Once part of the native British fauna, beavers were hunted to extinction some centuries ago but are now once again living wild and breeding in the UK. The Devon Wildlife Trust (DWT) is involved in two separate beaver conservation projects. The first is on a securely-fenced enclosure where a pair of beavers were introduced in 2011, and have since successfully bred. Studies of this group of animals show that beavers are effective at reducing woodland encroachment and the numerous ponds they create slow the rate of water flow, helping to reduce flooding downstream.

In 2014, DWT got involved with the population of beavers living in the wild in the river Otter. There had been sightings of these animals for a few years but once it was confirmed that the beavers were breeding in the wild, Defra proposed that they should be removed from the river, citing the risk of non-native diseases. DWT opposed this plan and proposed a solution: testing the beavers to prove they were free of non-native infectious disease, then re-releasing them on the river Otter as part of a five-year monitoring study. The River Otter Beaver Trial is England’s first beaver re-introduction project in the wild. In January 2015, Natural England granted DWT a licence to release beavers into the wild as part of this project. After the beavers had been screened for disease, they had ear-tags fitted for monitoring purposes and were re-released on the river Otter in late March, where subsequently one of the female beavers gave birth to at least two young. In May 2016 two new beavers were introduced into the river in an effort to increase genetic diversity in the population. In June 2016 five kits were born to the newly released beaver pair, an unprecedented number of young for a single female.

The River Otter Beaver Trial is led by Devon Wildlife Trust, working in partnership with the University of Exeter, Clinton Devon Estates and the Derek Gow Consultancy. It aims to to monitor the impacts of these wild-living beavers on the River Otter, and investigate how they colonise the river and impact the ecology and existing users of the valley.

NPL photographer Nick Upton has had privileged access to shoot both stills and footage of the veterinary checks and release of these wild beavers. He has also taken images at different times of the captive beavers in their enclosure and their effects on the landscape, and of the beaver kits born in the wild after the release.

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