Rewilding East London: the Big Smoke's green ambition
This autumn, white storks and beavers will be introduced in the London Borough of Dagenham and Barking - but it's not the only area in the capital taking a wilder approach
One magpie, a family of Canada geese – a foraging fox or two. Walking through London's Eastbrookend Country Park in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham, I don't have to look far to spot a few familiar/feathered faces. But soon, I will be able to see something slightly more unusual.
This autumn, the London Wildlife Trust (LWT) and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham are set to reintroduce white stork in Eastbrookend Country Park. Shortly after, in March 2027, a family of beavers will join the fray.
Supported by £500,000 of the Mayor of London's Green Roots Fund, LWT says its Rewilding East London project will increase local biodiversity, create outdoor learning opportunities and improve access to nature for the local community.
Layla Mapemba, Senior Species Recovery Officer at LWT, is talking me through it. The stork, due on-site in October, will first be housed in a specialist aviary, where the birds will develop 'site loyalty', before moving into a release enclosure from which they will be free to "come and go as they please", explains Mapemba.
The beavers, meanwhile, will stay closer to home: it is illegal to release the species in the UK without a license, meaning that the Eastbrookend Country Park population will remain in a publicly accessible 12-hectare enclosure, with access to 6.5 hectares of open water.
Why Barking and Dagenham?
After previous collaboration on the restoration and expansion of Eastbrookend Country Park's wetland area, the LWT and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham have developed a longstanding relationship.
"A few sites were discussed and looked around, but the hope was to do a stork and beaver reintroduction – so, it made sense to look for a space where that could be done in one place, " Mapemba explains.
While the park's reedbeds will make an excellent habitat for stork, beavers are well suited to the combination of planted woodland and naturally established willow growing at the edge of the park's two largest ponds.
A Eurasian beaver: Beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain in the early 16th century © Peter Shackle/The Ealing Beaver Project
Map of London © Shutterstock
When choosing a suitable reintroduction site for storks, "a huge factor is having an appropriate food source", adds Mapemba: "While we'll be supplementary feeding the storks while they're in the aviary, once they're out, they will need to forage."
The River Rom, which runs through Eastbrookend Country Park, creates ideal wetland conditions and "the perfect foraging ground for the stork", she explains.
It was also important that the area surrounding the park offered ample feeding opportunity, as stork will typically forage within 40 kilometres of their nest site, Mapemba adds.
"The sites are now suitable to support white storks, providing the quality habitats needed for the birds to forage in; the wider landscape also offers other rich feeding grounds for the birds nearby."
Coming in at 84-hectares squared (that's around 117 football pitches) Eastbrookend Country Park will also provide the stork with plenty of space to raise their chicks.
"There are some big and beautiful black poplar from many years ago that were part of a London Wildlife Trust project to replant poplars on site, and there's also some oaks... So, the stork will have lots of habitats for nesting," Mapemba says.
A nesting white stork: Rewilding East London's stork population will establish Britain's second breeding colony, with the first successful reintroduction carried out by the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, East Sussex, in 2018 © Unsplash
Above: Tom Thumb Lake, Eastbrookend Country Park. Eastbrookend Country Park has plenty of existing lakes and water sources, but several ponds will also be built in the aviary's breeding enclosure
What is rewilding?
Rewilding sits in the same ecosystem as conservation, but it can be tricky to define.
"I think rewilding doesn't have an actual definition at the moment," says Pia Trevelyan-Ashby, Urban Rewilding Officer at Citizen Zoo, a social enterprise facilitating rewilding and conservation in and around London.
"If you look up what it means, everyone will say different things – but in my opinion, conservation is maintaining what we have and ensuring that we don't lose anything else. Rewilding is bringing things back that we've already lost in an area – but we know can be there. Rewilding is a new take on an old problem."
Trevelyan-Ashby's is an understanding echoed by the charity Rewilding Britain, which defines the concept as seeking to "reinstate natural processes and, where appropriate, missing species – allowing them to shape the landscape and the habitats within".
It is "the large-scale restoration of ecosystems to the point where nature is allowed to take care of itself", the charity adds.
Rewilding is bringing things back that we've already lost in an area – but we know can be there
This doesn't mean simply walking away and leaving nature to its own devices. Careful human intervention is needed to keep things on track. That might look like restoring natural river channels, connecting areas of green space, or – as is the case with the Rewilding East London – the managed reintroduction of key species.
