CORNISH TEA CROP UNDER THREAT – FROM BEAVERS
PRODUCTION at the only tea plantation in the country could be under threat by an invasion of wild beavers.
The rare wild mammal was pictured by gardeners at Cornwall’s Tregothnan Estate, in Tresillian, which has been growing award-winning tea for the last two decades.
Beavers were first brought back to Cornwall after 400 years in 2017 by the Beaver Project, a conservation group, with the release of a male and female at Woodland Valley Farm, near Ladock. Since then there have been two more releases, including a beaver on Bodmin Moor in 2020.
Gardeners said they were “astonished” that the beavers had decided to make the tea plantation their home.
Staff at the grounds, near Truro, say they are now concerned for the tea and rare plants grown on site – and raised fears that supply could be impacted by the species. The dam-building creatures are understood to favour twigs and stems a few millimetres in diameter, the same as tea plants, and are the second-largest living rodents.
A spokesperson for the estate said: “The nearest beaver enclosure is over ten miles away and it is a mystery as to how the creature arrived here.
“Head gardener at Tregothnan, Neil Bennett, is concerned that tea and many other rare plants with the perfect stem diameter of a few inches are at high risk.
“We don’t yet know what the beavers’ impact will be on many endangered species that we conserve. Some of these trees are extinct in the wild or part of a national collection and must not become a beaver snack.”
The spokesperson added: “Tea workers suspect the beaver will target mature tea bushes as potential dambuilding material.”