Letting nature lead: Beavers building climate resilience
Clinton Devon Estate
Clinton Devon Estate manages large areas of farmland, woodland, and river corridors - including parts of the River Otter catchment. In recent years, sections of the estate have become home to a holistic natural flood management (NFM) approach: beavers.
Working with natural processes on the farm
As part of the River Otter Beaver Trial, wild beavers established territories across the catchment, including on land managed by Clinton Devon Estates. In partnership with the University of Exeter and Devon Wildlife Trust, the estate monitored the impacts on water flow, flood resilience, biodiversity, and land management.
On the Budleigh Brook, a tributary of the Otter, beavers built a series of dams and ponds that held back water during heavy rainfall, helping reduce peak flow into the main river channel downstream. The series of beaver ponds on estate land has transformed a once fast-draining watercourse into a slow-flowing wetland corridor, recharging groundwater, trapping silt and nutrients and reducing flood risk for a nearby community.
The presence of beavers has been associated with new costs to those farming the land. This has included the need for the farmers to inspect the watercourse more regularly, with some areas of adjacent cropped land becoming waterlogged and no longer under production. Dam removal has also been required in some locations to protect infrastructure.
Monitoring has shown that these beaver-engineered wetlands help regulate water during both flood and drought conditions, boosting climate resilience for people and wildlife.
Aerial imagery on an adjacent beaver wetland has shown the value of drought resilience for the estate’s grazing livestock, which can compensate for productive land lost.
Conservation land management
Clinton Devon Estates has played a leading role in demonstrating how making space for water means beaver activity can be compatible with modern land management with a modest adaptation of approach. Working with the beaver team at Devon Wildlife Trust, simple, low-cost interventions, such as flow devices and culvert protection, have been deployed to reduce the risk of localised flooding or crop damage.
The beavers on the River Otter have established permanent territories, following a decision by Defra in 2020 to allow them to remain. Since then, they’ve continued to play their part in supporting nature’s recovery and showing what’s possible when we let natural processes lead the way, only made possible by making space for water.
Beavers build biodiversity-rich wetlands, and we benefit by giving them space
“We have been living with beavers for over a decade. Their presence has required some management, but nothing that we have not been able to surmount with relative ease and at a small cost.
Creating wide riparian corridors adjacent to watercourses - you only need 20m or so either side - not only de-risks the environmental impacts of our farming operations, but also gives space for water and nature.
Our hope is to achieve this for all our watercourses. If there was financial support that enabled this to happen and which recognised both the many benefits to society of giving space for water and the cost of doing so to those who manage the land, it would be fantastic.”
Aerial Images: Allan Puttock