KarunaNews Story

Beavers have saved Czech taxpayers $1.2 million by flooding a protected former army training site where a long-stalled dam was planned. Officials had hoped to build a barrier to shield the Klabava River and its population of critically endangered crayfish from sediment and acidic water spilling over from two nearby ponds. As a bonus it would turn a part of this protected area south of Prague into a nature-rich wetland. First drafted in 2018, the project had a building permit but was delayed by negotiations over the land, long used by the military as training grounds. Yet before the excavators got the green light, the beavers set to work building a dam of their own. The beaver family then moved on to a gully encircling the ponds, in which the conservationists wanted to build little dams to allow overspill that would help flood the area.