Will East Devon's beavers be saved from going to the zoo?
Petitions have been launched urging ministers not to remove a family of wild beavers roaming freely in the River Otter near Budleigh.
The news comes after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced they want to round up the family-of-three and put them in a zoo.
Beavers, once native to the UK, were hunted to extinction here 500 years ago as they were prized for their fur, meat and scent glands.
The three rodents, thought to be adults, were filmed together earlier this year – a sighting wildlife experts suggested was "highly significant" as it suggested a small breeding population of beavers now existed outside captivity.
But officials are thought to want them taken out of the wild amid health and safety concerns. Defra is now trying to find a home for them in a zoo having ruled out culling as an option.
But two petitions have now been launched to spare the beavers from captivity. The first, on the 38 Degrees campaign website, wants to "save the free beavers of England". It has secured 738 signatures.
Another, on the on the change.org website, reads: "Leave the beavers on the River Otter alone. Do not cull, remove or disturb them in any way.
"Although it is not known where the Devon beavers come from, trapping them for testing could be traumatic and risks killing the young."
Some 496 people have out their name to it.
The Government's plan emerged in a written Parliamentary answer from Environment Minister George Eustice, who said: "We intend to recapture and rehome the wild beavers in Devon and are currently working out plans for the best way to do so.
"All decisions will be made with the welfare of the beavers in mind. There are no plans to cull beavers."
There is a history of division in Devon over beavers. A proposal in 2009 to set beavers free on South West Water's 730-acre Roadford Lake in west Devon was halted amid stiff local opposition despite claims their dam-making would help purify water naturally.
The reintroduction of beavers to the wild in Scotland five years ago has been an "outstanding success" by the team of ecologists that brought them back.
