On 17 April 2019, two adult beavers from Scotland were released into an enclosure in Cropton Forest, North Yorkshire as part of a five-year scientific trial. Find out more and discover what the beavers have been up to each year.
Latest news from the beaver enclosure: autumn 2025
The beaver family have welcomed another two new kits over the summer. They live as an extended family group and are regularly captured feeding, grooming and socialising together on camera trap footage.
Despite prolonged dry and hot conditions over the summer, large amounts of water continue to be held back behind the beaver dams throughout the site, helping to increase drought resilience and providing valuable habitats for a range of wildlife. The beavers have also been busy with repair work to some of the dams following storm damage earlier in the year and at the end of 2024.
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Why Cropton Forest?
Communities downstream from Cropton Forest have suffered severe flooding in the past twenty years, with the most serious flood in 2007 causing approximately £7 million in damage to homes and businesses. Man-made dams had already been helping to reduce flooding through the ‘Slowing the Flow’ project. However, these dams were expensive and time-consuming to maintain.
As a follow on to the 'Slowing the Flow' project to reduce flooding, two beavers were released into a secure enclosure to maintain the existing woody dams and create their own. As the first project of its kind, we were excited to see how the beavers would interact with the man-made structures and what other changes they would make to the site.
Cath, the leading Ecologist for the project, told us what it means to her and the local community:
Being closely involved in bringing the beaver back to Yorkshire for the first time in several hundred years has been incredible. It has been amazing to watch the changes that the beavers have made to the site over the last 6 years and the species that have moved in and thrived alongside them. They have created a complex wetland habitat connecting the river with the floodplain, holding back water in the upper catchment, bringing benefits in times of drought and slowing the flow in times of flood.
Beavers are brilliant architects
Beavers can completely change their surrounding habitats for the better. They build dams which restrict water flow and create ponds of deep water. They coppice trees and shrubs, and dig canal systems, creating diverse wetlands. These can bring huge benefits to a wide range of plants and wildlife.
As well as benefiting wildlife, beavers can help us by creating large areas of water-retaining wetlands which reduce flooding risks downstream. They also help to filter water and reduce silt levels. With all these benefits to people and wildlife, it's fantastic to see beavers returning to our rivers in this trial project.
Working with the community
Making time for nature and spending time outside has been proven to improve your mental and physical health by the mental health charity Mind, so we're delighted to see the local community getting involved in the project and they are excited to be welcoming their new neighbours.
Throughout the project, over 50 volunteers have contributed more than 2500 hours of work, and their help has been vital in the success of the project. They have been getting involved with everything; from helping to prepare the area, undertaking regular checks of the fence line, and monitoring wildlife and plants throughout the site.
One of the many wildlife volunteers, Joan Childs, tells us what the project means to her:
It's been a great privilege to be able to contribute in a small way to this exciting project, by helping with the Diptera survey of the release site. North Yorkshire will be richer for the dynamism that beavers bring back to wetland habitats.
Local wildlife groups
The beaver release has changed the surrounding habitat for the better and altered local biodiversity. Local wildlife groups have been on hand to volunteer and assess these changes.
Local Butterfly Conservation member Graham Oliver, who has been volunteering throughout the trial, told us what it meant to him at the start of the trial:
I’m thrilled to be a volunteer in the Yorkshire beaver release trial. It will be fascinating to watch beavers in Yorkshire managing their own habitat and to witness the effect they have on local flood control and biodiversity.
Wendy English, a member of Whitby Naturalists Club, has been monitoring the plants on site each year since 2019. Here are some of her reflections:
I have found my annual visit to monitor plants within the beaver enclosure at Cropton absolutely fascinating.The speed and scale of the habitat changes created by one family group of beavers is far greater than I thought possible. Each year's visit has brought a new surprise and left me marvelling at their ingenuity and industry. My only regret is that I still haven't glimpsed them - although their presence is so very obvious!
Scientific Research
Researchers and students from several colleges and universities have also contributed significantly to the valuable scientific research and monitoring that has been ongoing throughout the trial period.
Research has involved hydrological monitoring, dam capacity modelling and environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys.
