KATE MARTIN: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.
I'm Kate Martin Lead Ranger at Formby in Liverpool. And today
I'm revisiting the Holnicote Estate in Exmoor National Park.
I was last there two years back to explore a habitat that hasn't
been seen in the UK for over 400 years.
And today, I'll be finding out how the charismatic inhabitants
have been getting on and learning about a heart warming
surprise just in time for Christmas.
Exmoor National Park occupies almost 700 square kilometres of
rugged Moorland and shingle beaches to the north of this
area is the Holnicote estate, a 32 square kilometre National
Trust managed segment of this parkland, its coastline, ancient
woodland and network of rivers, make it a wonderland for the
outdoor enthusiast.
The area that I'm walking through at the moment is sort of
a natural bowl where you've got these rolling hills. So there's
a real sort of abundance of natural features here. But
ironically, it's some of these natural features that contribute
to the climate concerns that have plagued this area for
decades.
NIGEL HESTER: I'm Nigel Hester and I live within the Holnicote
estate near Allerford. It's a tiny Hamlet of about six
buildings, lovely cottages as you can see and it's a, a
perfect place to live.
There are two river catchments here. The Horner rises high on
the moor and the Aller comes down the vale behind us and they
both meet. Today, actually, they're flying nice and gently
and it's all very lovely.
Get a heavy downfall of rain and the water just comes off these
steep hills. You just get a torrent coming down. It's
looking to spill out and it spills out into the villages,
flooding the cottages.
The worst one I remember was back in 2000 when most of the
cottages in Allerford and Bossington got flooded out.
But I remember one cottage, literally that the sewer burst
and all the effluent came up into the house completely ruined
the whole house. It's the uncertainty of knowing when it's
gonna happen and then the total disruption to your life.
KATE MARTIN: I can see a group of stone buildings which I
assume is the estate office. Hopefully someone there will be
able to point me in the direction of Ben Eardley, the
estate's project manager and the driving force behind the flood
management scheme that he believes will be able to help
solve some of the area's water management issues.
BEN EARDLEY: Hey, is it Kate?
KATE MARTIN: It is!
BEN EARDLEY: Hey, how you doing?
KATE MARTIN: I believe you've got some issues with flooding.
BEN EARDLEY: Obviously, with climate change, we're seeing
more frequent and more extreme weather, but some of the issues
are also to do with how the rivers and streams here have
been managed that in itself has caused and does cause issues as
well.
Now, we're learning how we can work with nature to benefit
those downstream communities.
KATE MARTIN: It would be good to see some of the work you're
doing. So any chance we can go and have a look?
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah, it does get a bit muddy up there. So the only
way we're going to get there really is in the gator.
KATE MARTIN: This vehicle's fantastic. Go off road, but
we're going on the road as well.
Seems to do absolutely everything.
It's a great place to appreciate the landscape. Cos it's all sort
of open sided. You can see the villages, you can see people's
houses, obviously, these are the people who are affected by the
flooding, but there's also a fantastic landscape and I
imagine a real abundance of wildlife. So what effect do
these flooding events have on the wildlife?
BEN EARDLEY: This landscape looks beautiful, but it's
actually suffered significant declines in biodiversity.
So what we'd like to do is to help increase biodiversity,
bring some of that lost wildlife back. Ironically, what we'd like
to see in certain areas of the landscape is more water,
creating space for water upstream. We can help to reduce
flooding downstream.
KATE MARTIN: And I also believe that you are doing something...
a little bit special?!
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah, we've got our own flood engineers if you like.
So why don't we drive on a bit further and I'll show you what
I'm talking about.
KATE MARTIN: This is a gorgeous spot.
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it? Whiteman's
wood.
KATE MARTIN: You can see sort of woodlands around us in a field
in front of us.
BEN EARDLEY: If I take you over there, I can talk through some
of those issues that we, we discussed earlier on.
KATE MARTIN: We're looking out now over rolling green fields.
BEN EARDLEY: It's a lovely landscape, but it's not a
natural landscape before this was floodplain. So the water
would move through this field. You'd have had wetlands, streams
and ponds flowing down into the main floodplain itself. What
we've done to graze these areas is drain that catchment and you
can hear the sound of sort of flowing water.
