SRA Annual Report 2024-25: Somerset Beaver guidance and recommendations
This project began life in 2021 as a Somerset Beaver Strategy. The SRA Board judged that as more beavers were likely to end up inhabiting parts of Somerset, it would make sense to agree well-informed, evidence-based, science-led plans for managing them. An SRA grant was therefore given to the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group SouthWest (FWAG SW), who commissioned Somerset Wildlife Trust to produce a strategy.
Since then, a lot has happened. Locally, for example, Natural England confirmed in 2022 that beavers were living in the Avon and Somerset Frome. Colonies there are now reckoned to form probably the third largest wild beaver population in England. Nationally, in 2022, beavers were given European Protected Species status in England. And at the end of February 2025, Natural England was given permission to issue licences for the wild release of beavers in England.
Developments such as this significantly changed the context in which Somerset Wildlife Trust was working.
After formal discussions with interested parties in May 2024, and a wider public consultation was concluded in the autumn, it was decided to re-badge and re-organise the strategy as Guidance and Recommendations.
Part 1 would focus on the legal frameworks that now exist, Part 2 on actions that people and organisations in Somerset could take to help communities, land managers and beavers co-exist successfully.
Somerset Beaver Co-existence and Management: Guidance and Recommendations was duly published by Somerset Wildlife Trust in May 2025 (front cover pictured below).