A people-first approach
"Reintroduction projects fail if people aren't involved, or the local people aren't on board. It's such a key and important part," Mapemba tells me when I ask what opportunities the Barking and Dagenham community will have to get involved.
Divided into "pre-stork" and "post-stork", the Rewilding East London engagement programme will offer volunteer opportunities, school tours, guided walks and educational drop-in sessions.
"I see this as the core element of the project," Mapemba explains. "It’s what I love about working in London, and it’s why I choose to do this work in London – I like working with people, and I think it's really important that we feel connected to these green spaces. It’s important that local residents feel that they're involved."
Reintroduction projects fail if people aren't involved, or the local people aren't on board. It's such a key and important part
Trevelyan-Ashby agrees, telling me that engagement is her top priority: "I’d say my biggest role is ‘rewilding people’, which is something that people don't often talk about in the conservation field.
“Species reintroduction is so important, 100%. That's what it's all about. But I think when you're trying to bring it to an urban place, you realise how much of it is about engaging with different groups and making people aware."
"Rewilding brings hope to communities who may have felt they can never have this kind of nature in their space."
“Rewilding is a new take on an old problem”
Pia Trevelyan-Ashby, Urban Rewilding Officer at Citizen Zoo
Key events in the UK's rewilding timeline
2000
The Knepp Castle Estate project gets underway
Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree decide to rewild 3,500 acres of their farmland in East Sussex. Knepp Castle Estate is one of the most influential examples of large-scale rewilding in the UK. "We're using a lot of their learnings," Mapemba says when I ask if there are any similarities between Knepp's White Stork Project and the LWT's.
2015
Rewilding Britain is founded
Fifteen years later, Rewilding Britain, the UK's first rewilding charity, gets off the ground: a nationwide organisation aiming to promote the benefits of rewilding for the climate and people.
2021
Sadiq Khan announces plans to 'rewild London'
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launches the £600,000 Rewild London Fund to help restore natural habitats in the capital, delivered in collaboration with the LWT.
In the years since, there has been a surge in public interest around rewilding, with Google recording a 40% increase in the search term "What is rewilding?" over the past year and 78% of Britons supporting the reintroduction of a species of animal that has gone extinct in the UK, according to a 2025 YouGov poll.
Interest in the topic
↑40%
Increase in the 'What is rewilding?' search term
via Google over the past year
Support for rewilding
↑78%
of Britons support the reintroduction of
species that have gone extinct in the UK
Why is rewilding important?
Despite a rise in the number of people showing an interest in the subject, rewilding isn't a complete crowd pleaser. Only 42% of those who responded to last year's YouGov poll would support the return of wildcats to the UK, for example, while a little over a third would bring back boar (37%) and (37%) and moose.
"I know that lots of people do have concerns about species reintroductions," Mapemba says, adding that this is why drop-in sessions play such a crucial part in any engagement programme.
The Rewilding East London sessions, she tells me, will give people the chance to "come in and ask questions and to get engaged with the project, to bring up any of their concerns and give us the chance to hear suggestions about how they would like to be involved".
For Trevelyan-Ashby, education is also key. Citizen Zoo recently worked with the University of Brighton to carry out a study on attitudes toward white stork reintroduction in the capital, in which around 70% of respondents said they would support the initiative. But almost all of those who said they would not like to see the birds' return also ticked survey boxes saying they had never seen a white stork, or knew very little about them.
"If you don’t know, why would you say yes?", Trevelyan-Ashby asks: "It’s just an education thing. Which is why rewilding is really great. It’s a fairly new concept, and it comes with a lot of excitement and interest."
London-based
rewilding projects
There are rewilding projects taking place in every corner of the capital, with prominent examples including the Rewilding East London project, Ealing Wildlife Group's The Ealing Beaver Project and Citizen Zoo's Wild Tolworth initiative.
A trip to paradise
Featured in David Attenborough's Wild London series, the Ealing Beaver Project is one of the capital's rewilding success stories
"There’s no other animal that does what the beaver does – we try to do it, but we just do a terrible job."
On a Sunday morning in May, Şeniz Mustafa, Urban Beaver Officer at the Ealing Beaver Project, is telling a group of nature enthusiasts, myself included, about the benefits of europe's largest rodent.
