Until approximately 500 years ago, European Beaver (Castor Fiber) were hunted for their fur, castoreum and meat, leading to their extirpation (local extinction) on the British mainland and a consequent degradation of the freshwater habitats that they used to thrive within. The loss of a keystone species like the beaver, has meant that many of the critical ecosystem services that they support, (water storage, flow attenuation, wetland biodiversity, carbon storage and improved water quality to name but a few) have also been lost from the landscape. However, populations of the Castor Fiber are now expanding rapidly across Britain, as efforts are made to reintroduce this once common ecosystem engineer to British freshwater habitats.

One of the challenges that this MbyRes will address is that beavers are now returning to much more intensively‑managed, ‘anthropocene’ landscapes – and we simply do not know how their ecosystem engineering will change these heavily modified places...