Statutory guidance

Licence to modify or remove beaver dams and damaged burrows (CL52)

Updated 1 January 2024

Applies to England

Reference: CL52

This licence permits actions relating to dams and damaged burrows built by Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber). You can only use this licence between 1 September and 28 February each year. This is outside of the beaver breeding season.

What you can do under this licence

You can use this licence for:

• beaver dams
• damaged burrows – only when natural processes such as erosion, or wear and tear have caused damage

Once registered, you can act under this licence to:

• modify a dam, meaning damage, reduce the height, notch or insert a flow device
• remove a dam, meaning destroy it
• repair a damaged burrow, meaning excavate and fill in part of the burrow
• remove a damaged burrow, meaning destroy it by excavating and filling in the whole burrow

This licence does not allow you to modify or remove a lodge or undamaged burrow. Read about the licences you need for actions that affect beavers.

A dam is a structure built by beavers that can hold back water. Dams are usually made of wood, mud, stones or other materials. A dam is associated with a burrow or lodge if it is physically connected to, or it directly affects the water levels around a burrow or lodge.

Burrows and lodges are protected by law because they are breeding sites and resting places for beavers.

A burrow is made of tunnels and chambers in the bank of a body of water.

Beaver lodges are more visible structures that are usually made from sticks and mud. Beavers may create a lodge above the ground and live inside it or use sticks and mud to form a roof over an underground tunnel or chamber. Access to burrows and lodges is normally below the water level and may not be visible unless the water is clear.

This licence allows you to disturb beavers while you modify or remove a dam or damaged burrow. You cannot disturb beavers for any other reason. Disturbance includes any activity that is likely to affect an animal’s population numbers, distribution or their ability to:

• survive
• breed, reproduce or to rear or nurture their young
• hibernate or migrate

Who can use this licence

Only a registered person, an accredited agent or their assistants can use this licence. They must be people who manage land or waterbodies, for example:

• farmers
• landowners
• land or water managers
• fishery managers
• foresters
• advisers or consultants to these people

You must contact Natural England to apply for an individual licence if this licence does not cover the action you want to take.

Who cannot use this licence

You cannot use this licence if you have been convicted of a wildlife offence on or after 1 January 2010, unless one or both of the following applies:

• you have served your conviction and are a rehabilitated person under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974
• a court has made an order discharging you of the wildlife offence

You cannot use this licence if Natural England has withdrawn your permission to use it. Natural England will usually give 28 days’ notice if it plans to revoke your registration.

Register to use the licence

You must register to use this licence or authorise others to act under this licence as an accredited agent or supervised assistant.

To apply for registration under this licence, you must:

1. Complete the CL52 registration form.
2. Email your completed form and training certificate to wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk.

You can also submit your form by post. Send the completed form to:

Wildlife Licensing
Natural England
Horizon House
Deanery Road
Bristol
BS1 5AH

In an emergency, call the enquiries service line to register on 0300 060 3900.

An emergency is an unpredictable and sudden situation that poses a serious threat to loss of life or irreparable damage to the environment or livelihoods and requires immediate action.

The enquiries line will ask about the situation and help you find a solution. You can only use this emergency registration process once. Before you can re-register you must complete the necessary training and the registration form.

Before you register

You need to complete Natural England accredited training before you can modify or remove a dam or damaged burrow.

Contact Natural England for information on upcoming training courses.

Email: beaverlicence@naturalengland.org.uk

After you register

Natural England will contact you with the outcome of your registration. This usually takes 15 working days for normal registrations and 2 working days for emergency registrations.

If your application is successful, you will receive an email to confirm you are registered as a registered person. You can only use this licence once you have received this confirmation.

Once you are registered, you can use this licence if you meet the terms and conditions.

Where you can use this licence

You can only use this licence in England. The licence applies to all counties in England, inland from where the sea reaches at low tide.

You do not need a licence to modify or remove dams if:

• the dam is less than 2 weeks old
• the dam is over 2 weeks old and not associated with a burrow or lodge
• the burrow is too damaged for beavers to use

If a dam is over 2 weeks old, it’s not usually possible to tell if a burrow or lodge will be affected by removal of a dam. This is because the entrances to these structures are usually underwater and may only be visible where the water is clear. You must assume there is a burrow or lodge present unless you are certain there is not one.

Protected sites

Land can have different protected statuses. These include:

• sites of special scientific interest (SSSI)
• European sites, such as special protection areas (SPAs) and special areas of conservation (SACs)
• Ramsar sites – a protected wetland area

This licence does not give consent to modify or remove a dam or damaged burrow in an SSSI. The owner or occupier of the site may need to get separate consent from Natural England before you can use this licence on an SSSI.

Use Natural England’s Designated Sites View to search for and view details about all SSSIs. The notification document for each SSSI includes a list of operations that require Natural England’s consent (ORNEC).

How to apply for SSSI consent from Natural England.

If the SSSI is also a European site, Natural England will complete a habitats regulations assessment before they give consent. This makes sure there will be no negative effects.

