Since 2007, Martin Mere has become home to a number of wetland mammals. Within this area of the website you can find out about both our beaver and otter families as well as learn about their characteristics and personalities.
Meet the Otters
Ned was born on 17 March 2006, making him 3 years old. He was born at Birmingham Nature Centre before going to Blue Planet Aquarium with his two brothers in April 2007. Thai was born on 30 October 2001, making her 7 years old. She was born at Weymouth Sealife Centre before going to Gweek Seal Sanctuary in May 2002. Unusually Thai is much larger than Ned.
Their enclosure is in the oriental area of the wildlife gardens and has been carefully designed both on land and water to allow the otters to express their natural behaviour including areas for digging, grooming, climbing, foraging, bathing, swimming, resting and sleeping. Asian Short-clawed otters are the least aquatic of all the 13 species of otters and the enclosure has been designed to only allow areas of shallow water with an abundance of vegetation.
Asian Short-clawed otters have a very fast metabolism, it only takes 1 to 2 hours for food to pass through their bodies so they will need to be fed little and often, with 4 meals a day including a larger morning and afternoon feed with two smaller scatter feeds in between. Their diet is approximately 80% meat (mostly minced meat) and 20% fish (mostly non-oily). However they also need a small amount of fruit and vegetables (e.g. carrots, apples, tomatoes).
Three Asian short-clawed otters were born at WWT Martin Mere on Saturday 3 October
Follow the link for information and to see footage and photographs of the babies.
Meet the Beavers
After a 500 year absence from Lancashire, two European beavers, a male and a female, have settled in to their residence at Martin Mere along with their baby beaver, Wizzy
Beavers, the world's second largest rodent, are one of nature's engineers excavating canals and building dams and lodges of branch and earth. The display at Martin Mere will be the only attraction in the North West where visitors can see a beavers natural habitat.
Entirely vegetarian, the beavers are members of the Vegetarian Society and the wardens have tried them on numerous fruits and vegetables: carrots, apples, sweetcorn, pumpkin, turnip, sweet potato and parsnip. They really like carrots, apples and sweetcorn but didn't touch the parsnip and turnip. They also get willow branches put into the enclosure every night.
Baby beaver: Wizzy
The first ever baby beaver to be hand reared in the UK has been nursed back to health by wardens at WWT Martin Mere in Lancashire when he was found in July 2008. Baby beaver has been called Wizzy after the late Pat Wisniewski who first brought beavers to Martin Mere in 2007. He now has his own enclosure along the nature trail.
Follow the link: www.wwt.org.uk/babybeaver to also see footage of baby beaver and photographs.
Twiggy and Woody: The parents
As the adult pair, Twiggy and Woody (named via the Champion newspaper) have successfully bred every year since they were released at Martin Mere.
Beavers are pregnant for four to five months and they will look after their young, named kitts, until they are two years old. They have successfully bred with Wizzy in 2008 and another 3 young were born in February 2009; and we secured new homes for them in November 2009. Keep an eye on this webpage to see if they have more young in 2010!
What have the beavers been up to since their release?
When the beavers were released on Wednesday 11 July 
2007 they immediately built an underground burrow home in the first night. This included several chambers for sleeping, eating (larder) plus drying off. They now have two (at least) living burrows, one on the front pond and one on the back pond. Also an extensive tunnel system from back pond going out into pen. The picture on the right shows what the enclosure looked like upon their release, and the picture below is illustrating the amount of work they have done.
The original pen contained two separate ponds. They have connected the two ponds together by building a canal which is now 4 to 5 foot long and about 2 foot deep.
They have felled most of the trees in the enclosure. They use the branches for food, building dams, storage on back pond and repair work, such as when they burrowed into the bank on the left of the back pond, it collapsed and they used branches and lots of mud to repair the damage.
The beavers also continue to block up the beaver deceiver every night. The beaver deceiver is a cage around an outflow pipe and it is the animals natural instinct to stop flowing water by creating dams.