Apart from looking nice, they do spoil a few things for us.

Piotr Roman at a City Council session on beavers

I was somewhat shocked when I heard that at a City Council session you publicly demonstrated your lack of knowledge about beavers’ activity in rivers. Especially since you govern a city on the Bóbr River, and such knowledge would seem to be basic knowledge for the mayor of Bolesławiec. Please reach for specialist literature rather than listening to people who, like you, have no idea how beavers live and how they support the environment in which they occur.

Beavers should serve as an example of how best to restore rivers and repair what we have damaged by subjugating the natural world.

A beaver is not an idiot, who wants to live in a dirty home—that is, a river—and therefore cleans it. How? It digs its burrows in the riverbanks, causing water eddies; the water then slows down, and a small treatment plant is created. Collapsed beaver burrows form mini-meanders where all biological processes begin, and pollutants at this microscale can be deactivated. Fish can find shelter in them. Small nature refuges are created there. In a beaver’s home, the beaver wetlands, water has time to become clean, and its biodiversity also increases.

A beaver is not an idiot, who would ruin its home—that is, the river. Beaver dams slow the flow of water and have a beneficial effect on the environment in the era of climate change. The mechanism of slowing water flow is extremely important in protecting rivers and combating floods and drought. Dams retain water during droughts and slow its flow during torrential rainfall, reducing the risk of flooding and thus limiting the severity of both phenomena.

A beaver is not an idiot and does not intend to fry in an increasingly warmer climate. A beaver wetland is like a natural air conditioner, because river water mixes with groundwater accumulated as a result of rainfall, which on hot days is always cooler than the water flowing in the river. Beavers not only cool the water itself, but also cool the surrounding area.

A beaver is an idiot and performs its work in combating drought for people for free. Each year, beavers carry out water-retention work that could be valued at 100 million zlotys (a pre-inflation estimate from 2020 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), that is, the World Wide Fund for Nature (a non-governmental organization founded in Switzerland in 1961)).

Beaver dams are the best natural way to:

  • store water
  • flatten the flood wave
  • stabilize groundwater levels
  • clean the river

Mr. Mayor, this is only basic knowledge about beavers, which, in one respect I agree with you, are very attractive animals.

Grażyna Hanaf