If you are working for a public body, and your work will affect an SSSI, you will need to get advice and approval (‘assent’) from Natural England.

Permissions and consents near watercourses

You may need a permit or written consent to carry out certain activities in a body of water.

How to get permission from the relevant flood risk management authority.

When you can use this licence

This licence is valid from 1 September to 28 February. This is outside the Eurasian beaver’s breeding season.

Natural England will reissue the licence each year. If you want to renew your registration, you need to request this on your annual report.

Penalties if you breach the licence conditions

Natural England may make pre-arranged or unannounced site visits to check you are following the terms and conditions of this licence. They also monitor annual reports to make sure you are meeting all the licence conditions.

If you do not follow the conditions of this licence, you could be committing an offence against the Habitats Regulations. You could:

• receive a prison sentence for up to 6 months
• be given an unlimited fine
• lose your permission to use this licence

If you do not follow the licence conditions, you cannot rely on the licence. This means you will effectively be acting without a licence and are committing an offence.

Natural England will write to tell you if they withdraw your permission to use the licence. Natural England can also apply the sanction to other similar licences you hold. This may mean you cannot use this licence as a defence for offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996.

Condition 1: appropriate use of this licence

To use this licence, you must be the:

• registered person - the person who successfully registered to use this licence
• accredited agent - a trained or experienced person authorised by the registered person to work under this licence without supervision
• assistant - a person authorised to act under this licence while they are supervised directly by the registered person or accredited agent, they cannot work alone or unsupervised

Responsibilities of the registered person

As the registered person, you must:

1. Get the necessary permissions before you start work under the licence, including consent from landowners for access and from regulators for working in or near water.
2. Keep records of the permissions and consent for at least 2 years after you complete the licensed activity.
3. Make sure accredited agents have appropriate training or experience and instruction to act under this licence.

You are responsible for all activities that are carried out under this licence. This includes work completed by your accredited agent or assistant.

Condition 2: when you can modify or remove a dam or damaged burrow

You must only use this licence to modify or remove a beaver dam or damaged burrow for the purpose of:

• preventing serious damage to livestock, animal feed, crops, growing timber, fisheries or any other property
• preserving public health or safety
• protecting wild animals and plants of conservation concern

Prove damage is serious and likely

You can only use this licence to prevent serious damage if the dam or damaged burrow is causing, or is likely to cause, serious damage to economic or financial interests.

You must have evidence to prove you needed to take licensed action because beavers were causing, or highly likely to cause, serious damage. This evidence could include:

• examples of losses in the current or recent years
• realistic forecasts of the likely damage
• photos of the dam and the high value property nearby

You must keep a copy of this evidence in case Natural England or the police ask to see it.

Check animal or plants are of conservation concern

You can only use this licence for the conservation purpose if you are modifying or removing dams that put wild animals and plants of conservation concern at risk. This means species on the:

• red list of Great British species from the Joint Nature Conservancy Committee (JNCC) and are vulnerable (VU), endangered (EN) or critically endangered (CR)
• UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UK BAP) priority species list from JNCC
• red or amber list of birds published by the British Trust for Ornithology

You can also use this purpose for work you carry out to protect:

• habitats listed on the UK BAP priority list from the JNCC
• sites designated or protected for their wild animals, plants or habitats

Condition 3: consider suitable alternative actions

You must only use this licence when there are no other suitable alternative actions. You must consider all the lower impact actions, including non-licensed solutions, and conclude that they’re not appropriate.

You do not need to use an alternative solution if the method would be impractical, ineffective or disproportionate in the circumstances. For example, it may depend on the cost of the alternative methods, or the size or type of problem.

When you complete your activity records, you will need to explain the alternative actions you considered and why they were not appropriate.

Advice: suitable alternative actions

Before you modify a beaver dam or damaged burrow, consider if an alternative action is suitable. For example:

• make no changes and adapt to the new circumstances
• create a buffer zone, field margin or consider agri-environment scheme habitat creation options

If you think you need to remove a beaver dam, first consider if you could modify it instead by:

• installing a flow device
• reducing the height or notching the dam

If you think you need to fill in a damaged burrow, first consider:

• creating a buffer zone, field margin or moving a fence line back from the body of water
• diverting a track or right of way

Find out how to manage beavers without a licence.

Condition 4: protect animal welfare

You must always take reasonable precautions to avoid physical harm and suffering to beavers.

Advice: how to protect animal welfare

You need to correctly use the appropriate equipment for your work to avoid unnecessary suffering.

Consider other protected species in the area you’re working in. All wild birds and some wild animals are protected so you need to take care when you work near them.

Condition 5: modify or remove a beaver dam or damaged burrow

This licence allows the registered person, their accredited agent or assistant to:

• modify a beaver dam
• remove a beaver dam
• repair a damaged beaver burrow – where damage is caused by natural processes or wear and tear
• remove a beaver burrow

You can only carry out these actions for the licensed purposes.

