Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications to have beavers introduced under the wildlife licensing scheme, CL50, have been (a) made and (b) accepted.

Class Licence CL50 allows for re-release of captured or rescued beavers back into existing wild-living beaver populations, and is intended to enable conflict management, rescue for welfare reasons, and research. CL50 cannot be used for introduction of beavers to river catchments where they do not already exist. There have been 12 applications made to Natural England to re-release beavers under CL50, all into the same river catchments that they were captured or rescued from. Of these, 9 were granted, and 3 were withdrawn or not granted.