You've got that drainage ditch behind you, but that drainage
ditch is there to drain this land so that it can be managed
in a certain way.
The drawback from that is that that water just moves through
the landscape very, very quickly now. So rather than it being
soaked up by the field, it just shoots through that drainage
channel straight through the catchment and out into the
Bristol Channel.
KATE MARTIN: And that's all moving really quickly through
the lands. That's when you then get those sort of flooding
events in the villages and people's properties?
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah.
KATE MARTIN: So is the flood management scheme that you're
working at the moment aiming to reverse management that's
happened to you in the past.
BEN EARDLEY: In certain areas we are looking to reconnect those
rivers and streams with the surrounding landscape. We've got
some little engineers helping us with that at the moment on the
project. If you come with me, I'll take you over to the
enclosure where we're implementing a big part of our
flood management scheme.
KATE MARTIN: Fascinating!
This is quite a serious fence.
BEN EARDLEY: It looks quite severe but it does let the
wildlife in and out.
KATE MARTIN: But the workers can't, they're locked in?
BEN EARDLEY: No, we want them to stay on the job.
KATE MARTIN: That's quite concerning in now. I want to see
them.
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah. Ok! Let's pop in the easiest way to walk
through the site is up through the stream itself.
KATE MARTIN: It's like Narnia, there is something otherworldly
about it, isn't it?
BEN EARDLEY: I think it's been untouched and unmanaged for so
long.
KATE MARTIN: Yeah. If you suddenly came across like a
woodland elf or a nymph-
BEN EARDLEY: You wouldn't be surprised!
So you can actually hear some of the work that the guys have been
doing up here, actually.
KATE MARTIN: Yeah. It's definitely getting louder, isn't
it that water?
BEN EARDLEY: So, that's some of the work they've been doing.
KATE MARTIN: A lot of sticks.
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah. And that's where they live over there in
the hole in the bank.
KATE MARTIN: I'm getting the idea. These aren't people.
BEN EARDLEY: No, they aren't people. No, this is a Beaver
created dam. We've actually got Beaver living and working in
here.
CHRYSSA BROWN: Beavers were quite widespread across much of
Europe and also in the UK during the 1600s/1700s they were
hunted. There were still concentrations of them in
Germany, France and Norway. But at their lowest, we were at the
point of almost losing them.
My name is Chryssa Brown and I am a PHD researcher looking at
how reintroduced Beavers affect rivers and streams.
We've seen in the UK, this real interest in Beaver
reintroduction and how they could assist in natural flood
management.
As a rodent who lives in water for majority of their life,
they're interested in creating and extending their territories
to do that. They create dams
By doing so this water then spreads out, as soon as you're
able to increase and extend that area of water. You attract all
of these other species and animals that thrive on that
environment flies beetles, bugs, fish, amphibians as well and
they create life and through their modifications, they
encourage that life to continue to use that environment.
BEN EARDLEY: So this is where they're starting to dam this
area. But you can see all the boulders, stones, all the woody
material, all the earth, that's all material that they've moved.
KATE MARTIN: They built all that, all the difference between
the sort of stream and the top is what about 4 ft, 5 ft maybe?
And how long has it taken them to build up?
BEN EARDLEY: They've only done this in the last few months.
KATE MARTIN: Really?!
BEN EARDLEY: So, yeah. Yeah. So it hasn't taken them very long
at all. And you can see we're starting to create wet woodland
over there to the right before you just have one channel. Now
you've got a variety of different water habitats.
KATE MARTIN: That's absolutely amazing.
BEN EARDLEY: They are incredible creatures. Yeah. I mean, if, if
we walk around there a section you can get a better view of the
house.
I think we can just track straight to this bit.
KATE MARTIN: Just walked up through this holly bush and i'm
stood in a pond.
Around me there are trees that are now surrounded by water.
It's so different from that kind of rushy-tumbly stream that
we've just walked past. The Beavers have done this in a
relatively short space of time. Only a matter of months. So what
are you expecting this area to look like in a year's time?
BEN EARDLEY: The guys they will take on bigger trees and they
will affect bigger change. There's somewhere else that I
can take you and show you that really sort of highlight that
for you. It's a very different site to this one, but more
exciting in some ways.
