ADA hosts Beaver Licence Training

Image: James Dilnot (Operations Officer, River Stour IDB) describes low cost repairs to beaver damage on a flood embankment alongside the River Stour.

By Ian Moodie MSci, Technical Manager, ADA

ADA recently hosted a beaver licencing training course for water level managers in East Kent. The two day event took place, at the request of ADA’s Environment Forum, on 19 and 20 November, with 14 environment officers from internal drainage boards (IDBs) and three from the Canal & Rivers Trust in attendance. The training was presented by Natural England’s National Beaver Officer, Jake Chant, and Giles Wagstaff from their Complex Cases Unit.

The training covered Natural England’s CL51 protected species licence to modify or remove beaver dams, burrows and lodges at any time of year. It is particularly relevant to public authority land and water managers and can be used to allow activities that prevent serious damage to property, preserve public health or safety, conservation, or to enable scientific or educational work. This licence allows the holder to disturb beavers while carrying out the licensed actions, but not for any other reason. The training emphasised that a 5-step approach to beaver management should be followed, and detailed the available guidance for how to manage beavers and when a licence is and is not needed.

Beyond the training itself, the event proved to be a fantastic opportunity to share learning between water infrastructure managers and beaver experts. Such knowledge exchange will be vital as we learn to live with and manage beavers within our lowland landscapes.

The first day focused on a classroom session at the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory learning about the ecology of beavers, their presence in England, a 5-step approach to beaver management that should be followed, and when you do and do not need a licence to prevent beaver problems, as well as the licences themselves.

Elly Andison, the Environment Agency’s senior advisor on beavers, talked about ongoing work to investigate the hazards and mitigations in relation to infrastructure, particularly from beaver dams and burrows. Pete Dowling, Clerk & Engineer to River Stour IDB described how beavers have impacted on flood and water management assets across lowland catchments in East Kent, and also the interventions that the IDB has been involved with to prevent, mitigate, and repair damage from beavers over recent years (see ADA Gazette, Autumn 2024).

The first day concluded with the opportunity to see evidence of beaver activity right in the centre of Canterbury on the River Stour. After dark a few of the participants were lucky enough to see a beaver gnawing and then swimming away.

The second day focused on field visits to Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve to principally look at field signs (gnawing, foraging channels, scent mounds, and dams), and also see examples of burrows and embankment damage. This allowed the group to see an example of a relatively low cost and low impact repair to a flood embankment that had been undertaken by River Stour IDB with Natural England.

What was evident from the two days was the importance of being able to act early and proportionately to damage by beavers in flood defence structures and assets. It will therefore be essential that the myriad of regulatory regimes that interface with protected species and water management align to enable actions quickly at modest cost to avoid more expensive and invasive repairs.

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