviour, more signs ofher looking sort of healthy and
ok on the camera traps.
That's why she's called Grylls.It's a bit of a funny take on
Bear Grylls and Born Survivor.But it's because nobody really
gave her a chance. And toeveryone's surprise she pulled
through.

(16:32):
She's the Beaver in here nowwith the male, Yogi. And they're
doing really well.

Now, I do realize they are wild animals and there
is never a guarantee. But do youthink there's any chance we
might see one?

Well, we can potter along to the lodge and I've got
a thermal imaging camera. That'sa good way if they are out and
about to spot them.
Right. We're gonna walk sort ofacross the back here and then
along that bank and their lodgeis at the end. So, if we're
quiet as we walk along there,we've got more chance.

(17:06):
I'm just gonna show you how touse this before we get down
there.
So, anything bright white ishot.

Ok. I'll keep quiet.

That's their lodge over there. So-

That's amazing!

You can see just all that jumble of wood and
stuff that's their lodge. so youcan see the slides of how they
get in and there's all that overthere as well.

Is that a fallen tree?

Yeah and a pond. And they build around that they
can access underneath the waterright to the bottom, the other
side as well.

That's amazing!
It's a shame we haven't seenthem. It's a little bit early.
They're still having a good kip!

They're like students. They like to sleep
through the day.

Nothing wrong with that!

No!

So, what's the future do you think for them
here?

We haven't really seen Grylls very much so. We
think it's, it's probably prettylikely that she's pregnant.
They'll probably have kits inthe next few weeks. They'll
probably get even busier withthe work that they do once
they've got sort of a family asin, you know, male, female and
kits that tends to kick startanother round of sort of
ecosystem engineering.
So it'll be interesting to seehow that develops. But yeah, my

(18:23):
hope is that in 2 to 3 yearsthat we're in a situation
whereby, you know, Beaver aremore commonplace species that we
see in, in our rivers andstreams.

That'd be good, wouldn't it?
That's how Ben and I, leftGrylls, Yogi and the other
Beavers a couple of years ago, alot can change in an ecosystem
in that time. So, Ben's beenback to the wetlands to describe
the changes to the habitat andthe Beaver colony, including
some exciting news about thegrowing brood.

Hey, Kate. So, I thought I'd give you a bit an
update on the Beaver enclosuresince you last came a few years
ago here at paddocks. It'schanged massively!
So, whereas before it was sortof quite an enclosed woodland
when you were here, it is today,brimful of water because we've
had so much rain recently, butit's also full of light. The
Beavers of, of coppice, lots ofthe trees.

(19:16):
And if I move over to one of thefresh dams they built, it's
really clear the amount of deadwood habitat that they created.
And by that, I mean, the amountof trees that they fell and just
like the wetland, it's a habitatthat we've lost from most of the
UK Really.
And the Beaver put that back andin that are lots of opportunity
for, for other wildlife. We seeotter more often we see

(19:38):
Kingfisher more often. There's ahuge number of Dragonflies and
bees and wasps during the warmertimes of the year.
We've got Water Vole in here aswell, which is really important
because Water Vole are having areally hard time nationally.
But here at Holnicote, they'redoing really well and in both
Beaver enclosures, now, thewater vole are thriving.
We've been engaging with thelocal community as well. So

(19:58):
every year we've been showing agroup from the local community
around the site. It's lovely tosee such a wide sort of age
group of people.

JACK SIVITER (20:07):
Hi, Ben. How's it going?

Hey, Jack.
Jack's our Beaver expert here atHolnicote. And he's going to
tell you a little bit more aboutthe, amazing wildlife we've got
here on the site.

JACK SIVITER (20:15):
Our dominant pair in this site is a Yogi and
Grylls. So they've, they'restill together. They've mated
for life, which is reallyexciting. It's part of a Beaver
ecology. So those animals pairfor the duration of their
lifetime and it's a reallystrong bond and they defend that
territory quite fiercely.
But we've also got some excitingupdates in the fact that we've
had kits born in the site forthe last three years.

