SEAN MCCORMACK: To have this once extinct species back in

urban Greenford next to a McDonald's and a retail park has

really captured people's imaginations and we get people

from all over London and beyond coming to see them.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Welcome to Wild Voices, a special series

from Wild Tales of inspiring conversations about people,

nature and the stories that connect us. When community and

nature come together, extraordinary things can happen.

That's exactly what's unfolding at the Ealing Beaver Project in

London, where local people are helping bring wildlife back to

the city.

In this episode of Wild Voices, Ajay Tegala joins Sean McCormack

live at the Global Bird Fair to explore the power of rewilding,

the future of conservation and why making nature accessible in

our towns and cities matters more than ever.

AJAY TEGALA: Hello and welcome to this special Wild Voices

episode of Wild Tales from the National Trust. It's wonderful

to be live here at Global Bird Fair and I'm Ajay Tegala, Nature

Communicator and National Trust Ranger on Britain's very first

nature reserve, Wicken Fen, where I help safeguard important

wetland bird populations.

And today I'm very excited to be discussing nature and belonging

with Sean McCormack. Sean is a vet, a conservationist, founder

of the Ealing Wildlife Group. And a leading advocate for

community-led urban rewilding. As project lead for the Ealing

Beaver Project, he has helped spearhead the first beavers to

be reintroduced to urban London in over 400 years, so welcome,

Sean.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ajay. It's great to

chat - you know I love to.

AJAY TEGALA: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I thought we'd start

really at the beginning, actually, your kind of

background. So your earliest nature memories, how it all

started for you.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, yeah. So I think like many people here just

was naturally, I don't know if it's...

genetic nature or nurture but naturally just fascinated with

living things so plants and animals and bugs and all sorts.

Probably came a little bit from my dad and my grandparents were

gardeners and you know very connected with outdoors, so yeah

I just was fascinated with with kind of living creatures and

anyone who asked me what I wanted to be when I was a tiny

kid when I grew up it was a zookeeper or a vet so I ended up

becoming a zoo vet and yeah that's how stubborn I am.

Once I get an idea in my head. And yeah, I just branched out in

recent years then to kind of diversify my career and go move

more into nature conservation and rewilding, urban rewilding

in particular, where I live in London.

AJAY TEGALA: So that felt like a natural kind of progression,

something that kind of called to you?

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, it did. I kind of realised that

veterinary, as amazing a kind of vocation as it is, it didn't

really suit me. You know, it wasn't going to suit me full

time, long term. I was getting a little bit jaded, I was getting

a little bit bored.

You know, I was basically, my whole working life, long hours,

was in a small windowless consultation room under

fluorescent lights and dealing with a carousel of, you know,

people's emergencies and problems with their pets, some

of them quite pampered pets. And I thought, hang on, this kind of

wasn't what I envisaged when I was a kid.

I wanted to be outdoors, I wanted to be exploring nature, I

wanted to be, I really was like, you know, passionate about...

Ecology and nature and how nature worked. And actually a

lot of things in the pet world, especially, are kind of going

against nature. It's how we're selectively breeding pedigree

dogs, and they're suffering for their exaggerated appearance and

things like that.

So I was also dealing with exotic pets and kind of coming

around to the conclusion, which is pretty obvious, that a lot of

these species are not really suited to lives in captivity.

And I felt like that wasn't my vocation. And I kind of thought

back to who was I as a kid?

Where was that passion where was that like what was that thing

that made my heart sing and it was wild creatures in their wild

habitats doing their wild things and I just I got a bit burnt out

and I took a I'd say in hindsight a very brave step but

I thought it might have been a very foolish step to step away

from full-time clinical life, and try and reconnect with that

childhood passion which was nature in nature. And yeah

looked around in Ealing trying to kind of find if there with

some conservation group or something I could join.

There wasn't. So I sort of half by accident set it up myself.

And it's grown into a massive behemoth organisation, which is

brilliant and has built a lot of community. But I always joke to

say the veterinary work that I still do pays the bills and the

conservation makes my heart sing.

