Beavers released in Forest of Dean as solution to flooding

Hope is that dams built by pair of beavers will hold back water and improve biodiversity

Four hundred years after the beaver was hunted to extinction in the UK, two of the mammals have been reintroduced on government land in an English forest as part of a scheme to assess whether they could be a solution to flooding.

Two Eurasian beavers were released on Tuesday into their new lodge within a large penned-off section of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. The hope is that the animals will build dams and create ponds on Greathough Brook, which feeds into the River Wye, and slow the flow of water through the steep-sided, wooded valley at times of torrential rainfall.