Urban beavers to be released by Wildlife Trusts during record comeback
The beaver revolution is coming to England with many more releases planned for this year
Beaver-watching is a popular pastime in some European cities
Credit: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire
Perhaps one of the last things one would expect to see when popping to the high street would be a beaver busily foraging materials for its dam.
However, the Wildlife Trusts are planning the first in a wave of urban beaver releases, with a pair due to be transplanted to central Shrewsbury, and influential figures behind the rewilding plans say this is the beginning of a drive to get them in most towns and cities.
Last modified on Tue 16 Feb 2021 06.57 EST
A group of leading environmental organisations are taking part in an employment initiative to make the green movement more diverse.
Friends of the Earth, Client Earth, the RSPB and others will take part in a programme that aims to open up the environmental sector to young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Just 3.5% of those who work in the environment sector identify as from a minority, according to research by Policy Exchange. The sector has been called “too white” in the past, with the former head of Friends of the Earth Craig Bennett declaring it must escape its “white middle-class ghetto”.
The Government must be more ambitious in protecting UK peatland or risk international embarrassment over its failure on climate action, wildlife campaigners said.
UK peatlands hold three times as much carbon as woodlands, but in their current degraded state – with peat damaged, drained, extracted or burned – they release 23 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, some 5% of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, the Wildlife Trusts said.
Peatlands are also a precious wildlife habitat, and are vital for storing and filtering water, reducing flooding and cleaning water supplies, the coalition of wildlife groups from around the country said.
The Wildlife Trusts accused the Government of failing to be ambitious enough in ending damage to the UK’s peatlands and restoring a significant proportion of what is already harmed.
The Daily Express is calling on Boris Johnson to show world leadership on the issue in the run-up to the G7 summit in Cornwall in June and the crunch Cop 26 climate change summit in Glasgow in November.
Our “Green Britain Needs You” campaign has already won the backing of the bosses of the biggest green groups who between them represent well over eight million members.
Even allowing for people who are members of more than one group, this constituency is far bigger than the one million members of the UK’s political parties.
The supporters include the National Trust, RSPB, The Wildlife Trusts, WWF, Greenpeace Friends of the Earth, the British Trust for Ornithology plus industry bodies such as Solar Energy UK and the Federation of Master Builders.