AJAY TEGALA: Oh, that's great.

And of course, Ealing Beaver Project grew out of that. So can

you talk us through how that began?

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, yeah.

So Ealing Wildlife Group, we set up just to run a few bat walks

and to do a few kind of nature engagement projects in the

borough and we gradually grew and got more volunteers and then

got more grant funding and set up fairly traditional

conservation projects for things like swifts in the urban

landscape, hedgehogs with hedgehog highways, we have great

crested newts, then a lot of raptor species and owls so Barn

Owls and peregrine falcons and things like that that we could

influence in the urban landscape.

The rewilding side of things really started to happen. I was

quite interested in it during my undergrad degree in animal

science. I did a project on the possibility of bringing Beavers

back to Britain, like, you know, 20 odd years ago.

And then Beavers came back into my kind of life, I suppose, when

I went to Vancouver and studied there and saw there was beavers

in Stanley Park in Vancouver. And that was a bit of a light

bulb moment of, oh. beavers can be in urban areas too and be in

cities, you know.

And then we jokingly, we were talking about water vole

restoration in Ealing. And I said, look, before we do

anything with water vole reintroduction, let's practice

first with harvest mice. So I said that harvest mice would be

our little practice run.

And you never know, one day we've reintroduced Britain's

smallest native rodent. One day we might reintroduce Britain's

largest native rodent, the beaver. And everyone laughed and

said, oh, as if we'd ever have beavers in Ealing, let alone

London.

And who is laughing now, Ajay? Because we do, we have them. So

we just really got a brilliant community behind us. We'd proven

ourselves at the local council. They trusted that we could do

it. We were basically saying that beavers would be a natural,

nature-based solution to urban flooding. And we could save the

council money because they'd earmarked Paradise Fields, the

site of the project for engineering works for flooding.

And we were very, very lucky, Ajay, that we had a Canadian

Head of Parks at the time. And when we asked him, could we

bring beavers back? He was like, yeah, OK. You know, he was all

aboard the beaver train already. So that's where it came from. It

kind of was a build up and it's been our biggest and boldest

project, I suppose, to date. But it's been a roaring success.

Yeah.

AJAY TEGALA: And that community involvement really so important.

SEAN MCCORMACK: We couldn't do it without the community. You

know, we had to do a public consultation and we had to ask

the community if they would support it and get behind it. We

also had to ask the community if they would come and volunteer

for us.

And we are so lucky, you know, between us as Project Partners

Ealing Wildlife Group, also Citizen Zoo, our Project

Partners, Friends of Horsenden, who are a community farm, we

already had three ready-made groups of volunteers that were

just really willing to go. And when we said we were going to

bring beavers back and we wanted them to help do it, the offers,

you know, were flooding in.

People were so willing to help, to the extent that for the first

year of the beavers being on site, We had a pair of

volunteers do a fence patrol every single morning for the

first year to make sure the fence was intact, the beavers

were safe, nothing bad had happened overnight. Absolutely

phenomenal. We couldn't do it without it.

You know, we're managing the project through community

WhatsApp groups and basically whatever we ask people to do,

they'll come down and do it at a moment's notice. So it really,

really is the power of community and volunteering that has helped

that project get off the ground and to be maintained as well and

be a roaring success. Yeah, couldn't do it without them.

AJAY TEGALA: Yeah. So important. And of course, fantastic for

those involved and those that know people that are involved

and can kind of get involved that way through sort of knowing

the right people. But of course, you know, we're talking about

some amazing species in urban areas. And there must be a lot

of people that aren't aware. And I suppose a challenge is kind of

reaching those people that haven't found it yet.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, yeah. It's still funny to me that, you

know, we've made such a big song and dance about it. And it's all

I've bloody talked about for five years, you know, beavers,

beavers, beavers, beavers. But there's people that walk through

that site, Paradise Fields, and don't know that beavers are

living there.

So, you know, there's a lot of hesitancy in some certain kind

of camps about beavers and not wanting beavers back in the

landscape because they might cause us some nuisance effects

or getting used to something new is often daunting for people.

