Raising the Stakes

Paradise Fields goes wireless

Beavers are coming to Ealing. They will return to live in our borough after more than 400 years in a rewilding project of the first area of urban London. Nothing can stop the beavers now! Or something can? Their beavers' new address, Paradise Fields at the far West end of Horsenden Hill, was not secure yet for the magnificent creatures. It was surrounded by wire fencing that could harm beavers. Something had to be done about it!

The last push

'Wow, are you training for something? Marathon? We weren't sure if you were coming to join us or just running'

Nadia, the enthusiastic leader of today's Big Beaver Volunteer Day, looked at us curiously.

Why not both!, we replied.

We introduced ourselves and explained briefly what GoodGym is about. There were a lot of new faces from Ealing Wildlife Group but we found some familiar ones too: Dr Sean McCormack, in charge of EWG, and Ben Morris, the founder of Clean Up River Brent.

Nadia, in a very energetic manner, described what we would be doing today, which warmed us up immediately (not that we had a chance to cool down after a 6km run from Ealing on a pretty hot day!). It was the final push from the volunteers before the arrival of the beavers and the stakes were high. Nadia ran the group through when and how to use shears, secateurs and saws, then passed the baton to Sean who asked:

Are there any questions about the beaver project?

When are the beavers coming?

Sean himself couldn't be sure yet. He told us that the aim for the Big Release is mid-October. The beavers were still being imported. How? Currently, the beavers were trapped and collected from the sites where they were not wanted. Can you imagine this? Apparently, in Scotland, they had too many of them. Export of beavers to Ealing is much more humanitarian than other methods of getting rid of them. Hey, who wouldn't like free housing in Ealing anyway?

The beavers already caught were first in quarantine before their move down to the site. There were rumours we would be getting a whole family of beavers!

As much as everyone would like to see the arrival of the rodents, the Big Day is supposed to be an exclusive event, open only to the most dedicated regular volunteers and prominent figures (possibly the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan!). To save beavers from the stress, their transport would be by a secret van, and the release would happen overnight.

Divide and conquer

After Sean's informative speech, we split into several teams:

• Litterpickers - wherever there's litter in Ealing, there's LAGER Can with their signature blue waste bags and pickers for everyone
• Aquatic litterpickers - led, of course, by Ben from CURB who couldn't wait to put his waders on and go fishing for some sunken treasures
• Support of infrastructure for water outflow - the two exclusive slots in that group were already booked by experienced folks
• Biological data recording - their focus was to gather intelligence to understand changes in the ecosystem after the beavers' arrival. There was a question from the audience about that task:

If we're doing the biological recording, do we need to kill anything?

Not this time.

That team was supposed to take pictures of insects found in the area.

• Wire fencing removers - the largest group with the highest priority task: remove hazards on the site

Guess which teams we chose to be in?

The wiring squad

You guessed it right. Destruction, dismantling, disassembly, you name it. Those are our favourite activities, and we didn't want to miss a chance to remove the fencing with wooden stakes. There were a lot of stakes! Some of the stakes had brambles tangled around them, others had small trees growing in between them, and the rest were trapped in twigs, grass and whatever could grow in Paradise Fields.

Before we even started chopping and pulling, our team had to resolve a big dilemma: where are the right-hand thick gloves? We couldn't find a single one in the gloves bucket.

Spoiler alter: they were in a different bucket.

The task was physically demanding and satisfying. The muscles had to be engaged to keep chopping and pulling the vegetation obstructing the fence, cut the wire, pull the stakes and big poles from the ground and then roll and carry the fencing.

After two hours of hard work, we had to make a move, refuel energy and run for our second mission of the day, the Tiny forest maintenance.

It was GoodGym's last gig at Paradise Fields before the beavers' reintroduction day. After our beloved mascots arrive, their new home is going to be closed to the public for at least a month to let the animals settle in the neighbourhood.