It’s 6pm on a freezing evening in the south of England, and the remote, muddy track I am on is forbiddingly dark and quiet. Local farmers have ceased their ploughing for the day. The kingfishers that dart the nearby waters are in their nests. And there are no dog walkers out for a late stroll.
But there is a different, more furtive kind of activity about to take place. Soon, a dark Ford Transit pulls up and its driver – a man in his fifties dressed in thick coat and scarf – rolls down the window and greets me with a hesitant “evening”. He is not alone. In the back of his van, cocooned in a metal crate and somewhat grumpy from four hours of confinement, is the illicit cargo of a large beaver.
Transported that very same day from Cornwall, the industrious mammal is being released into this water catchment as part of a campaign known as “beaver bombing” – where the animals are covertly distributed throughout the country in a bid to boost the species’ numbers in the wild.
Honestly had no idea Britain had beavers. Looks like NA beaver has 8 less chromosomes than the Eurasian varieties, I wonder how different the might look or act.
Beavers were native, but were wiped out around 400 years back in the UK. They have only been brought back at all in the last couple of decades really.
Different numbers of chromosomes, but one of the notable points about both species is that their appearance and behaviour is VERY similar. No matter where they are, they have a niche and they are phenotypically very well fitted to it.