River restoration: slowing the flow

We’re launching a public consultation about the future of Boothby Wildland’s stretch of river – and exploring the role beavers could play in transforming this landscape through wetland creation.

Boothby’s West Glen River as seen from a drone survey in 2023 - unnaturally straight and narrow

Over the past year, we’ve been monitoring the West Glen River to better understand how it functions. This information has shown us how dysfunctional the river currently is in terms of holding water and as a home for wildlife. Through the dry summer there was hardly a trickle, making the river unrecognisable compared to the flume-like torrent of more recent flood events. At numerous times of high rainfall, the water surged through Boothby, breaking its banks at Lower Bitchfield, flooding the road and our neighbours downstream.

It’s clear our 2km stretch of the West Glen needs restoring to a hydrologically healthy state, to help prevent flooding downstream, improve water quality, and create an important mosaic of wildlife habitats. We’ve spent the last few years exploring options, with national and local experts walking its course through Boothby Wildland – taking measurements of the water quality, flow rates and levels, as well as plants, invertebrates and animals found in the river system.

What’s the future vision?

As a Defra Landscape Recovery pilot project, there’s been much discussion, modelling and budgeting on the various options for river restoration. We’ve learnt that this part of Boothby Wildland was most likely a wet valley bottom as opposed to a flowing river in time gone by, where the water would have covered a wider area comprising a multitude of small streams and ponds while being much more seasonal. However, over the past millennia the river has been excavated and straightened to improve agricultural conditions, creating what is known as an ‘incised channel’. This means the water does not interact as it naturally would with its floodplain, but instead is quickly drained and removed from the land by this ingenious human engineering.

As a result, we know we must ‘slow the flow’ in this stretch of the West Glen by widening the channel, creating pools and meanders, and lowering the floodplain allowing much more water to slowly pass through the land. This will allow it to act like a sponge – storing water in times of both drought and high rainfall, creating a filter to improve water quality at the same time. With 90% of our national wetland habitat lost in less than 100 years, this will create such an important area for a wide variety of life to thrive.

Bring in the ecosystem engineers

Re-engineering this very straight river is not a small job! Across Boothby Wildland we’re working to restore natural ecosystem processes and there’s a huge amount of evidence on the impact beavers can have in restoring river systems. Experts from across the UK are helping us understand how these semiaquatic rodents – perhaps ‘the ultimate ecosystem engineer’ – can help transform the landscape and deliver our vision to ‘slow the flow’.

Our proposal is to obtain a license from Natural England (the Government’s authorisation body) to reintroduce beavers into a large enclosure on the West Glen River. Experts from the Beaver Trust and the University of Exeter have modelled how the beavers will transform the West Glen. These models have proven to be highly accurate in other case studies and include ways in which we can ensure certain areas aren’t flooded. The key aim is to alleviate flooding downstream, but we certainly want to ensure there’s no flooding upstream too, or on neighbouring land. We also need to give the beavers a helping hand in certain areas and plant fast-growing trees such as willow before they arrive.

It’s important to note that we are strictly looking at an enclosed and managed release – we want our future beavers to stay at Boothby Wildland where their amazing skills will transform this landscape.

Beavers are nature’s ecosystem engineers

More about beavers

Our native plants and animals have co-evolved alongside beavers in the UK for thousands of years, with many wetland species thriving in the habitat created by beavers. They’re the UK’s largest rodent and are completely herbivorous, eating only plants. They prefer wetlands, living in freshwater habitats such as rivers and streams. They are known as a ‘keystone species’, which means they have a large (positive) effect on their environment. They do this by building dams using nearby trees and then digging underwater, engineering more wet areas as they feel safest in water. This damming and wetland creation supports other wildlife, but also captures carbon and slows the flow of the water, helping prevent flooding downstream.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in this country 400 years ago, having been trapped for their fur. Our freshwater habitats have suffered without them. In the last decade beavers have been reintroduced throughout Britain, as they are being recognised for their importance in wetland creation and flood control.

What does this mean for Boothby Wildland?

Our studies of the West Glen River and surrounding area show it is currently not supporting any significant plant or animal community. Wetland creation will provide more habitats for a much wider range of wildlife, and we hope in the future we may have animals such as scarce water voles living there. We can easily protect our most important trees from being gnawed by the beavers and we’ll be planting more, in part to support their dam building efforts. It will take time, but gradually the bottom of this valley will transform from having a deep ditch running straight through it to a less defined, much wider, watery – and many would say more beautiful – landscape.

Beaver wetlands as seen at Knepp

Our proposal is to fence the entire ‘western block’ of Boothby Wildland, as in time we’ll also be bringing in larger, free-roaming herbivores such as cows, pigs and ponies. Fencing for beavers is slightly different to that for the other animals, and there will need to be more consideration around access points to keep the beavers in. We’re working with experts to develop all the plans, including how we safely secure the river area so the beavers can’t escape.

Following our community workshops and feedback from local people, we’ll be increasing the number of permissive routes across both sides of the Wildland. We’re currently finalising plans for more footpaths and bridleways so that you can explore and enjoy more of this rewilding area – and maybe even spot a beaver or two in the future!