A huge heartfelt thanks to everyone who has donated and spread the word about the Cornwall Beaver Project. We are thrilled to meet our stretch target of £20,000 but it is more than that; knowing that so many of you feel this project is as important as we do means an awful lot.
Do keep in touch via the project Facebook page - Cornwall beaver project.
Beavers are officially back in Cornwall! Thanks to the generosity of our pledgers, on Friday 16th June we were able to release a pair of Eurasian beavers into the crowdfunded 5-acre enclosure at Woodland Valley Farm. To our delight the beavers calmly explored their new home, swimming round the pond in full view. Please keep an eye on our Facebook page, Cornwall Beaver Project for updates and for video footage coming soon.
Beaver cage just opened © Cornwall Wildlife Trust
Beaver in lilies © Jack Hicks
A quick update (as this isn't included in our Crowdfunder total)... Little White Alice threw open their doors and hosted an evening of music, food and a chance to experience their Wild Spa Area. They raised £750 for the Cornwall Beaver Project!
- To receive one of the fantastic 'Rewards' select one of the 'Pledge' options to make your donation. If there isn't a pledge option with the amount you'd like to donate, just select the lower pledge amount and then you have the option to top up the donation on the next page.
- To make a donation with no 'Reward' just select 'Donate' and enter the amount. Thank you!
After being hunted to extinction in the UK 400 years ago, Cornwall Wildlife Trust and partners Woodland Valley Farm want to bring beavers back to Cornwall. This ground-breaking project hopes to show that beavers can help create new wildlife habitat, make our water cleaner and crucially reduce flooding. Beavers will be reintroduced to a fenced area, upstream of Ladock village, near Truro, that has suffered severe flooding. Our partner Universities will study the before and after impacts, building on research from reintroductions in the UK and across Europe. The results will help us find out if this native species could once again become part of the Cornish landscape to help us combat flooding – naturally. You can be part of this exciting story.
With your support we can bring beavers back to Cornwall, credit David Chapman.
- We need £10,000 to install a 650m beaver-proof fence around the site which will be our beavers' new home - we must raise this within the first 3 weeks so the fence can be installed and checked before the beavers' arrival.
- We need £5,000 to pay for the beavers themselves and the equipment to look after them - we must raise this in time for the proposed Beaver Release date of Friday 16th June.
Beavers are just great for wildlife, help us bring them back to Cornwall. Credit Mike Symmes/Devon Wildlife Trust
Eurasian Beavers were once a native species of the British Isles and are a 'keystone species' of wetland habitats - meaning they benefit a wide range of wildlife species, from fish and frogs to insects and birds. At a beaver reintroduction site in Devon the number of frog spawn clumps went from 10 to 580 in just five years!
Beavers also have the potential to reduce flooding - their activities such as building dams and digging water channels enable the land around them to hold more water. This means that during very heavy rainfall water doesn't flow as quickly into rivers, which will help prevent them overflowing and bursting their banks.
This same activity helps make river water cleaner. Slowing the flow of the water helps to filter it, causing soil sediment and pollutants to settle at the bottom of beaver ponds, essentially trapping them away.
Credit Stuart Coleman.
Bringing beavers back to Cornwall could potentially help reduce flooding, credit David Chapman.
With your help, two adult beavers will be released here at Woodland Valley Farm, near Ladock, Truro.
This project has been approved for funding through the Heritage + The Crowd match funding. It has received a bridge of 50% towards its fundraising target from Heritage Lottery Fund.