Planting Willows: Supporting Beavers and Boosting Biodiversity скачать в хорошем качестве

Planting Willows: Supporting Beavers and Boosting Biodiversity

Willows: Perfect Trees for Restoration If you were designing the perfect tree for restoration, you’d end up with a willow. It grows at a pace that makes most trees look lazy, it can be cut, chewed and coppiced almost indefinitely, and it will still bounce back. For beavers, willows are not just useful, they’re essential: food, building material and a renewable resource all rolled into one trunk. At Southill Estate, willows are being planted inside the beaver enclosure ahead of a release. As Gamekeeper Paul Dunn shows in our video, it’s about giving the beavers a head start — ensuring they have a supply of browse and branches to work with the moment they arrive. Later, Ross Wingfield explains just how straightforward willow propagation can be: no nursery contracts, no costly interventions, just a branch snipped from an existing tree, pushed into the ground, and left to do what willows do best. Willows as Ecological Engineers But willows aren’t simply a gift to beavers. They are ecological multitaskers. Their dense roots pin riverbanks in place, slowing erosion and helping to shape stable waterways. Their early catkins pump nectar into the food chain at a time when pollinators don't have much choice on the menu. Birds nest in their tangled crowns, bats roost in their hollows, and every scrap of fallen or rotting wood hosts a miniature world of beetles, fungi and invertebrates. Planting willows isn’t a decorative exercise; it’s ecological engineering in its simplest form. Put a stick in the ground, and you’re not just making a tree, you’re laying the foundation for a web of life that stretches from dragonflies to otters. At Southill Estate, that process is already underway, with the humble willow leading the charge. To learn more about how Restore supports landowners in creating resilient, biodiverse landscapes, contact us at info@restorenature.com