{"id":727134,"date":"2026-08-04T11:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/727134\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T11:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:18:09","slug":"dementia-patients-helped-by-very-unusual-beaver-boom-at-former-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/727134\/","title":{"rendered":"Dementia patients helped by &#8216;very unusual&#8217; beaver boom at former farm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A colony of beavers which has set up home on a former dairy farm is being hailed as a success story for a rewilding project. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Three years ago, charity Heal Rewilding bought a 460-acre site between Frome and Bruton in Somerset, with the aim of returning the land to its natural state.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since then, a beaver colony has dammed the tributaries of the River Frome, creating its own personalised pond and welcoming five kits this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Local dementia support group Wild Memories also regularly meets at the site to spend time outdoors among the sounds, sights and smells, which it said triggered a &#8220;beautiful nostalgia&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After acquiring the site, charity CEO Jan Stannard said the group &#8220;simply stood back and watched&#8221; for two years, to learn about the land and gauge its potential.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We let the grasses grow up and we started to take surveys to find out everything from insect numbers, to birds and bats,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.healrewilding.org.uk\/state-of-nature\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The charity&#8217;s first report, external<\/a> reveals 94 species of birds have been informally recorded since 2023, including 21 red-listed and 28 amber-listed species.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The number of butterfly species also doubled from 11 to 24, along with a significant increase in mice and vole populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A colony of beavers which has set up home on a former dairy farm is being hailed as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-727134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}