- Beavers are capable of chewing through both wood and bureaucratic red tape.
Administrative bureaucracy can be necessary for doing things by the book, but we all know how infuriatingly slow official processes can be. When the wheels of bureaucracy refuse to turn, you sometimes really wish you could go and take matters into your own hands.
Well, that’s what these beavers did.
In Czechia, the local government of the Brdy region has been planning to build dams to create a protected natural wetland area. And when we say they have been planning it, they’ve really been planning it.
The project has been on hold for years and years due to red tape, go-nowhere funding proposals, and other bureaucratic and political dead-ends. Frankly, it seemed the project would never get carried out.
Then, one day, locals noticed the wetland area was flooded as planned. That was strange, considering no one had seen a single excavator or bulldozer in the area.
Turns out, the flooding was due to several dams that the area’s beavers decided to put up. By sheer coincidence, they ended up working exactly according to the local government’s plan.
By doing so, they circumvented all the departmental wrangling and formalities — and they saved the government more than $1 million while they were at it.
Oh, the Bureaucracy
The Brdy Protected Landscape Area is a natural beauty spot in the west-central Brdy region of Czechia in Central Europe. This area, once covered in wetlands, is part of the Vltava River basin.
However, human development has caused the vulnerable wetlands to start drying up over the years. To prevent the fragile ecosystems from collapsing completely, the local government decided to draft a plan to restore the wetlands with a series of dams.
It’s a good plan, both for the animals and people who want to enjoy pristine nature. Unfortunately, the project has been stuck in bureaucratic hell for years.
The Brdy restoration project was started all the way back in 2018. It hasn’t progressed much since.
We won’t go into exhaustive detail on why the dams haven’t gone up, because the whole story is — frankly — mind-numbingly boring. Suffice it to say that the local government, environmental protection organizations, and construction contractors have been mired in an endless swamp of permits, funding requests, and what have you.
Essentially, the whole project got wrapped in so much red tape that we doubt anyone even knew how to start unraveling it. As a cherry on top of the sundae of bureaucratic inefficiency, the price tag for building the dams was expected to sit somewhere around $1.2 million.
Leave It to Beaver
Then came January 2025. All of a sudden, friends of the Brdy wetland region got a delightful surprise.
The planned wetland areas flooded seemingly overnight. Had the local government finally cleared the mountains of paperwork and finished what they’d started seven years ago?
Not by a long shot. It turns out that the wetlands were restored by unlicensed contractors — namely, beavery.
A beaver colony living in the Brdy wetlands decided to take matters into their own hands. Over only a couple of nights, they did what beavers do best and constructed several dams to block water from flowing out of the area.
It just so happens that each of the dams is where the local government had planned to build one. Consequently, the new wetland area the beavers created matches the authorities’ plan almost to a tee.
Environmentalists dedicated to protecting the Vltava River basin have inspected the dams and flooded areas, and they’re nothing short of impressed. The beavers have created an excellent environment where rare stone crayfish, frogs, and other vulnerable species can live long and prosper.
Life, uh… Finds a way.
‘Beavers Always Know Best’
For the local government, however, the best news is that the beavers resolved the dam project’s bureaucratic mess by chewing through a few tree trunks. Not only that, they saved the regional authority a massive pile of money.
After all, the beavers won’t come asking for a paycheck. That means the government can use the funds earmarked for the dam project on something else.
“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 CZK30 million ($1.23 million). They built the dams without any project documentation and for free,” zoologist Jiri Vlcek told Radio Prague International.
Although beaver dams can cause issues and damage to human infrastructure, in this case, there’s no need to worry about it. If anything, the beavers’ dams are better than what trained engineers had planned.
“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, delighted.
So, if your town council or county government is stuck arguing over a go-nowhere construction project, go and throw some beavers at it. It just might resolve the issue.