Beavers not to blame for disrupting film sequel

BEAVERS are no longer under suspicion for delaying the longawaited Twin Town sequel, with the blame now falling on an unknown group of teenagers.

The cameras were due to begin to start rolling last week for the filming of the first scenes of the follow-up to director Kevin Allen’s cult ’90s original. But the location earmarked for filming ended up submerged under four feet of water.

Director Kev Allen was originally told that a rare colony of Carmarthenshire beavers were to blame.

It was thought they dammed up a contributory stream, causing the the water to swell out onto the film set.

Mr Allen said last week: “It’s the oddest thing I’ve come across in 20 years of film-making. Having spent months building one of the key sets for the movie, it has taken a bunch of beavers to screw up my filming schedule.”

But beaver experts were quick to call foul on the accusation.

Alicia Leow-Dyke, Welsh beaver project officer for Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, said: “Whilst the film set might be flooded, beavers are not to blame, I have worked with beavers for almost a decade and I am very familiar with beaver ecology.

“No beavers have been reported living near Kidwelly. The only beavers living in Carmarthenshire are in an enclosed area, upstream of Kidwelly and on a different catchment that is nowhere near Kidwelly. The dams created by these beavers did not causing flooding to the Twin Towns film set. It is also well evidenced that beaver dams actually decrease the risk of downstream flooding.”

Director Mr Allen now believes a group of teenagers caused the damage. He said: “We have actually learned over the weekend that it was in fact a group of teenagers who had built the sabotaging damn and not in fact beavers after all.”