KATE MARTIN: Right. Let's go
BEN EARDLEY: Cool.
So this is paddock's wood for a different look and feel.
KATE MARTIN: Wow.
The first enclosure that we went to the Beavers had created the
pool that was tens of metres squared across compared to where
we are now, it does look like something that you would expect
to see like the Everglades.
This pool stretches hundreds of square meters pretty much as far
as I can see.
BEN EARDLEY: This was all dry before, this woodland. This was
just a small channel. And now essentially you've got a wetland
and you can see, you know, more signs of them felling trees.
It's a habitat we've lost in this country. You know, we've
lost 90% of our wetlands since Roman time.
It's a missing component of the landscape and a super important
one.
KATE MARTIN: It's amazing what relatively small animals can
actually do, the changes they can make in their environment.
It really is quite astounding.
BEN EARDLEY: I can show you some more further down in the site if
you want to follow me down.
That's the, the original Beaver Dam in the site. So that's,
that's what's holding back all that water.
KATE MARTIN: That's unbelievable. So that is a
essentially a pile of sticks, holding that huge pond.
BEN EARDLEY: They literally constructed this over the course
of just a few days. You know, we did a site check one week and
the site was just a couple of spring fed streams and then came
in the next week and did our site checks and there was a dam
here and a- you know, a big wetland.
KATE MARTIN: I can obviously see the physical changes that have
happened here, obviously with the, the dam and the pond and
then the stream. But what's the sort of environmental impact of
this.
BEN EARDLEY: When we have sort of more extreme weather, water
is flowing more slowly through this environment, so that
protects communities downstream at drier times when you've got
hotter dry weather and perhaps the risk of drought, you've held
more water in the landscape that's released more slowly. So
you've reduced the impact of that drought on the local area
as well.
KATE MARTIN: All the stuff that we've seen so far from a sort of
environmental point of view and also from a natural flood
management point of view is, is fantastic.
But I know myself, any sort of change, you're trying to do any
sort of environmental work you're trying to do. There were
always people who are less keen, have you had a lot of sort of
complaints?
BEN EARDLEY: I'm of the firm opinion that they're easily
managed. It just needs to be a approach. So if a farmer has
land and Beaver move in and start building dams, he knows
who to call to come and sort that problem out.
You can put in things called Beaver deceivers or you can
relocate the Beaver to somewhere else in that catchment. So it
just needs to be sensible and thought through. And I think the
positives far outweigh any of the inconvenience we have to
accept for that species being in the wider landscape.
KATE MARTIN: It's interesting. I think most people would probably
think of Beavers as kind of wild animals that we don't really
have any sort of control over. But do you still see them a
little bit as a sort of- more of a human connection than you
would do they have sort of personalities?
BEN EARDLEY: The animals themselves, they've certainly
got personalities and one animal in particular, we sort of
nicknamed the Grylls. She had sort of quite a hard start in
life.
Grylls is introduced with her mum. Beavers cachet food in the
pools and ponds to feed on during the winter when times are
tough and construct dams.
They're big animals when they're fully grown. Well, over 30 kg.
Some of the bits of wood that they move would be a significant
branch for me to pick up. But obviously, Grylls wasn't at that
stage. She was 2/3 months old, you know, a few kgs.
She wasn't gonna be carrying out any great feats of engineering.
They pick up a lot of the behaviours that they need to
survive from other family members, but things didn't work
out like that for Grylls.
Unfortunately, her mum passed away within a few weeks of being
introduced to the site. People didn't give Grylls much chance
of surviving the rest of the winter.
Beavers themselves have got no natural predators anymore in
this country, but young Beaver will, will still be taken by
fox.
We know there are a fox around and about in that habitat and
Grylls was small. So the fear was that she would be eaten by a
fox or that she was simply too small to survive the harsh
weather conditions in the winter. Spent a lot of time
putting vegetables and fruit into the site to keep her going.
We were just checking the camera traps, checking the site
regularly, fully expecting to find her having passed away. We
were just on tenterhooks.
