Paradise Fields beavers get named by Ealing primary school pupils

Ealing’s recently introduced beavers have officially been named by children from four primary schools in the borough.  

The children attended a special beaver naming ceremony and tour last week (15 February 2025) at Paradise Fields in Greenford where they met with representatives from the organisations and people who helped to reintroduce beavers back to London.  

The Ealing Beaver Project – a collaboration between Ealing Wildlife Group, Citizen Zoo, Ealing Council, Friends of Horsenden Hill with support from Beaver Trust and Mayor of London – released a family of five beavers into the wild at Paradise Fields in October 2023.

Since then, they have enhanced the local ecosystem, helped improve the local environment and made themselves at home, with two more baby beavers, known as kits, joining the family.

And now, the beavers have finally got their names. 

The project, a collaboration between Ealing Wildlife Group, Citizen Zoo, Friends of Horsenden Hill and Ealing Council with support from Beaver Trust and Mayor of London, allows residents, landowners and other stakeholders to learn how to live alongside the beavers.

It is the first time in over 400 years for beavers to be back in Ealing.

The special beaver naming ceremony saw Mete Coban, Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, give out certificates, along with beaver plush toys to the children.

Speaking to the group, Mr Coban, said: “For me, this is an incredible project because we’ve got big challenges in London. Climate change is an issue that’s going to affect us in the future.

“It’s so important that we have places like this, both from a place of having access to green space, but also from a place of making sure we’re mitigating against the impacts of climate change.”

London Assembly Member for Ealing and Hillingdon, Bassam Mahfouz told EALING.NEWS of his joy to see the introduction of the beavers. He said: “I’m super excited to be here at Paradise Fields in Greenford because it’s an area I’ve loved for a really long time. This is an amazing spot for the environment and it’s been made even more special because of the introduction of beavers just over a year ago. They are just extraordinary creatures.”

Mr Mahfouz added: ““We really need to recapture and rewild right across London, and so projects like this really are fantastic opportunities and they are just the start of what we want, and our ambitions across London and I want to see this right across Ealing and Hillingdon”

Dr Sean McCormack, founder and chair of Ealing Wildlife Group said: “It’s a real feel-good event. You know, we’ve had our beaver naming ceremony, we’ve been talking about it for a long time, getting local school children involved in naming the beavers and putting the beavers at the heart of our community.”

Dr McCormack added: “There’s great excitement, we’ve got now Woody, Willow, Chompy and Chewy, which are fantastic names and it’s just brilliant to see the families coming and learning about beavers, not only what they’re doing for the local ecology and wildlife here on Paradise Fields but also what they’re doing for our urban community in Greenford in terms of defending against flood. So, it’s been a fantastic success and it’s brilliant now to get the kids involved and get them naming the beavers.”

Elliot Newton, co-founder of Citizen Zoo commented on the naming and introduction of the beavers: “I think it’s incredibly exciting to see the enthusiasm of these young children to come in here, I mean the knowledge that they have about beavers is absolutely outstanding. How fantastic it is standing here in Zone 4 London and there’s children just enjoying being in a beaver landscape, raising expectations about what nature we can have living alongside us.”