A colony of beavers has saved the Czech government almost £1 million after completing a stalled dam project themselves.
Despite a seven-year planning process and successfully securing the funding, the Czech Republic’s plans to build a new dam in the Brdy region came to a standstill as authorities struggled to acquire building permits.
However, it was the arrival of eight hard-working beavers that finally got the job done.
Speaking to Radio Prague, Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency, said: “Beavers always know best.”
Using their powerful incisors, the semi-aquatic rodents fell trees to create wetland areas – known as ‘beaver ponds’ – which they then use as sources of food and protection from predators.
The human project had aimed to restore the area to its natural state, decades after soldiers at a military base built a bypass gully which had drained the area.
According to the Brdy Protected Land Administration (PLA), which was managing the human project, the beavers constructed dams in almost the same spots that constructions were planned.
“The Military Forest Management and the Vltava River Basin were negotiating with each other to set up the project and address issues regarding ownership of land. The beavers beat them to it, saving us CZK 30 million (£994,000),” said Bohumil Fišer, the Brdy PlA chief. “They built the dams without any project documentation and for free.”
Mr Obermajor added: “The places where they build dams are always chosen just right — better than when we design it on paper.”
cologists tasked with inspecting the dams have said they will last a long time and create good conditions for the rare stone crayfish, frogs, and other species that thrive on wetlands.
“We are already seeing the emergence of a small pond and surrounding wetland there,” the PLA said in a statement, adding that the eight beavers were still hard at work creating new wetlands.
‘Ecosystem engineers’
Beavers are “ecosystem engineers” meaning they modify their environment to create resources, and their dams can stretch for miles.
The largest beaver dam recorded is in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada, stretching the length of seven football fields – so big it is even visible from space.
In another case, when beavers built dams on the property of a large stormwater treatment facility in Oregon, scientists discovered that the animals’ structures were able to filter out heavy metals and other pollutants about twice as effectively as the human-built structures.
In 2023, California introduced a beaver-assisted restoration programme so the animals could create a healthy ecosystem for other animals, replenish groundwater and even provide wildfire protection.
In the UK, where beavers were once hunted to extinction for their fur and a natural secretion called castoreum which is used for perfumes and medicines, they have also now been successfully reintroduced. A trial in Devon between 2015 to 2020 saw the first wild breeding of beavers in 400 years.
“Beaver wetlands are a paradise for many animals and plants. They are stable ecosystems that contribute to the diversity of our landscape,” said the PLA. “Beavers are returning the landscape altered by humans to its natural beauty.”
- I didn’t know there were European Beavers
- Say where Castoreum is secreted from you cowards at the Telegraph.
Honestly the beavers building in the majority of the already planned spots is a major commendation to the humans who picked the sites to start with; your decision-making was validated by ecological experts.
Moderately quibbling with the definition the article gave for ecosystem engineer; it’s more accurate to say that they modify the environment to create habitat or services that better suit themselves, and then it happens to benefit a lot of species around them. Oysters create their own vertical relief and hard structure through accumulation of shells (complex structure is good for them and helps protect them from predators when they’re small, plus it’s a good evolutionary bet that if a larva settles where there are existing oyster shells, that spot is going to be good for them too). And then that reef structure happens to be really handy for loads of other fish and crustaceans that need places to hide. Likewise other animals, like the red grouper, inadvertently shape habitat for others. Red grouper dig pits for themselves in sandy bottom, down until they reach a rock layer beneath. Those pits then become really helpful for animals like spiny lobsters, who use the pits as shelter. Modifying an area from soft bottom to hard bottom is a real ecosystem game-changer - you get an entirely different kind of community that can live there.
I’ve gotten into discussions about this, in regards to what people call “inhospitable” environments, like deserts. Sure, its not suitable for humans to live in, but there’s a lot of wild life that has adapted and thrive in that kind of ambient. To forcibly change one into green forests and pastures would be a complete ecological devastation with unimaginable consequences, yet its something that plenty of people advocate for (instead of, you know, wondering why we have empty buildings in perfectly serviceable land already)
I shrimply cannot read this article without imagining the beavers in little safety hats, with clipboards and blueprints
My mother is an architect and she has a mug with a drawing of a beaver wearing a hard had and carrying blueprints and it says “it’s just one dam project after another”
Funny because the wording of " However, it was the arrival of eight hard-working beavers that finally got the job done." makes me think of several anthro beavers with ripped muscles, each carrying one huge log over the shoulder, probably only wearing a pair of jeans.
Oh yeah, this kind of attitude nearly fucked us in the US when everybody was turning swampland and estuary into “free developmental real estate” by draining and filling them until they were solid land. I’m particularly gung ho about estuaries as a marine scientist (coastal wetland is honestly the bulk of what a lot of folks do both bc they’re such essential/dynamic ecosystems and also bc they’re the easiest places to study, logistically.) But like. You Need That Shit, it’s a barrier to coastal flooding and essential nursery habitat.
One of the major downsides of hardcore urban development is the way that you turn what could be a more varied mosaic of environment into the exact same mix of concrete/asphalt/metal. Likewise for suburbs, turning it all into lawn grass. On the other hand the nature of city development and zoning can also mean that you can set up a different landscape of patchwork environments. It’s not going to fully mimic theoretical “pristine” environment, but the patchwork islands are part of what is necessary to help sustain a more varied ecological community within that human-dominated built space. You give the anidmals a network of resource spaces that enables them to keep existing in the area.
Edit: y’all done hit me square in the “15 min impromptu lecture” zone riplmao. It’s been a long long time since I’ve had to interact with urban ecology at all but man what a great course that was in undergrad. Estuaries are my real passion rip.
-AND ANOTHER THING
IT TAKES SO MUCH WORK TO MAINTAIN A MICRO-ENVIRONMENT AGAINST THE PREVAILING CONDITIONS OF THE LOCATION. DON’T FUCKING POISONWOOD BIBLE YOURSELVES [^1]
Back when I was in Alabama there was a house on the water somewhere at the state boundary between us and Florida. That just had. A full green grass lawn in its yard instead of the usual sand to the water. Fucking Baffling, I have no idea if it was astroturf or real grass (probably the former bc what the hell kind of setup would you need to keep the lawn grass from shriveling into a briny pulp). It was an ecological eyesore and would’ve done jack and shit to preserve the land unlike the ones that still had small stands of beach grass and marsh reeds on their stretch of sand.
[1]: The Poisonwood Bible is a novel about an American missionary family in the Congo at the transition between Dutch rule and Congolese independence. Needless to say things don’t go well for the missionaries. But there’s a very central metaphor where the missionary father is trying to plant an American style home vegetable garden in their village house. And it takes a lot of tries, only for the first successful surviving set of plants to fail to bear produce because none of the local pollinators will touch them.