Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 26 June 2014, Official Report, column 330W, whether he considers the population of wild beavers in Devon to be a non-native species.
European beavers were once present in the British Isles and are considered a previously native species. However, the species has not been ordinarily resident for several hundred years, since it was hunted to extinction in the sixteenth century.