After a 500 year absence from Lancashire, four European beavers, two males and two females, have taken up residence at Martin Mere.
Beavers, the world's second largest rodent, are one of nature's engineers excavating canals and building dams and lodges of branch and earth. The display at Martin Mere will be the only attraction in the North West where visitors can see a beavers natural habitat.
Entirely vegetarian, the beavers are members of the Vegetarian Society and the wardens have tried them on numerous fruits and vegetables: carrots, apples, sweetcorn, pumpkin, turnip, sweet potato and parsnip. They really like carrots, apples and sweetcorn but didn't touch the parsnip and turnip. They also get willow branches put into the enclosure every night.
Check the Beaver diary to find out what they have been up to.
Twiggy and Woody
As the adult pair, the Centre hopes that Twiggy and Woody (named via the Champion newspaper)will breed again early in 2008. They do breed every year but couldn't this year due to being in quarantine.
Beavers are pregnant for four to five months and they will look after their young, named kitts, until they are two years old, potentially having three generations living together at Martin Mere in 2009.
Timmy and Suzie
Timmy and Suzie have now left the enclosure to go to a new exhibit at Slimbridge next year.
Timmy and Suzie (named by the grounds wardens at Martin Mere) are about twenty-four months old and will ultimately leave Martin Mere to start a new life at Slimbridge when the adult pair start to breed again.
When young, the kitts won't leave the lodge for 6 months and rely solely on their parents for food. They are one of the few animals that are born with their eyes and ears wide open and can instantly manoeuvre around the lodge. We can expect Timmy and Suzie to live for up to 25 years in captivity.
What have the beavers been up to since their release?
When the beavers were released on Wednesday 11 July 
2007 they immediately built an underground burrow home in the first night. This included several chambers for sleeping, eating (larder) plus drying off. They now have two (at least) living burrows, one on the front pond and one on the back pond. Also an extensive tunnel system from back pond going out into pen. The picture on the right shows what the enclosure looked like upon their release, and the picture below is illustrating the amount of work they have done.
The original pen contained two separate ponds. They have connected the two ponds together by building a canal which is now 4 to 5 foot long and about 2 foot deep.
They have felled most of the trees in the enclosure. They use the branches for food, building dams, storage on back pond and repair work, such as when they burrowed into the bank on the left of the back pond, it collapsed and they used branches and lots of mud to repair the damage.
The beavers also continue to block up the beaver deceiver every night. The beaver deceiver is a cage around an outflow pipe and it is the animals natural instinct to stop flowing water by creating dams.