r/todayilearned • u/rosstedfordkendall • 1d ago
TIL beaver dams saved a wetland in the Czech Republic. The government was planning to do the same thing, but the bureaucracy took too long. The dams saved $1.2 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver-engineered_dam_in_the_Czech_Republic117
u/courier31 1d ago
I have read that the American southwest looked radically different till beavers were hunted to extinction in that area.
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u/Mama_Skip 1d ago edited 1d ago
That sounds about right. I can imagine a fragile wetlands ecosystem being common.
In a similar but opposite way, the middle east actually used to be wetland floodplains until Turkey and Iran dammed up major parts of the Eurphrates and Tigris, solidifying the barren desert region we think of the middle east today. Oh and it was like that until the 50s-70s lol. The desertification of the Near East is a recent phenomenon, and there's likely still old people kicking around that remember the lush plains of their youth.
Human dams are awful for the environment. Beaver dams create life. Turns out we're worse engineers than a bunch of large rodents.
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u/gmishaolem 1d ago
Human dams are awful for the environment. Beaver dams create life. Turns out we're worse engineers than a bunch of large rodents.
Not really: It's just that they evolved in concert with what they were doing, so bad dams or dams with bad effects had immediate results and were self-solving problems, whereas we use our other technology to avoid or mitigate the damage our decisions do, so the consequences don't result in us backing off.
Beavers don't have the human luxury of pushing consequences to future generations.
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u/ShopIndividual7207 1d ago
The motto of the government is ALAP
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u/gmishaolem 1d ago
ALAP: "As long as possible."
They probably didn't actually want to "fix" it and dragged it out on purpose.
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u/CarrotChunx 1d ago
Well timed. International beaver appreciation day is April 7th.
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u/Peterowsky 1d ago
Which honestly just shows how tiny of a project was needed.
US$ 1.2 million is pennies as far as any significant infrastructure project goes. And if that somehow managed to include all the necessary studies, data gathering, analysis, project and construction it can't have been sizeable.
Hell, a 2-lane road in the middle of nowhere is supposed to cost two to three times that much per mile .
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u/FrungyLeague 20h ago
Yeah that's what jumped out at me. Was the "dam" like a footbridge across a stream or something??
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u/Guinness1995 1d ago
I think beavers were introduced more widely in the European wild to restore nature.
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u/KUweatherman 1d ago
Those dam beavers saving the dam taxpayers money with their dam building due to dam bureaucracy.
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u/concentrated-amazing 1d ago
Where's a link to the letter about the "dam beavers" when you need it!
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u/yeontura 1d ago
Guess who else read the Did You Know section of the English Wikipedia lol
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u/Popular_Cost_1140 1d ago
What, is that like illegal or something?
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u/VikingSlayer 1d ago
It's a good place to learn something new, maybe even share it in a community for new things you've learned on a given day, whatever that might be called.
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u/TheShakyHandsMan 1d ago
Beavers are going to inherit the world after we’ve destroyed it.