Beavering right up to the end of 2024

I find myself wanting to round off 2024 the right way.

It has been a year of ups and downs, challenges and mishaps and more bad than good. I guess it is this seasonal time that encourages you to reflect on what the year has brought and it is often easy to run away and focus on all those little, bitty, gritty negatives. Hard to avoid it really, right?

However, there are more and more days where I find myself grateful to be doing what I do for work. And today was one of those days.

This Christmas, I find myself in the depths of Switzerland, in the wine region of the Rhine Valley. Everywhere you turn, there is a spectacle of wildlife. Today, whilst out on a 2-hour walk, we saw countless red kite, numerous flocks of Eurasian chaffinch, alpine chough and a small flock of yellowhammer (a first and a complete surprise!) in the vineyards that seem to outnumber the people who call this valley home. And I have absolutely convinced myself that we also saw some eagles traversing their territory.

What we had originally set out to see though was another species entirely.

Bordered by some pretty incredible mountain ranges and peaks leading to Lichtenstein and Austria, we crossed a road and found ourselves in a nature reserve, home to some very furry residents: beavers! Now, in my line of work, any opportunity to step into a site where beaver are doing what they do naturally is quite magical. And Siechastuden as a site is just that.

Pro Natura Graubünden have fostered a tale of recovery and restoration in this small nature reserve and spring protection site since late November 2022. Across 3-hectares, formerly a gravel pit, artificial ponds have become the perfect habitat for beavers. These rodents have crafted a dam, numerous lodges and areas of standing 'deadwood', which has given rise to a mixture of habitats.

The site was unassuming and only just off a main road up to Jenins - a settlement further up a mountainside. Very different to the sorts of beaver sites I am used to visiting - usually characterised with reams upon reams of barbed wire fencing and hidden behind invisible red tape. Instead, we were met with a site just off a main road, consisting of a wetland, separated by four ponds and a gravel bed, alpine river bed to the north-west. Raised dams had been created artificially by spoil to create a raised walkway allowing visitors an unparalleled view of the reserve... and my, what a view it was!

The üllrüfi and Selfirüfi are seasonal rivers and run westward to the site. Interestingly, at this site, the beavers act quite independently from the main river system. They do not affect directly the waters that rush off the Vilan and Alpbach - in stark contrast to many of the environments in the UK. Rather, they maintain the water levels in the ponds through their activities and dragging material from the surrounding landscape to maintain an existing dam and lodge(s) at various places throughout the site. The channel for the seasonal river, Selfirüfi, can be seen just above running parallel to the lowest pond in the beaver network with a raised berm in between.

Beavers are free to roam in Switzerland. No tall fences, no barbed wire, no steel gates and no red tape and it is great to see how a species is recovering after centuries of persecution. It is frustrating to know that even in this somewhat peaceful place, they are not out of the woods yet. Wherever beavers roam free, there always seems to be some debate about their future. However, at least for the time being, they seem to have found a home here. Long may they stay!