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The return home of British beavers
Slowing and taming our British rivers using beavers was never going to be speedy but the pace has surprised PETER FROST

IT SEEMS incredible even to me, that it was just over six years ago that I first wrote about the potential of using beavers to calm and slow some British rivers. 

In a sense it started in 2008 with some very naughty girls or boys who smuggled a few of the remarkable beasts into a section of the River Otter near the village of Ottery St Mary in Devon.

It was believed to be the first wild and free population of beavers in the English countryside for over 500 years, although various wildlife trusts and other groups had established some enclosed captive beaver populations mostly in Scotland.

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