Beavers Building Dams, Finishing Delayed Government Project as Officials Await Permits

The Brdy Protected Landscape Area in the Czech Republic benefited from beavers building dams after the project was stalled due to bureaucracy.

In a surprising and pleasant twist, a colony of beavers built several dams in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area of the Czech Republic—dams that authorities had been planning to construct for the past few years.

Although local authorities were unable to construct the dams due to bureaucratic delays, the beaver colony built them in the exact locations overnight—and for free.

The Brdy region, located southwest of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, has traditionally been used as a military training ground since the 1920s.

However, after 2016, the military stopped operations in the area, and it is now a protected landscape filled with moors, wetlands, and peat bogs.

The local authorities were planning to create an essential wetland, which would be an expensive project.

The government had approved approximately $1.2 million for the construction of the dams.

However, due to administrative delays, such as obtaining permits and approvals from the Vltava River Basin authorities, it became a challenge.

Bohumil Fišer, the head of the Brdy Protected Landscape Area Administration, told Radio Prague International, while officials were scrambling through paperwork to obtain the necessary approvals, the beavers quietly went about their work.

He said, “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. They built the dams without any project documentation and for free.”

When experts analyzed the dams, they realized that nature’s engineers had built them on a bypass gully that soldiers had originally constructed many years ago to drain the area.

The dams will not only help restore the landscape but also benefit local wildlife, allowing frogs, the rare stone crayfish, and other species to thrive.

Zoologist Jiri Vlček appreciated the beavers’ speed and ability to build dams in one to two nights, while humans could take up to a week just to complete the digging work.

Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency (AOPK), said, “Beavers always know best. The places where they build dams are always chosen just right – better than when we design it on paper.”

The entire incident has led locals to joke about the beavers’ ability to plan better than humans and stress the local administration’s bureaucratic inefficiency.