I'm Penny Green, I'm very lucky to be the Ecologist here at the Knepp Rewilding Project,
and at the moment we are in the beaver pen.
We have two beavers here in this beaver enclosure. It's about two hectares.
We've got a male and a female that we've brought down from the Tay catchment
and we are hoping to see what they do on a clay catchment
and the habitat that they create and what kind of wildlife turns up here as a result of it.
And already we're seeing really amazing results just in the five months that they've been here.
They've made a little network of ponds already from the damming that they've done.
They've been chewing back some of the vegetation in the ponds.
We've got little beaver lawns.
And the most interesting thing for us at the moment is because we're in huge drought year this year
all of the little streams either side of enclosure are kind of running dry,
but here in the beaver pen it's an amazing sort of wetland oasis all around us.
So over on the side of the water there we can see a lovely lodge.
And that was actually man made for them for when they arrived.
And we're just amazed that they've carried on using it.
So we thought like a beaver when it was being made.
And so they're utilising that lodge, they're coming out through the exit and underwater
and they're coming out into this big area of water just next to us here.
And that's probably about a metre deep.
So it's a nice area of water for them to move around
and to start to get to other areas of this site here so they can start to feed
and start to kind of almost farm the trees
that they want to be coming back and eating the young shoots of in the future.
So where they're coppicing them, they're coming back and nibbling away on those young shoots as they emerge.
So we've got this lovely bit of water here that's being held back by a dam.
And that dam they've been making gradually
and within two hours of them arriving here, they'd already started making that dam
so the sound of the trickling water was obviously sending them crazy.
So they started making a dam and over the next few weeks they carried on building the dam
all the way around the edge of where we can see the water here
with sticks and branches
and also patting mud over the top as well to make it really nice and watertight.
And that's really held onto the water very well here.
I think a lot of people when they think about beavers
they think about them cutting down all the trees in an area and causing massive floods
and just generally perhaps being a little bit of a nuisance.
But this is really not true.
There are never going to be enough beavers to cause that much damage.
And beavers are actually really, really beneficial for the environment and also for people.
Most people are aware that they will cut down trees
and then build dams and dam streams and rivers,
but when they do that, what they do is they slow down the progress of the water
and they end up kind of flooding the area behind their dam as well.
And so this creates this really complex ecosystem, so this really lovely wetland habitat.
And that's really good for biodiversity
because lots of different plants and insects can live in that area.
You also get lots of different fishes from what you would do in the fast-moving streams
and it's also a really nice habitat for all kinds of birds
and sometimes even things like otters and water voles.
So really brilliant for biodiversity.
It's also really beneficial for people
because these big wet areas actually can be really, really good for preventing fires.
So if there's a wildfire, it can get stopped by these big wetlands created by beavers.
Additionally, by slowing down the rivers,
you also have reduced problems of flood risk
and in droughts you get these wet areas, which can still provide water
to plants in the surrounding areas and animals,
even though there's not much water anywhere else.
These wetlands all around us here that the beavers are creating
will go on to be fantastic for dragonflies and damsel flies.
We're already seeing a huge increase in the numbers of those this year.
It will provide more wetland habitat for wetland birds nesting here.
So we've already heard our first reed warbler in here,
which has not been recorded here yet, so that's very exciting.
It will be really good for amphibians.
So we've been doing frog spawn counts to see if that changes over time.
But also other insects will be thriving in these wetland habitats
and that will go on to be good for bats
such as the Daubenton's bat that feeds over open water.
So these areas we're creating behind us here
will be really good for hunting bats.
So there's all sorts of different opportunities for wildlife to move back into this landscape.
The wetlands are, you know, really just full of wildlife.
So it can only be a good thing I think.
Biodiversity in general is a brilliant way of helping ecosystems be really healthy,
which is obviously good for the animals and plants that live there,
but also good for people because we get all kinds of ecosystem services from that biodiversity.
And a really big one that we might want to think about a lot now
is this idea of carbon sequestration.
Beavers are actually brilliant at sequestering carbon, so taking carbon from the atmosphere or from the soil
and sort of keeping it in the environment rather than it being released into the atmosphere.
So by slowing down water, it means there's more sediment
falling to the bottom of these beaver pools and meadows so that sequesters carbon.
They're also bringing in vegetation and things like that and burying it in the water,
which is sequestering carbon as well.
Also, if they prevent these wildfires, then they are preventing all that vegetation burning
and then releasing that carbon back into the atmosphere.
So beavers can be really, really important for tackling global climate change.
There's actually been a paper recently that suggested that beaver ponds and meadows worldwide
were probably sequestering about 470,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
So if we can increase the number of beavers, we can increase that sequestration,
which would be awesome.
So at the moment we've got a five-year licence for the beaver pair that we have here
and obviously any kits that come from that pair.
But long term we would just love it to be able to take down the fences of this small enclosure
and let them be in the larger area of Knepp
and hopefully even the area beyond, the landscape beyond Knepp as well.
We would absolutely love that.
I think the people of Sussex are ready to have beavers back in the landscape again.
Seeing big nature doing its thing, creating wildlife habitats for other species is really exciting.
And so I feel really hopeful that that might be something that might be able to be done
in Sussex in the near future.
There's absolutely no reason that anyone should be worried about having beavers.
In fact, we should be excited and really keen to see them
and to welcome them back into our ecosystems.