You must check upstream from the dam after you modify or remove it and the water level has dropped. Count how many burrows or lodge entrances are now partially or completely above the waterline. You must record this number on your activity record.

Modify a dam for fish passage

If you need to take licensed action to allow the passage of migratory fish, you must only modify the dam by the minimum amount needed to create enough water flow over or around the dam to allow fish passage.

Advice: how to remove a beaver dam

You can use hand tools or machinery to remove a beaver dam. Natural England recommend you try with hand tools first and, if it’s not sufficient, move onto using machinery.

When you remove a beaver dam because all alternative actions were not suitable, you should remove it back to the stream bed. You should continue to remove any dams that beavers rebuild as soon as they reappear. This quick and repeated action will help make sure the dam removal is successful and eventually the beavers will move on.

You should place the dam material you remove on the bank top to prevent it from re-entering the water.

Advice: how to repair a damaged burrow

You will normally need to start your repair where the burrow has collapsed. To repair the burrow:

1. Use hand tools to make the hole big enough so you can see into the tunnels with a torch.
2. Excavate the tunnel in sections, a section should only include what you can see inside the tunnel – use hand tools or, if necessary, a mechanical excavator.
3. Stop to check the next section is clear before you proceed.
4. Allow any beavers to escape.
5. Repeat until you have excavated to the tunnel’s end, unless there is a confirmed escape route for the beavers.
6. Fill in the hole using only local materials such as soil and stone.

Before you start, you can insert an endoscope into the tunnel or chamber to check for beavers. You must remove the scope if you see a beaver.

Condition 6: consider biosecurity risks

You must take relevant precautions when you visit sites with freshwater to avoid the spread of amphibian and fish diseases and non-native invasive species. You must clean and air-dry waders and other equipment before you use them in other areas of water. This will prevent the transfer of pathogens and invasive species between sites.

Products you use to clean and disinfect equipment need to be safe for use around animals.

Read biosecurity guidance for field workers from the Non-Native Species Secretariat.

Condition 7: record and report your actions

You, as the registered person, must keep a written record of all the activities you, your accredited agent or assistant carry out under this licence.

To do this, you must:

1. Download the activity record and annual report.
2. Complete an activity record after each activity you complete between 1 September and 28 February.
3. Complete your annual report form – you must do this even if you have no activities to report.
4. Email the completed annual report and all of your activity records to wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk before 31 March each year.

Accredited agents must give you, the registered person, the information you need to complete the activity records and annual report.

You need to submit the annual report to stay registered. Natural England will reissue this class licence each year and if they do not have your report, they will no longer consider you a registered person who can act under this licence.

Condition 8: Licence compliance

To comply with this licence the registered person must:

• have a copy of the licence on each site for reference by site workers and for inspection by Natural England or the police
• allow access to Natural England officers to monitor work and determine compliance – you can ask to see identification before you allow entry
• assist Natural England officers and anyone accompanying them in their duties
• email Natural England on wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk as soon as you can if you breach a condition of this licence
• allow Natural England to inspect your activity records at any reasonable time

Legislation

Natural England has issued this licence under regulation 55 sections 2(c), 2(e) and 2(g) of the Conservation of Habitats and Species regulations 2017 (as amended).

Natural England has used the common name in this licence for guidance only. In the case of disputes or proceedings, Natural England will only consider the scientific name of the species.

Natural England or the Secretary of State can modify or revoke this licence at any time. This will not be done without good reason.

A wildlife crime is an offence under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, the Deer Act 1991, the Hunting Act 2004, the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the Protection of Animals Act 1911 (all as amended).

COVID-19 

You should stay at least 2 metres from live, wild mammals to avoid passing COVID-19 to them. Only capture or handle live wild mammals if necessary and avoid going within 2 metres of known breeding sites or regularly used resting sites.  

If you cannot follow these guidelines, then you should:  

• minimise the time spent in close proximity and handling mammals 
• limit the number of people that come into close proximity or handle mammals 
• keep animals separate from other individuals as far as possible 

Under this licence, you should follow good hygiene practices, including:  

• wearing disposable gloves, or clean and disinfected non-disposable gloves 
• wearing a face covering when handling and close to any mammal 
• washing hands before and after being close to or handling mammals  

Face coverings, non-disposable gloves and overalls or other clothing should be washed or disinfected between uses when handling mammals.  

You should not carry out activities under this licence if you feel unwell, test positive for COVID-19 or live with someone who has, or might have COVID-19.  

Any products used to clean and disinfect equipment should be safe to use should there be contact with animals and must be used at an effective and safe dilution rate. ‘Safe4’ is an appropriate disinfectant and is considered effective against the virus at a dilution of 1:50. Other products can be used to clean and disinfect equipment.

Contact Natural England

You can contact the Natural England wildlife licensing team if you need help with:

• licence registration or reporting
• the licence conditions

Email: wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk

If you have questions about beavers or you’re not sure if you need a licence, you can contact the Natural England enquiry line.

Email: enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk

Phone: 0300 060 3900