Rewilding East London

White storks were once part of Britain’s fauna became extinct as breeding birds due to a combination of overhunting and habitat loss in historic times. For centuries, white storks have been woven into folklore as symbols of renewal, good fortune, and the changing of the seasons. As a result, the highly successful reintroduction project that began at the Knepp Castle Estate in 2018 has received huge public support. 

White storks are part of Britain’s rich ecological and cultural history; the village of Storrington in Sussex appears in the Domesday Book in 1086 as "Estorchestone" and was known in 1185 as Storketon and in 1242 as Storgeton. The name which later changed again in into Old English ‘Storca-tun’ has been interpreted as meaning "homestead with storks". Records of other possible breeding sites elsewhere, bone finds, their provision for feasts and hunting records well into modern times demonstrate the species' former occurrence.   

At London Wildlife Trust, our vision is for a London alive with wildlife and nature on everyone’s doorstep. Reintroducing an iconic flagship species like white stork helps us all to imagine a more hopeful future for nature recovery in the UK’s capital city. It will inspire communities to connect with nature and landowners to create more wetland habitats for storks, in turn, benefiting other species. In this way, the reintroduction of white storks becomes a catalyst for wider ecological restoration, helping to build a greener, more resilient London for generations to come.

It is not possible to wild release storks in the UK and although the population at Knepp is growing slowly, our project will secure the future of the species in an urban environment. White storks have always lived alongside people, and it is our intention to raise a population of chicks which having been hatched in London will consider it to be their home in a purpose-built aviary at Eastbrookend Country Park. It will be these individuals which will have an innate desire to return to where they hatched after each annual migration, and after several years this will lead to a wild breeding population in East London. The birds will come from established captive breeding programs and will be fully health screened before being released.  

Eastbrookend Country Park provides suitable to support white storks, providing the quality habitats needed for the birds to forage in; the wider landscape also offers other rich feeding grounds for the birds nearby, and in time we expect storks to be regularly seen in neighbouring areas of London. 

The birds will be moved to Eastbrookend Country Park under the care of vets and an expert team from Derek Gow Consultancy who have advised on the successful white stork reintroduction at Knepp in Sussex.  We will reintroduce the birds into a large purpose-built aviary that includes areas of their preferred grassland habitat. Staff at London Wildlife Trust and London Borough of Barking and Dagenham will feed and check the welfare of the birds daily and conduct regular inspections of their enclosure.  

Eurasian beavers are large herbivorous rodents that are native to Britain, having roamed our waterways for millennia before being driven to extinction by human persecution probably around the 1600s. Beavers are now being carefully reintroduced across Britain to help restore wetland habitats, manage water naturally, and support urban biodiversity. 

Beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers” because they can dramatically shape the places where they live and provide a wide range of ecological and economic benefits. By creating wetlands, they form rich, dynamic habitats that support a wide variety of plants and animals, boosting overall biodiversity, as well as improving water quality and sequestering carbon.  

The landscape at Eastbrookend Country Park has been identified as suitable for beavers, comprising a mix of planted woodland, naturally established willow growing along the edges of the two main lakes, and open areas of grassland and scrub. The shoreline of the lakes, where the sunlight allows, are well vegetated offering plenty of food and good-quality habitat for beavers to forage and move around safely.

No – beaver reintroductions in London are currently enclosed due to licensing restrictions, safety, landownership, and infrastructure considerations. The reintroduction process involves stakeholder engagement and landowner support under Natural England’s licensing system.

Until February 2025, beavers were only allowed to be released into enclosures. Years of campaigning and their official recognition as a native species, in 2022, has made it possible to release beaver into the wild, subject to the relevant Natural England licensing requirements. 

At Eastbrookend Country Park, the beavers will live within a 12 hectare fenced enclosure encompassing two large fishing lakes and several small islands. Both lakes are artificial, the result of historical gravel extraction which was first started in the 1920s to build the Becontree Estate. There is a network of public footpaths surrounding the lakes, that will remain accessible through self-closing gates, which have successfully kept the beavers safe in other similar projects such as the National Trust at Valewood in Sussex and the Ealing Beaver Project in London. 

Beavers have the ability to transform their environments and landscapes by coppicing vegetation, foraging, and constructing dams. Beavers instinctively build dams in flowing watercourses to create deeper pools for safety and food access.  

However, in stillwater environments such as the front lakes at Eastbrookend Country Park, where there is no inflow or outflow (the lakes are ground water fed, with no direct hydrological links to the surrounding landscape), beavers have no ecological incentive to build dams. Instead, we’ll witness the beaver increase the deadwood, reshape the banks of the lakes and lower the tall willow trees , opening up space and light for smaller plants that grow under and around the trees. 

London Wildlife Trust and the Ranger Team from London Borough of Barking and Dagenham are working together, with the support of experts at the Beaver Trust and Derek Gow Consultancy to carry out full risk assessments. This includes checking if any mitigation work might be needed, such as managing or protecting trees, or dealing with burrows that could affect paths. 

The field signs of beavers are obvious and easy to define – felled trees, regularly used paths emanating from a water body into the surrounding landscape, wood chips and tracks. A regular maintenance regime will be established to ensure that the enclosure and its fence lines are checked regularly by site staff and trained volunteers to look for signs of burrowing or undermining either inside or outside of the fence line.  

Beavers in the enclosures will mainly be monitored using remote trail cameras to check which animals are present, whether they are reproducing, and their overall behaviour, health and welfare. 

Beyond monitoring beaver health and welfare, the project team and volunteers will assess the ecological impact on the lakes, including water quality sampling and macrophyte surveys, before and after beaver release. Eastbrookend Country Park has a well-established set of ecological records that can be used to chart a process of change. 

The beavers will be sourced and translocated to the site under the project licence in agreement with Natural England and following animal sourcing recommendations and guidelines by The Beaver Trust. The Beaver Trust will facilitate the transfer of the beavers to the site. 

Beavers are crepuscular, which means that they are most active around dawn and dusk though they may be seen earlier during the summer months. Visitors will be encouraged to observe beavers safely, by watching from a distance, staying quiet and still to minimise disturbance and keeping dogs under control.

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