But it just shows that actually this is a native species that

can just sink back in, melt back into the landscape where it's

meant to be. And a lot of people just don't even realise it's

there doing its thing. But what it's doing, if you look closely,

is fantastic work.

Boosting the kind of food webs from the base up, improving

water quality, capturing carbon, mitigating for drought at this

time of year when everything is bone dry and Paradise Fields is

this lush oasis, you know, with wetlands. You'll know.

AJAY TEGALA: That's a powerful message.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, it really is. And then mitigating for

flooding, you know, saving.

If you were to believe all of the hype that we've got lately

when we've gone viral, these five beavers we reintroduced

have saved the entire London Underground from flooding. In

fact, they've saved Greenford Tube Station ticket hall from

flooding, but it makes a better headline to say they've saved

the London Underground.

But yeah, they're just fantastic. And it's been really

heartening to see the reception they've got from the community.

Community members who wouldn't have come to, you know, do some

pond habitat management for grey-crested newts or come on a

bird walk or come and count butterflies, actually to have

this once extinct species back in urban Greenford next to a

McDonald's and a retail park,

has really captured people's imaginations. And we get people

from all over London and beyond coming to see them or even just

see signs of what they've been doing, you know.

AJAY TEGALA: I want to talk also about people that perhaps feel

excluded from nature.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yes.

AJAY TEGALA: So kind of, especially young people as well,

engaging people. I know that's a big part of what you do as well.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Massive part. And I think one of the things we

always have talked about in the Ealing Wildlife Group is that we

don't want to...

Only focus on the areas of the borough where we know there's a

good kind of heartland of people interested in nature. People who

maybe are affluent enough to experience nature, have the time

off to go and seek it out.

We know the nature sector is dominated by white middle class

people of a certain age. And that is exactly the case in the

early days of Ealing Wildlife Group and who was interested in

us. They were the easy wins to bring on board. But what we

wanted to do is try and get to areas of the borough where there

was...

little green space and show the value of it you know so putting

on free events trying to get families trying to hook kids in

and harness their pester power which I've talked about in my

children's book, and really open up kids eyes to things that are

all around them because maybe they haven't had access to that

before. And certainly with the Ealing Beaver Project one of the

fundamental principles of it that we were very keen on and

not willing to let go at the start despite Natural England

being wary of.

Was we wanted to put people into the beaver enclosure and that

hadn't been done before so we're the only beaver enclosure trial

in Britain that is freely publicly accessible 24 7 365 and

we said, I said especially like with Elliot from Citizen Zoo We

don't want Beavers on one side of a fence and people on the

other.

That has been done to death. I disagree fundamentally with

enclosures as it is at this point in time now because

they're a native protected species, they need to be out

there. But I understand why. I said if we're going to do this

at great cost of time and energy and finance as well, we're going

to do it to push the envelope and do something different and

we want this to be accessible to all.

So from the very get-go we were doing free tours, free guided

tours of the project for anyone to come down and see what the

beavers are doing. It's free for anyone to come down any time

without a guide and see for themselves as well. So that was

really at the heart of it.

And then we also secured funding, which is brilliant, for

an urban beaver officer. We believe the only one in Britain

as well. Another first. Şeniz Mustafa, who you know, I think.

AJAY TEGALA: Yes, I do.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Şeniz has been doing an incredible job bringing

in people from different faith groups, people from different

kind of backgrounds.

And some schools and outreach with schools and scouts groups

from areas that aren't so kind of affluent and things like that

and basically giving kind of accessible education and

engagement with nature on a very basic level to kids who really

don't know much about it. And it's been remarkable to see the

reaction to that because i think fundamentally all of us as kids

are fascinated with the natural world we just grow out of it for

various reasons and some of those reasons are social justice

reasons so that's what we're trying to really put at the

heart of all of our projects, that they need to be accessible

to all. It can't be just, you know, private tours and pay your

way. And we don't have time. We're really investing in making

sure people have that time and have that ability to come.

