England's First Wild Baby Beavers In Centuries Are Here, and They're Super Cute

Wild baby beavers are back in England for the first time in centuries, the BBC has reported—and they're cute as all dang frickin' heck.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in England in the 16th century, which makes the sudden appearance of baby beavers—or kits—a Pretty Awesome Thing. According to The Guardian, the adult beavers that spawned the kits were identified last year in the River Otter, near the town of old Devon, in a video shot by Tom Buckley, a retired environmental scientist.

But here's the thing: nobody knows where the beavers came from.

The Devon Wildlife Trust had a couple beavers in a compound nearby, but they were still confined when Buckley filmed the River Otter beavers, The Guardian reported. It's also possible that the beavers were dropped into the area by environmental activists aiming to illegally reintroduce beavers as bonafide English fauna.

"Whether it's an accidental escape or whether someone's deliberately put them in the river, we don't know," Peter Burgess, the conservation manager for the DWT, told the Toronto Star last year. However they got there, the English beavers now have their first wild, native-born babe.

Beavers were hunted mercilessly in England for their fur, meat, and other byproducts until they all but disappeared in the 1500s. Beavers nearly met a similar fate in Canada later, in the 19th century, for the same reason. Conservation efforts in Canada have ensured that the beaver never went extinct like it did in England, however.

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Recent "rewilding" efforts across the UK are trying to bring beavers back by breeding them in captivity, and a wild population that popped up in Scotland was allowed by the government to thrive unhindered.

But these projects are not without their share of controversy—particularly from farmers and landowners. In response to such efforts in 2013, a spokesperson for the National Farmer's Union said: "The history as far as introducing mammals in particular is not a particularly good one. We've seen the grey squirrel, rabbits and even mink so in reality there isn't much evidence to suggest they do any good at all."

"Introducing" was perhaps not the best word choice there, since beavers are actually native to England. But the benefits of beavers in the country would also be manifold, according to environmental experts. Last year, the UK Mammal Society suggested that that the best way to control flooding in the country would be to bring back beavers and their dams, and the way beavers naturally groom the landscape by chomping trees is thought to be good for biodiversity, too.

Against the odds, and for whatever reason, beavers appear to be back in England. Maybe this time we'll avoid killing them all.