Ellsworth Toohey
BoingBoingFri, 14 Feb 2025 23:09 UTC
© Radio Prague International/YoutubeBeavers in the Czech Republic outpaced government bureaucracy by building dams overnight, saving officials CZK 30 million while restoring wetlands vital to the ecosystem.
Remember when humans could build stuff? Like, "Hey, let's slam 4 million cubic yards of concrete between two canyon walls" and five years later — two years ahead of schedule — Hoover Dam?
Well, nowadays it takes longer than that to approve the font size on the "No Smoking" sign for a public park bathroom that'll cost $2.3 million and require 47 community input sessions.
But some beavers in the Czech Republic just gave a masterclass in Getting Sh*t Done. While government officials were busy having meetings about having meetings about their river restoration project (started in 2018), these rodents rolled up and built a dam in two days.
No permits. No environmental impact studies. No LinkedIn humble-brags about "transformative infrastructure solutions." Just teeth, logs, and the hutzpah to ignore five years of bureaucratic foreplay.
Sure, they flooded some stuff and messed up a railway line, but compare it to modern infrastructure projects that take decades and billions of dollars only to end up as PowerPoint presentations about why they need more billions.
One Czech official had to
admit: "The beavers saved us 30 million Czech korunas ($1.2 million). They built the dams without any project documentation — and for free."
Comment: More on the story from
The Latin Times:
A beaver colony in Brdy, Czech Republic, just pulled off a multimillion-dollar infrastructure project without spending a dime.
As local officials struggled with red tape, the industrious animals got to work. They completed a series of dams overnight that not only solved a drainage problem but also saved authorities an estimated CZK 30 million, or about $1.23 million, as reported by Radio Prague International.
For months, the Brdy Protected Landscape Area Administration had been bogged down with bureaucratic hurdles and attempted to secure building permits and navigate land ownership disputes with the Vltava River Basin authorities.
Little did they know a family of beavers, unfazed by governmental inefficiencies, constructed the necessary dams in a matter of days and revitalized the wetland ecosystem exactly as environmentalists had planned.
Beyond their cost-saving construction work, the beavers restored natural habitats. Nature and Landscape Protection Agency of the Czech Republic/YouTube
"Beavers are able to build a dam in one night, two nights at the most. While people have to get building permits, get the building project approved, and find the money for it. But of course, a digger working on his own could build it in about a week," zoologist Jiri Vlček told the outlet.
Beyond their cost-saving construction work, the beavers helped restore natural habitats. Environmentalists inspecting the new wetland confirmed the pools and marshes created by the dams will support rare stone crayfish, frogs, and other species to thrive.
"Beavers always know best. The places where they build dams are always chosen just right — better than when we design it on paper," Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency, told Radio Prague International.
While authorities acknowledged the work of beavers is not always welcomed by humans, as beaver-engineered floods had wreaked havoc in some areas and submerged farmland and railway lines, officials celebrated their work in this instance.
Comment: More on the story from The Latin Times: