Beavers win top BBC Countryfile award

The remarkable story of Devon's wild beavers goes on with the announcement that the Westcountry rodents have now won a top national award.

Readers of BBC Countryfile Magazine have selected the River Otter Beaver Trial based in East Devon, along with the Scottish Beaver Trial, as their 'Wildlife Success Story of the Year' for 2017. The public poll attracted 56,000 votes across its 12 award categories.

The accolade is recognition of the work being done with the East Devon beavers by the charity Devon Wildlife Trust. The beavers are the first wild population of the animals to exist in England for 400 years. Devon Wildlife Trust leads the River Otter Beaver Trial in partnership with Clinton Devon Estates, University of Exeter and the Derek Gow Partnership.

Devon Wildlife Trust's Mark Elliott manages the River Otter Beaver Trial and said:

"We're delighted to have won this prestigious BBC Countryfile Magazine Award. The fact that thousands of members of the public have taken the time to vote for beavers in Devon and in Scotland shows the wide support these charismatic creatures enjoy."

A breeding population of beavers was first discovered on the River Otter in 2014. No one knows how the beavers came to be living wild in East Devon. In 2015 Devon Wildlife Trust was granted a five-year licence from Natural England. This allowed the beavers to remain after they were initially threatened with removal. The licence also allowed the charity to establish a project which will monitor the beavers until 2020 when a decision about their long term future is to be made by the government.

Devon Wildlife Trust's Mark Elliott added:

"The BBC Countryfile Award stands as a tribute to the strong partnership we've established to conduct the trial. Our research is now beginning to show the important role that beavers could play across our wider countryside in improving water quality, mitigating against the worst effects of flooding and drought, and in benefiting other wildlife. The trial has a long way to go, but this is a very public endorsement of the work we've done with beavers here in Devon and of the trial that has already been carried out in Scotland."

News that Devon's beavers were in the running for the BBC Wildlife Magazine Awards was announced in February. Nominations were made by a panel of judges which included the author Bill Bryson, along with broadcasters John Craven and Anita Rani. Other nominated projects in the same award category included conservation work done with dormice, cirl buntings, bumblebees and bitterns.

Prof Richard Brazier, University of Exeter, project partner and Chair of the River Otter Beaver Trial's Science and Evidence Forum welcomed the public recognition:

"Undertaking research into the impacts of beavers is a challenging yet highly rewarding field of study, made all the more fascinating via the genuine partnership approach that Devon Wildlife Trust is leading and the huge interest in this keystone species shown by the general public."

Dr Sam Bridgewater, Conservation Manager for Clinton Devon Estates, said:

"There was a lot of stiff competition. The award is testament to the hard work of all the partners involved. Clinton Devon Estates recognises that the beavers can have great benefits for wildlife and society and this award is affirmation that these benefits are being recognised nationally. We are very grateful to everyone who has voted for this project."

Devon-based mammal expert and project partner Derek Gow said:

"I am over the moon that the Devon Beaver Trial has been given this recognition.  I have worked with this magnificent species for 22 years. It is just brilliant that BBC Countryfile Magazine have recognised the importance of beavers in the presentation of this award."

Chairman of Natural England, Andrew Sells, said:

"I would like to add my congratulations to Devon Wildlife Trust for their work on this programme. Their careful planning and monitoring of England's first wild population of beavers for 400 years continues to provide us with important evidence on any impacts which a potential reintroduction might have. This is an exciting time for conservation and their award success is a clear indication that many people are very supportive of this scheme."

It is thought that around 20 beavers now live on the River Otter which winds its way through 20 miles of East Devon countryside. Last year one breeding pair of the rodents established themselves on land owned by Clinton Devon Estates close to the village of Otterton. Throughout the summer the adults along with their five offspring, known as kits, were seen most evenings. The family drew hundreds of visitors to the area.

The River Otter Beaver Trial receives no government funding. People can learn more about its work help and give their support via www.devonwildlifetrust.org/make-a-donation

Female (mother) and kits on the River Otter, East Devon, August 2016. Photo copyright Mike Symes (All rights reserved)

WHAAM! Tickets now available for Westward Ho! & Appledore Music Showcase

Tickets are now on sale for “WHAAM JR”,  the Westward Ho! & Appledore Music Showcase at The Pier House, Westward Ho! on Friday 24th March from 6.00 to 12.00pm. The Showcase will be representing North Devon’s youth bands, singers and choirs performing in aid of the Royal National Life Institution's Appledore Lifeboat Station.

The WHAAM Showcase is making a welcome return following the enormous success of the event in 2016. WHAAM JNR will be celebrating the talents of North Devon’s YOUTH BANDS, SINGERS AND CHOIRS featuring a broad spectrum of music from rock ’n roll bands to folksy bands and individual singers, from youth theatre groups, senior schools and colleges, pantomimes and interspersed with one or two SENIOR ENTERTAINERS so that young people may gain knowledge and experience from them.Top of the bill for the Youth Session will be 17 year old award winning singer/songwriter Yazzy Chamberlain. Scroll down for ticket information. Find out all about the Westward Ho! and Appledore Music Showcase check out their new website.

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Tickets are on sale at Delicadevon and The Co-operative Food, Westward Ho! and The Coffee Cabin, The Quay, Appledore AND OF COURSE AT THE DOOR! Reservations are acceptable by email for collection at the door. Email: noahsark@uku.co.uk

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Tap here for WHAAM JR Website

Tap here to find out about Yazzy Chamberlain

Novelist and folk duo deliver a new audience for forgotten ‘Postman Poet’.

