UK flooding plan Reform led council backs beaver release in Leicestershire defying party stance on rewilding.
Reform UK-led Leicestershire county council has voted to support the release of beavers into local rivers as part of its strategy to tackle flooding in the area. The decision puts the council directly at odds with the national position of its own party which has publicly opposed large-scale rewilding programmes in Britain.
As reported by the Guardian, the council's cabinet member for environment and flooding Adam Tilbury told the BBC that Leicestershire was badly affected by flooding and that beavers were great natural engineers who could form part of the solution. He said two potential release sites in the area had already been identified. A fellow Reform councillor Joseph Boam celebrated the decision on social media saying the council was making Britain great again one beaver at a time and describing the animals as a source of natural flood defence and restored habitats.
The Labour government legalised the release of beavers in England last year, approximately 400 years after the animals were hunted to extinction in Britain for their fur and for a natural oil their bodies produce. Beavers build dams in rivers which slow the flow of water and reduce flooding downstream during periods of heavy rain. They also store water in the landscape during dry periods and have been found to improve water quality while boosting populations of bats, fish, birds, amphibians and invertebrates.
The Leicestershire decision has exposed a genuine split inside Reform on the question of nature policy. Nature campaigner and Conservative Environment Network co-founder Ben Goldsmith was approached by Nigel Farage to help develop the party's nature platform. Reform's business spokesperson Richard Tice rejected the idea of working with Goldsmith whose proposals on rewilding and returning farmland to nature have drawn strong opposition from farming communities. Farage said he found Goldsmith's ideas interesting but the party formally stated that large-scale rewilding proposals were not aligned with its principles or objectives.
Goldsmith himself owns a Somerset estate where he has already released beavers and has been one of the most prominent advocates for the animals' return to the British countryside. Responding to the Leicestershire vote he told the Guardian that nature was at the root of everything and that protecting it should be a non-partisan goal. He said if Reform going pro-beaver signalled the start of an ambitious nature restoration policy from the party that would raise the bar for all other parties in Britain.
Farage recently criticised plans to feature wildlife rather than historical figures on British banknotes, specifically objecting to the possibility of a beaver replacing Winston Churchill and describing the idea as absolutely crackers.
Internal polling shared within Reform shows the party faces a political problem on environmental issues. More than 80 per cent of Reform voters are said to care deeply about nature and Conservatives who have so far been reluctant to switch to Farage's party care more about the environment than any other voter group. The Leicestershire decision suggests some within Reform are paying attention to those numbers.