We've got several camera traps in the site to check on the, the
Beaver. We have to go out to the camera traps, download the
footage from an SD card, take it back to the office and check. We
all sort of hunk around the laptop when we downloaded the
footage from the enclosure that Grylls is in. We saw something
that surprised us all.
We saw footage of Grylls trying to construct her own little dam.
You know, you'd be stretching it to call them dams. They were
sort of gatherings of twigs and branches, but it was good just
to know that she was trying her best. She had us in fits of
giggles a good few times. She was always trying to carry
sticks and branches that were too big for her.
She used to do funny little dances and things. She tried to
hold like two or three parsnips in her mouth at once as well as
a branch and went nose to nose with a fox on the trail cam.
That was quite funny.
Time went on and she survived sort of week after week and
then, you know, more signs of feeding more signs of other
beaver behaviour, more signs of her looking sort of healthy and
ok on the camera traps.
That's why she's called Grylls. It's a bit of a funny take on
Bear Grylls and Born Survivor. But it's because nobody really
gave her a chance. And to everyone's surprise she pulled
through.
She's the Beaver in here now with the male, Yogi. And they're
doing really well.
KATE MARTIN: Now, I do realize they are wild animals and there
is never a guarantee. But do you think there's any chance we
might see one?
BEN EARDLEY: Well, we can potter along to the lodge and I've got
a thermal imaging camera. That's a good way if they are out and
about to spot them.
Right. We're gonna walk sort of across the back here and then
along that bank and their lodge is at the end. So, if we're
quiet as we walk along there, we've got more chance.
I'm just gonna show you how to use this before we get down
there.
So, anything bright white is hot.
KATE MARTIN: Ok. I'll keep quiet.
BEN EARDLEY: That's their lodge over there. So-
KATE MARTIN: That's amazing!
BEN EARDLEY: You can see just all that jumble of wood and
stuff that's their lodge. so you can see the slides of how they
get in and there's all that over there as well.
KATE MARTIN: Is that a fallen tree?
BEN EARDLEY: Yeah and a pond. And they build around that they
can access underneath the water right to the bottom, the other
side as well.
KATE MARTIN: That's amazing!
It's a shame we haven't seen them. It's a little bit early.
They're still having a good kip!
BEN EARDLEY: They're like students. They like to sleep
through the day.
KATE MARTIN: Nothing wrong with that!
BEN EARDLEY: No!
KATE MARTIN: So, what's the future do you think for them
here?
BEN EARDLEY: We haven't really seen Grylls very much so. We
think it's, it's probably pretty likely that she's pregnant.
They'll probably have kits in the next few weeks. They'll
probably get even busier with the work that they do once
they've got sort of a family as in, you know, male, female and
kits that tends to kick start another round of sort of
ecosystem engineering.
So it'll be interesting to see how that develops. But yeah, my
hope is that in 2 to 3 years that we're in a situation
whereby, you know, Beaver are more commonplace species that we
see in, in our rivers and streams.
KATE MARTIN: That'd be good, wouldn't it?
That's how Ben and I, left Grylls, Yogi and the other
Beavers a couple of years ago, a lot can change in an ecosystem
in that time. So, Ben's been back to the wetlands to describe
the changes to the habitat and the Beaver colony, including
some exciting news about the growing brood.
BEN EARDLEY: Hey, Kate. So, I thought I'd give you a bit an
update on the Beaver enclosure since you last came a few years
ago here at paddocks. It's changed massively!
So, whereas before it was sort of quite an enclosed woodland
when you were here, it is today, brimful of water because we've
had so much rain recently, but it's also full of light. The
Beavers of, of coppice, lots of the trees.
And if I move over to one of the fresh dams they built, it's
really clear the amount of dead wood habitat that they created.
And by that, I mean, the amount of trees that they fell and just
like the wetland, it's a habitat that we've lost from most of the
UK Really.
And the Beaver put that back and in that are lots of opportunity
for, for other wildlife. We see otter more often we see
Kingfisher more often. There's a huge number of Dragonflies and
bees and wasps during the warmer times of the year.
We've got Water Vole in here as well, which is really important
because Water Vole are having a really hard time nationally.
But here at Holnicote, they're doing really well and in both
Beaver enclosures, now, the water vole are thriving.