He was a humble postman whose poems, written while walking the rural lanes of North Devon on his daily round in the mid-19^th century, won plaudits from the Prime Minister and the support of the biggest literary names of the day. He was to become known nationally as the Postman Poet and was referred to as ‘the Devonian Burns’.

Yet today, two years short of the 200^th anniversary of Edward Capern’s birth, many of his fellow Devonians are unlikely to have heard of his remarkable story, let alone people from further afield.

But that could be about to change. Recognition could again come knocking for Capern (1819-1894), thanks to collaboration between Bideford author Liz Shakespeare and folk musicians and songwriters Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll, also from Bideford – the town where Tiverton-born Capern resided for most of his life.

Liz has written The Postman Poet, a novel based on the life of Capern, and at the same time is publishing 34 of his 600 poems in The Poems of Edward Capern. During her research, Liz found that some of his poems were intended to be sung and Nick and Becki have spent the past 12 months choosing which ones to set to music for their CD, The Songs of Edward Capern.

The book and CD launch takes place with an evening of reading and songs at the Royal Hotel in Bideford on 25^th March, two days before they officially go on sale.

Capern was from a poor family and as a boy only went to school for four months. He was entirely self-taught but he had a local benefactor, William Frederick Rock from Barnstaple, who saw his early poems in a local newspaper and was behind the publication of Capern’s first volume of poems. Its subscribers included the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, Lord Tennyson and Charles Dickens. He was also admired by Poet Laureate, Alfred Austen.

“It was a remarkable achievement for a working-class man to become nationally known and I think he deserves a larger audience today,” said Liz. While writing the novel, Liz drew on historical research and details in the poems to tell the extraordinary story through Edward’s eyes as he struggles to support his family, a story that captures the opportunities and inequalities of Victorian North Devon.

Capern would jot down poems while he was walking and he often wrote on the envelopes he was about to deliver: “He had to ask the recipients if he could keep the envelopes because he’d written poems on them,” said Liz, whose own cottage in Littleham just outside Bideford was on Capern’s round.

It was during his daily two-hour break on the Bideford to Buckland Brewer route that most of his poems were written. It seems that one day he was invited into a cottage to sit in the warmth of the kitchen while the women of the house went about their daily chores. It was an invitation he was to accept every day after that.

While carrying out her research, Liz discovered that, quite by coincidence, the cottage is now owned by a good friend, local historian and genealogist Janet Few: “When you’re in the kitchen you can imagine Edward sitting there writing up a poem about the nature he’d seen and the people he’d met that morning,” said Liz.

When it came to Nick and Becki setting Capern’s work to music, they found that the poems had a particular rhythm to them: “You could tell he’d written them while walking,” said Nick, “because there is a walking feel to the rhythm of the lines.”

This “walking feel” was used when they composed the music, as Becki explained: “The feel informed the rhythm and we then created the melody to ‘fit’ what the words were saying. And the melody informed the choice of instruments.”

“The songs are certainly folk-influenced because that’s our background and it’s probably the music Capern would sing. But it’s not traditional folk music. It’s a much more contemporary sound.”

Nick and Becki initially sifted through Capern’s collection of poems that he’d written for music in his volume, The Devonshire Melodist, only to discover his words had been disastrously misinterpreted by composer Thomas Murby. His piano arrangements were clearly intended for the well-to-do and a review in the Illustrated London News decried Murby’s melodies as “artificial, laboured and hard to sing”.

As a result Nick and Becki have recorded just two of the songs as they were written – Christmas Bells and Come List, My Love, and have set a third from the collection, The Robin Is Weeping, to their own music. Nine further Capern poems are set to their folk-influenced interpretation.

 “It’s pretty obvious that folk was his genre,” said Nick. ”We think he’d be happy with what we’ve done.”

Although he was careful not to upset the aristocracy who bought his work, Capern was keen to use his pen to champion the cause of the poor. One poem Nick and Becki have set to music is The Dinner Bell, a tale of the haves and have-nots where Capern laments the plight of families who could hear the sound of distant dinner bells but had no food themselves. In recognition of Capern’s commitment to social justice, £1 from each copy of the poetry collection sold is being donated to the Northern Devon Food Bank.

Capern died in 1894, aged 75, and is buried in the churchyard at Heanton near Braunton, with his trusty postman’s handbell fixed in a niche in the headstone.

So how will 21^st century readers view Capern’s poems? Liz admits some are rather sentimental for today’s tastes but added: “The best of them are as fresh and honest now as they were then. The poems I’ve selected are those which best reflect his life and the locality. He loved his job, despite the weather and the long hours and it’s this love that really comes across in his work. His poems are written from the heart.”

Tickets for the 7.30pm launch event tonight are available from the websites. Signed copies of the books and CD can also be pre-ordered now from the websites, www.englishfiddle.com
and www.lizshakespeare.co.uk.

  Photo: Liz Shakespeare, Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll

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The Rural Postman (an extract):

O, the postman’s is as happy a life

As any one’s, I trow;
Wand’ring away where dragon-flies play,

And brooks sing soft and slow;
And watching the lark as he soars on high,

To carol in yonder cloud,
"He sings in his labour, and why not I?"

The postman sings aloud.

And many a brace of humble rhymes

His pleasant soul hath made,

Of birds, and flowers, and happy times,

In sunshine and in shade.