A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk, England, marking the first confirmed sighting since the species disappeared from the country in the early 1500s.
Footage captured the beaver hauling branches and setting up a lodge along the River Wensum at Pentsthorpe, a nature reserve close to the town of Fakenham.
Richard Spowage, the reserve’s manager, said the beaver showed up unexpectedly and no one is quite sure how it ended up there.
He explained that the animal seems to have settled into what they consider an ideal beaver environment.
Spowage thinks the beaver has likely been tucked away in a dense, hard-to-reach part of the reserve for roughly a month.
He also mentioned that the animal is living in a stretch of river they have allowed to grow naturally. There is plenty of tree cover in the area, and staff suspect the beaver is wandering into nearby marshes in search of food.
The animal, a nocturnal herbivore, has been gathering branches after dark and building up a stash of wood near its lodge. Not only that but it has also been felling trees and stocking up for winter so it can stay sheltered and warm once temperatures drop.
Staff first suspected a beaver might be on the reserve when a volunteer spotted a strangely shaped tree stump that looked as if it had been sharpened to a point.
At first, they joked that maybe a kid with an axe had somehow wandered into the woods.
But before long, they noticed what they described as clear “classic beaver chips” at the base of another tree.
They put out a few camera traps and soon captured footage of a lone beaver strolling through the woods after dark.
Locations of Unlicensed Beavers in England
So far, only one group of beavers has been officially released into the wild in England.
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust is still waiting on permission to introduce beavers to its Helman Tor reserve, where a wild group of them already lives.
Scotland, on the other hand, has been allowing beaver releases since 2021, and its population is now estimated at around 1,500 animals.
For now, no one knows whether the beaver found in Norfolk was secretly released by activists in what’s sometimes called “beaver bombing,” or if it simply made its own way into the reserve.
Wild beavers have also been reported in Hampshire, Kent, Wiltshire, Hereford, and Somerset.
Norfolk does have a few beavers in captivity, but none are missing.