We've been engaging with the local community as well. So
every year we've been showing a group from the local community
around the site. It's lovely to see such a wide sort of age
group of people.
JACK SIVITER: Hi, Ben. How's it going?
BEN EARDLEY: Hey, Jack.
Jack's our Beaver expert here at Holnicote. And he's going to
tell you a little bit more about the, amazing wildlife we've got
here on the site.
JACK SIVITER: Our dominant pair in this site is a Yogi and
Grylls. So they've, they're still together. They've mated
for life, which is really exciting. It's part of a Beaver
ecology. So those animals pair for the duration of their
lifetime and it's a really strong bond and they defend that
territory quite fiercely.
But we've also got some exciting updates in the fact that we've
had kits born in the site for the last three years.
But it was a super exciting time here for us to have the first
Beaver born on Exmoor for well, at least 400 years, the first
year kit we had has been born in kind of late spring.
We picked that up on our trail cameras. First time we saw this
Beaver, I actually thought it was a water vole cos it was so
small. It's one of those moments where you're like re-watching
the footage over and over again. Just to confirm what you think
you're seeing.
We decided to run a bit of a competition to name the baby
Beaver.
We put it out onto social media and asked the public and
obviously got some really interesting names. But the one
that was picked out was Marcus Rashford because with the Euro
finals were going on at the time we were doing really well and
England got to the final.
So at year two, we've had two more kits born to Yogi and
Grylls and then we're moving into year three, which is where
we're at now.
So this spring we had born two Beaver kits in our second
enclosure called Moss and Ferns. And in this site, we picked out
a single kit this year and that was named Earps female
goalkeeper from the women's World Cup. So, again, the
football theme running strong through the paddocks enclosure.
So I mentioned we'd had a single kit born this year. Well, that
isn't entirely true. When I was out, one of the evenings with
the local ranger team showing them some of the Beaver
enclosure and showing them some of the things.
I saw a single kit sat out in the sort of evening sun on a
little island and then we were just watching this kit and as we
stood there a second kit swims up, climbs out onto the island
and sits next to a single kit.
And while that was carrying on a third kit, swam up just from
behind and sat there and I had these little triplets all sat in
a row sort of in the dappled sunlight feeding away.
So it was a really nice moment.
We've obviously got this one single kit named Earps that's
got siblings and we need to come up with some names for these
guys going forward.
So, I mean, you know, we're in the run up to Christmas now. So
it might be really nice if we had a bit of a Christmas theme
to the names like Mince pie and pudding or something like that
might be a nice Christmas theme to the Beaver enclosure.
So we stood here with the lodge behind us. We're unlikely to see
any Beavers today because the animals are crepuscular. They
spend, most of the sort of early hours of the evening and the
night doing their activities.
I've got with me today my laptop to just check the SD cards that
are scattered around in the trail cameras on the site and we
can, go through the footage and just see what we see.
That's amazing. We've got one of the young kits swimming around
with mum. It's really lovely to see these animals just like,
really interactive.
So the, the young kits sit a lot higher in the water than the
adults. They're a lot more buoyant. It's a lot more air in
their fur. And, what they'll do is the kits will climb all over
mum's back.
They'll swim under mum, they'll clamber on top of them and
there's a little bit quite often, but you do see a lot of
the wrestling as well.
So mum and kits will be like play, fighting in the water. All
the play is essentially just a way of practicing kind of
natural behaviours, gaining their strength, getting their
confidence up in the water.
And you do see mum tell kits off a lot as well when she gets a
little bit too much, they've got stuff they need to be getting on
with. So, yeah, it's really nice. They've got proper
personalities and, the interactions between the animals
are really- that family bond is really quite strong.
It's lovely to see that footage of the Beavers and the kits kind
of, using their environment and, just as everyone else is like
stocking up for Christmas and getting all their gifts in these
guys are doing exactly the same thing and stashing their food in
the bottom of the ponds to see out the winter in the cosy
lodge.
KATE MARTIN: It's been 400 years since Beavers in this country
were hunted to extinction. It's really great now to see them
thriving, having kits and making a positive impact on the habitat
and wildlife as well as doing their bit to improve flood
management and the lives of local people.
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