"They’re really good for other wildlife, " says Mustafa, explaining that the semi-aquatic mammals create more "complex" environments. By gnawing at trees until they fall, beavers let light into overgrown spaces, while also creating dead wood, an essential habitat for creepy crawlies.
The Ealing Beaver Project is the UK's only fully accessible urban beaver initiative. Based at Paradise Fields in Ealing, it was conceived of in 2020 by Citizen Zoo's Eliott Newton and the Ealing Wildlife Group's Sean McCormack. The pair's first-choice rodent had been the water vole, before Sean suggested the team shoot for something a bit bigger. In October 2023, after three years of planning and public consolation, five beavers were released on-site. Now, after several years of successful breeding, the team estimate that there are around 10 individuals living at Paradise Fields.
A beaver takes its first steps at Paradise Fields, Ealing
© Ealing Beaver Project
Above: The Ealing Beaver Project team on release day in October 2023
© Ealing Beaver Project
Biodiversity has improved quickly, Mustafa tells us. Kingfishers have returned, as well as toads, bats, brown hairstreak butterflies and damselflies. On the day of my visit, the fresh-water volunteer team spot a stickleback for the first time since project records began; before the beavers' introduction, the Zoological Society of London declared the water a "dead zone", says Mustafa.
Standing still for a moment, I can hear the whisper of flora and fauna all around. The soft new growth on the flourishing blackthorn rustles in the breeze; a little closer, rising clear over the top of the wind, bird song – lots of it. And in the distance, city sirens. Paradise Fields gives a glimpse of what a city can sound like when it's in harmony with nature.
Beavers aren't just good for the planet: they're good for people, too. The species is excellent for urban flood management, Mustafa explains, with their dams keeping water levels high – but contained. 2024 was the first year Mustafa can remember that the roads around the Ealing site did not flood, which she believes is directly related to its furry new residents.
Above: A kingfisher flies low over the water © Unsplash
A study carried out by the Ealing team has also found a 90% decrease in anti-social behaviour at Paradise Fields: "People say they feel safer... It has gone from a wetland site that wasn’t very social to a beaver site – the vibe has changed significantly!" says Mustafa.
Although beavers aren't easy to spot during the day (they are crepuscular, meaning they primarily come out during twilight hours), the animals leave some pretty large clues as to what they've been up to. We walk past trees bitten down to their stumps, trunks with large chunks taken out of them – and one that has been felled completely.
The project, which was initially funded by HS2 disruption compensation, will soon be supported by the council. With 5,000 locals engaged over the past nine months, Mustafa is hopeful the team can keep showing that "people and beavers can thrive together".
What's next for Rewilding East London?
The next steps are well underway back in Eastbrookend Country Park. With five months to go until the storks wing their way to the capital, Mapemba tells me she is currently focused on finding a contractor to build the aviary – which hasn't proved an entirely straightforward task.
"It's quite a specific build… It's not a project that many people have done!" Mapemba smiles, adding that the number of similar aviaries the team has had access to while designing the enclosure is in the "single digits".
The stork aviary will be built in two halves: the breeding enclosure, 35m by 25m, and a smaller release enclosure, 15m by 20m, into which the birds will move when they are ready to migrate. The second area has a net roof that is designed to be rolled back, "a bit like a naked circus tent", says Mapemba.
'Trojan' storks
The LWT team hopes that the storks' foraging habits will have a domino effect when it comes to rewilding efforts across the capital.
"We like to call them 'Trojan storks'", smiles Mapemba: "They’re a flagship species that inspire nature's recovery. Hopefully, it will encourage more wetland restoration, as we hope to see them spread across London."
Councillor Dominic Twomey, Leader of Barking and Dagenham Council, is optimistic that the borough's new feathered friends will inspire locals to consider how they might make use of the green spaces on their doorstep.
"I think it will encourage people in other areas of the borough to go back to their parks and think: Do you know what? We might not be able to get beavers or storks, but why can't we work towards getting different types of ecology in our park?"
What we've got to get through to people is that it's their space. It's their park. These are community spaces and we want community ideas
"I just hope it just has an amplification, where it says to people: Look, there's something different here you can get involved with."
For now, Twomey is enjoying the excitement the project has already brought to the borough: "I've honestly never had so many positive comments as when the storks and the beavers were talked about being reintroduced here. It was really upbeat – really heartening in a time when there's so much negativity."
"What we've got to get through to people is that it's their space. It's their park. These are community spaces and we want community ideas."