AJAY TEGALA: That's so important. So important. And I

guess looking to the future with the success of what you've

achieved and how it's grown over time, if we kind of like look to

say 50 years ahead and imagining what Britain will be like.

Based on the success of Ealing Beaver Project, do you have a

vision for what a wilder sort of future Britain could look like?

SEAN MCCORMACK: I do. I do. I fantasize all the time about

that.

AJAY TEGALA: I thought you might. Yeah.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Look, I think when we talk about nature

restoration and we talk about rewilding, you know, often

people's immediate thought is like out there in the

wilderness. We need huge landscapes that are rewilded and

we need...

Nature connectivity and ecosystems functioning normally

and all that, and there can be a little bit of snobbery or

puritanism around the scale that we have to get to and I think

that's great and that's certainly the ambition we need

to have, but we also can't forget that 83 percent of people

live in towns and cities. And that in towns and cities often

nature is fragmented and it's chopped up into tiny little bits

and the sum of all its parts is much more important than each

individual part, and we see it all the time in Ealing, you

know, like just development chipping away at little blocks

and little bits.

So my vision for the future is that nature is not the preserve

of, you know, the countryside, the rural folk, the large, wild,

huge landscapes. Nature needs to be woven in to everywhere we

live. And that will take, you know, changes in urban planning

and changes in developers' psyche and what we either ask

developers to do or force them to do legally.

Through various schemes and incentives. I would like to see

that we have green spines running through every town and

village and city across the nation. I would like to see that

there's functioning ecosystems running through the urban

landscapes as well as through rural landscapes.

I would like to see that in the rural landscape that farming

becomes a little less adversarial with nature and the

conservation sector and that the conservation sector becomes less

adversarial with farmers. These two groups should not be at

loggerheads, should not be fighting each other.

Like, farmers love and know nature too, and often they've

been forced into economic models that have forced them to rinse

everything they can from the land and farm up to the edges of

nature all the time. And so we need to actually develop systems

that are more harmonious and that will weave nature through

our lives wherever we live. That's my vision for the future.

And wild things back.

Not being afraid to bring back the likes of... Harvest mice,

you know, pretty innocuous. But water voles and beavers and pine

martins and white storks and eagles. And, you know, let's get

those species back. Let's get those iconic species back that

actually get the non-nature nerds to sit up and notice

exactly what thriving ecosystems look like.

AJAY TEGALA: Absolutely. Yeah. And even in our homes as well,

of course, like, I mean, swift bricks. Yeah.

SEAN MCCORMACK: So many things people can do. Yeah. And I'm

from a bit of a background in garden design as well. I paid my

way through vet school as a gardener and garden designer.

And that was my first foray into TV was on a garden design show.

And I think the garden industry, you know, could improve a lot as

well.

You know, we're still seeing these floor to ceiling shelving

in garden centers of toxic chemicals and poisons to kill.

Everything that you don't want in your garden. I think we need

to see as gardeners that our gardens are part of those little

island stepping stones in the landscape for species to cling

on and to spread out from.

So I would like to see a big shift in how we garden as well

and bringing back native plant communities into our gardens

rather than just all these lousy, exotic ornamentals that

look really good, but provide nothing for the insects and the

food chain that is needed for everything else. People

wondering, you know, putting up swift boxes of where are all my

swifts gone? Well, where are all the insects gone?

That's the question. The insects can't be there if we all just

choose species of shrub and plant from all over the world

that doesn't feed the native insects, native plant

communities. So, yeah, I'd like to see everyone kind of joining

the dots a bit better and saying, actually, we need nature

back in every little patch of land we have, you know.

AJAY TEGALA: Exactly. And it starts with awareness, doesn't

it? I mean, for example, peat, peat-free compost, that's risen

in people's awareness. And so that is a change that's come

through. But you're so right with pesticides and you say

joining the dots I mean butterfly decline and obviously

the caterpillar habitat that's been decimated over the years

SEAN MCCORMACK: The garden centre is like plants for

pollinators plants for pollinators it's like that's

going to give the adults a drink but it's not going to raise

their young you know so yeah I think it is about education you

know we can be kind of all high and mighty here with knowledge

on this thing but I think once you start empowering people to

get involved themselves and that's what we've seen with

Ealing Wildlife Group the word spreads And it doesn't take

long.