(20:35):
But it was a super exciting timehere for us to have the first
Beaver born on Exmoor for well,at least 400 years, the first
year kit we had has been born inkind of late spring.
We picked that up on our trailcameras. First time we saw this
Beaver, I actually thought itwas a water vole cos it was so
small. It's one of those momentswhere you're like re-watching
the footage over and over again.Just to confirm what you think

(20:56):
you're seeing.
We decided to run a bit of acompetition to name the baby
Beaver.
We put it out onto social mediaand asked the public and
obviously got some reallyinteresting names. But the one
that was picked out was MarcusRashford because with the Euro
finals were going on at the timewe were doing really well and
England got to the final.
So at year two, we've had twomore kits born to Yogi and

(21:18):
Grylls and then we're movinginto year three, which is where
we're at now.
So this spring we had born twoBeaver kits in our second
enclosure called Moss and Ferns.And in this site, we picked out
a single kit this year and thatwas named Earps female
goalkeeper from the women'sWorld Cup. So, again, the
football theme running strongthrough the paddocks enclosure.

(21:42):
So I mentioned we'd had a singlekit born this year. Well, that
isn't entirely true. When I wasout, one of the evenings with
the local ranger team showingthem some of the Beaver
enclosure and showing them someof the things.
I saw a single kit sat out inthe sort of evening sun on a
little island and then we werejust watching this kit and as we
stood there a second kit swimsup, climbs out onto the island

(22:02):
and sits next to a single kit.
And while that was carrying on athird kit, swam up just from
behind and sat there and I hadthese little triplets all sat in
a row sort of in the dappledsunlight feeding away.
So it was a really nice moment.
We've obviously got this onesingle kit named Earps that's
got siblings and we need to comeup with some names for these
guys going forward.
So, I mean, you know, we're inthe run up to Christmas now. So

(22:23):
it might be really nice if wehad a bit of a Christmas theme
to the names like Mince pie andpudding or something like that
might be a nice Christmas themeto the Beaver enclosure.
So we stood here with the lodgebehind us. We're unlikely to see
any Beavers today because theanimals are crepuscular. They
spend, most of the sort of earlyhours of the evening and the
night doing their activities.

(22:43):
I've got with me today my laptopto just check the SD cards that
are scattered around in thetrail cameras on the site and we
can, go through the footage andjust see what we see.
That's amazing. We've got one ofthe young kits swimming around
with mum. It's really lovely tosee these animals just like,
really interactive.
So the, the young kits sit a lothigher in the water than the
adults. They're a lot morebuoyant. It's a lot more air in

(23:04):
their fur. And, what they'll dois the kits will climb all over
mum's back.
They'll swim under mum, they'llclamber on top of them and
there's a little bit quiteoften, but you do see a lot of
the wrestling as well.
So mum and kits will be likeplay, fighting in the water. All
the play is essentially just away of practicing kind of
natural behaviours, gainingtheir strength, getting their
confidence up in the water.

(23:24):
And you do see mum tell kits offa lot as well when she gets a
little bit too much, they've gotstuff they need to be getting on
with. So, yeah, it's reallynice. They've got proper
personalities and, theinteractions between the animals
are really- that family bond isreally quite strong.
It's lovely to see that footageof the Beavers and the kits kind
of, using their environment and,just as everyone else is like

(23:46):
stocking up for Christmas andgetting all their gifts in these
guys are doing exactly the samething and stashing their food in
the bottom of the ponds to seeout the winter in the cosy
lodge.

It's been 400 years since Beavers in this country
were hunted to extinction. It'sreally great now to see them
thriving, having kits and makinga positive impact on the habitat
and wildlife as well as doingtheir bit to improve flood
management and the lives oflocal people.

(24:26):
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of the National Trust
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We'd love to hear what you thinkof the show. Plus you can catch

(24:46):
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National Trust atnationaltrust.org.uk/podcasts
for now from all of us at theNational Trust podcast. We wish
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it and a very happy New Year.

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Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dam Engineers | The Beavers of Holnicote | Revisited