‘No one knows where it came from’: first wild beaver spotted in Norfolk for 400 years

A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.

It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.

It is the first time a free-living beaver has been recorded in the county since the species began to re-establish itself in the English countryside in 2015, when a litter of wild kits was born in Devon.