I think it's something like 3.5% of the population change their

mind on something significant. It starts to then snowball into

general consensus and acceptance of that's the way forward. We

see it with different things. You see the smoking ban, if we

want to use a kind of sociological thing.

You see it with, you know, I think at the moment, astroturf,

grass lawns, you know, on social media. Hugely aspirational for

like young couples in the outdoor room but now you're

starting to see the comments turn on social media into...

Oh my god plastic grass it's almost become like smoking

indoors like who would have that you know, so these things change

with just gentle gentle kind of gradual accumulations of

opinions getting out there and I think advocating for it in a way

that doesn't ostracize people it doesn't like judge people too

harshly. I don't always get it right by the way sometimes I'm a

bit annoyed and have a little riot act but no I think just

trying to gently educate and people to to think about nature

more.

In whatever way they can, you know.

AJAY TEGALA: And of course, your book, wonderful title, Beaver

Believers, that's part of that process, isn't it? Starting with

youngsters.

SEAN MCCORMACK: It is, it is. Yeah, Beaver Believers is really

about putting the three central characters, Abby, Patrick and

Jacob, the kids, at the heart of the idea of the Ealing Beaver

Project. So it's loosely based on that. But their school floods

and they decide to convince the adults that bringing beavers

back would be part of the solution.

And yeah, I'm doing a talk about the book, but it's only a little

bit about the book. It's mainly about how we all, as

naturalists, birdwatchers, lovers of this planet, how we

all can try to use our influence to really inspire the next

generation of nature lovers who are up against it.

You know, they're detached, they're living in a

technological age. You know, there's a lot of loss of

knowledge of nature in the generations coming up. So I

think we all have a duty to try and inspire. And try and bring

back that childlike wonder that we all had and instill it in the

kids in our lives. So that's what the talk is about.

AJAY TEGALA: And you mentioned technology there. And actually,

obviously, it's a challenge. It's a big part of life.

But obviously, technology has the power to shape conservation

as well. So have you any thoughts on kind of that,

especially with young folks?

SEAN MCCORMACK: Yeah, I think it's brilliant. I think I'm

becoming into that old technophobe category compared to

the young people who are doing. Incredible things and I'm like,

oh yeah, okay, I'm an old fogey now. I don't know how that

works. Or I don't have patience to learn that.

It's annoying me. It's not intuitive for me because I

didn't, I grew up in an age, Ajay, where we didn't have

dial-up, we didn't have internet. Cool. You know, and it

came in and it was that, you know, on your telephone line. So

I am old.

But I think the use of technology now is making nature

so much more accessible and engaging. And it's a

double-edged sword, isn't it? We want people off their screens.

We had a talk or chat recently within the Ealing Wildlife Group

team about should we print out work forms or adventure task

lists for kids to go and tick off species or should we just do

it on a web page and I was like no I want the kids coming to our

nature reserves to get off their parents phones and actually go

out and look at things so paper, paper but actually the likes of

the apps the ID apps like iNaturalist, Merlin And, you

know...

It's kind of gamifying nature in a way, which I'm all for,

because it's getting people to sit up, take notice and go, oh,

I never even heard the birdsong before, but now that I can hear

it and see it happening in my hand and know what it is, I'm

suddenly dialed in. And that's adults and young people alike.

And I think we have to speak young people's language and

their language is technological and I think all of these tools

we have now to get them engaged and actively participating in

nature recording, biological recording, you know documenting

nature conservation successes.

We've been trying to adopt all of these different new

technologies in the Ealing Beaver Project and allowing our

volunteers including their kids to come along and be part of

recording the success of what the beavers are bringing back so

yeah. I'm all for it. I'm just not very good at it.

AJAY TEGALA: But there's something about a clipboard,

actually, as well. If you're kind of filling out things on a

clipboard.

SEAN MCCORMACK: I love a clipboard.

