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Brian the beaver is rehomed

A photo of a beaver being release in Forder Valley as part of the Green Minds project

Following the tragic death of our female beaver last week, we have made the very difficult decision to re-home our male beaver, Brian.

Brian was the first to be released into our re-wilding enclosure at Poole Farm, before Beryl joined him a few months later.

Last week, storm damage to the enclosure allowed them both to escape. Brian was found and brought back to the farm, but sadly Beryl was hit by a car and died.

Throughout the project we have consulted ecologists and other experts to ensure that we are giving the best care we can and late last week, they joined us for a site meeting to decide the future course of the project.

Clearly we need to do some work to redesign and reinforce the damaged areas of the enclosure to ensure this can’t happen again.

While it's sad for us and for all the people who have taken an interest in Brian, the best thing for him is to go to a new home.

This is not the end of the project, we're clear on that and so are the experts. We will release beavers in Plymouth again, but we need some time to make things even better for any future pairs we introduce.

"This lovely wooded stream valley has always been very suitable for beavers," explains Mark Elliott, Beaver Project Lead at Devon Wildlife Trust. "This break now gives the project team an opportunity to improve it even more.

"By repairing and reinforcing the fencing, coppicing some of the alder, and slowing the flood flows we can make the site more resilient to high-rainfall events."