While gardens, farms and fields have been left parched by the heatwave, nature is fighting back against the climate crisis in one part of the country.
Once widespread in Britain, beavers were hunted to extinction by the 16th century for their meat, fur and glands.
But now a thriving colony in Somerset has provided a defence against drought-like conditions, creating a luscious area of water-filled wetland that otherwise would have become just a “muddy puddle”, said the National Trust.