AJAY TEGALA: It gives you a sense of sort of, you know,

people look, oh, there's someone with a clipboard.

SEAN MCCORMACK: I know.

You're very official. You feel really important with a

clipboard, right?

AJAY TEGALA: And wouldn't it be a shame if youngsters didn't get

that kind of experience?

SEAN MCCORMACK: I know. And then it's just another screen,

another tab open, you know, on your phone, on the internet, and

it's forgotten about. But I think there is something really,

really exciting in, you know, having that physical quest and

ticking off a piece of paper like I found this and writing

some notes and doing some sketches you know we encourage

kids to do those traditional ways of recording and engaging

with nature as well.

AJAY TEGALA: Yeah and you shouldn't say you're old really

because I mean I'm seeing you do some pretty cool things you know

trend trending dance videos and things he's not a stranger to

that

SEAN MCCORMACK: Oh that's called a midlife crisis Ajay!

AJAY TEGALA: But it's reaching people

SEAN MCCORMACK: It is reaching people I suppose yeah

thank you I'm still down with the kids is what I'm hearing

AJAY TEGALA: Yeah absolutely absolutely

So kind of wrapping things up, really, in terms of the next

generation, we've been talking about this already.

But optimism and activism, really, how do you see going

from that experience to actually then making that difference?

SEAN MCCORMACK: I have a huge amount of optimism and hope

because of young people now. I think there's a tendency.

To focus on the doom and gloom and you know lord knows we've

got enough of it like the whole news cycle is constant doom and

gloom and I think we have to be almost kind of aggressively

optimistic in our messaging and hopeful in our messaging to try

and just get over that, and try and basically say yeah we know

we know things are bad we know we're up against huge challenges

but actually if you talk to young people they're so dialled

in they're so clued in. And the systems that have led us here to

the poly-crisis with climate change and biodiversity loss and

everything, the systems are, I hope, going to die out.

And there's a great phrase, I can't remember who coined it,

but it's something like science advances with funerals, right?

Not to get too dark about it, but right now, a lot of the

decisions that are being made and a lot of the people that are

holding power are grossly wealthy white men largely

holding power and patting each other on the back for their

technological advances and spending the money and spending

their priorities on the wrong things. If you talk to anyone

from the age of 30 down, 20, 25 down, they all know that those

guys are wrong.

Those guys are absolutely wrong. And this new generation coming

through are going to be the CEOs, they're going to be the

business leaders, they're going to be doing things. And I think,

by and large, their ethics and their knowledge of what's right

and wrong is really, really tipping in the balance of things

are going to be okay.

I'm constantly inspired by young people's passion and knowledge

and optimism and hope. And I think we need to propagate that.

And we need to really, really cheerlead them to be the

solution to what the previous generations have got wrong.

So yeah, I have times where I'm pessimistic and I think, oh God,

this is all pointless. But actually, no, it's not. The new

wave along are coming and they're going to get it right.

we'll claw it back. We'll have a wilder, freer, more beautiful,

nature-entwined life by 2050. I'm confident of it.

AJAY TEGALA: I agree. Yeah. So thank you to everyone for

joining us for Wild Voices, this episode of Wild Tales. You can

follow us on Instagram, @ntwildtales and you can listen

to more episodes of Wild Tales on your podcast app of choice.

Coming soon, we have an episode of London's Parakeets. I know

you're familiar with London's Parakeets, so we've got one of

those. And also another on Barn Owls with Jake Brass. But yeah,

thank you so much for everyone for listening today. And big

thanks, Sean. Thanks for being here.

SEAN MCCORMACK: Thank you for having me. It's great.

AJAY TEGALA: Thank you.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Thanks for listening to this episode of

Wild Voices from Wild Tales. We hope you enjoyed the

conversation. We'll be back soon with more inspiring stories and

conversations from the world of nature. In the meantime, you can

follow us on Instagram @wildtalesnt for

behind-the-scenes moments from this conversation at the Global

Bird Fair, along with plenty more nature stories and

adventures. Until next time, goodbye.