Here’s what Professor Mark Smith from Leeds University had to say about his time working on the site monitoring:
When we started our monitoring in March 2019, as part of our baseline data capture we surveyed the site in detail and tried to ‘think like a beaver’ and imagine what the post-release changes would be. What happened was beyond our imaginations. We witnessed a complete transformation of the compound. Many of our ‘permanent’ survey sites were flooded which we had previously imagined to be impossible. A diverse and dynamic habitat emerged that revealed unexpected surprises each year. Our field days to the enclosure soon became an annual highlight. While our primary interest was in the structural and hydrological changes to the site, we couldn’t fail to notice the changes to the ecology that the beavers triggered. It was a privilege to witness the impact of the beavers here over the course of six years.
Project updates archive
Cropton beaver trial begins
April 2019: a pair of Eurasian beavers from Scotland were released in Cropton Forest in Yorkshire for a revolutionary trial in natural flood management.
Spanning five years, the trial will assess will the impact of the beavers’ activity on the long-term sustainability and maintenance of the “slowing the flow” artificial wooden dams. The dams have been helping to protect areas including nearby Pickering from flooding. This will be the first time in the United Kingdom that the effects beaver have on artificial dams has ever been studied.
The pioneering project between Forestry England, Forest Research, Exeter University, and beaver experts Dr Roisin Campbell-Palmer and Derek Gow is building on the “Slowing the Flow” project, north of Pickering. Slowing the flow has been hailed as a big success and a potential model for other flood prone areas across the country.
Forestry England expect that the beavers’ activity in Cropton Forest will improve biodiversity in their new 10-hectare home and may have the potential to reduce the impact of flooding locally. Monitoring will continue on site throughout the five-year project to assess these ecosystem benefits. The 5-year trial is licensed by Natural England.
June 2019: The pair welcome their first kits, the first to be born in Yorkshire for over 400 years! Two kits were born over the summer and the family of 4 continue to make improvements on site, felling trees and raising water levels. A lodge has been constructed, and work begins on their first dam.
July 2020: We are delighted that the beavers have become parents again! The pair already have two kits from last summer, who are mucking in and helping bring up the baby. Video captured at the beaver site shows the new arrival settling in with the family.
January 2021: The beaver family is bigger than we thought! Now confirmed, the Cropton Forest parents had two kits in summer, not one as previously thought. Ecologist Cath Bashforth explains: “I had suspicions, but it took a while to get two kits visible on the same camera clip!" This latest news makes them a family of six.
June 2021: More fantastic news! We are excited to welcome two new arrivals to the colony. The baby kits are settling in well, and the now family of eight are continuing their daily dam building activities.
Two of the older juveniles are relocated to similar successful projects in England. One, a three-year-old female was paired with a Scottish male in the hope that they will successfully breed and establish a new colony. She has gone to an enclosure at Sculthorpe Moor Nature Reserve in Norfolk, marking a significant milestone in the five-year Forestry England trial which began in 2019 to assess the impact of beavers’ activity on flood management, biodiversity and ecosystems in Cropton Forest.
Beavers naturally stay with their parents for at least two years, after which they will either stay with the family living as an extended family group or disperse and look for their own territory. So, the three-year old, born to the original Cropton pair released in 2019, was ready to pair and breed with a mate in a new location.
Forestry England worked with partners including Beaver Trust on the careful logistical planning needed to move the female to her new home and the health checks needed before she left North Yorkshire.
Eight beavers remain in the 10-hectare enclosure in Cropton Forest where the original adult pair are thriving alongside their remaining six offspring. Kits have been born every year since they first arrived, and Forestry England is hoping for more to be born this summer.
The beavers are now using the full length of the enclosure, with more dam building along the beck and new lodges constructed at the bottom of the site. For the first few years of the project, the beaver’s activity had concentrated around the two ornamental ponds and the stretch of the beck adjacent, in the top third of the site. Now, as the family group continues to grow, the beavers explore more of the enclosure and start to open up new areas, letting light in and allowing a mosaic of habitats to develop.
The highest diversity in small mammals on site is recorded in 2023, with six different small mammal species were recorded—the highest diversity seen so far. These included:
- Bank vole
- Field vole
- Common shrew
- Pygmy shrew
- Water shrew
Water shrews had been suspected on wildlife cameras in previous years, so it was exciting to confirm their presence.
April 2024 saw the end of the original 5 year licenced scientific trial. Data shows the beavers are ‘slowing the flow’ of water through the site. By reconnecting the beck with its floodplain through damming activities and making a complex mosaic of habitats, the beavers have helped store more water in the upper catchment, reducing the speed of water travelling through the site.
The Cropton Forest Beaver Trial is granted an extension of another 5 years by Natural England following the project’s success supporting flood mitigation and biodiversity benefits.
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