Better late than never. The famed story about the Czech beaver dam in the right place at the right time was told and retold in every single news outlet over the literal world for the last fortnight and the Grey Lady FINALLY had to climb aboard.

What makes this time special is that

1) it included my favorite quote yet from Emily Fairfax;

2) It featured a photo of Nutria that was actually CORRECTED and pulled,

Czech Dam Project Was Stalled by Bureaucracy. Beavers Built Their Own.

The dam project, drafted in 2018 and based on a former military training site south of Prague, had been delayed by land negotiations. Local beavers built several dams, saving the government more than one million euros.

Despite their remarkable ability to construct dams, beavers often draw the ire of landowners and farmers for destroying trees, eating crops and flooding roads and fields. But in thinning a tree canopy, the rodents can often help to diversify an ecosystem by allowing sunlight in so that other plant species can thrive, said Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota.

“They’re fundamentally changing the way water and life moves through that landscape,” she said.

The Czech dam is not the first time the rodents have assisted in building a wetland. Beavers in California have helped to restore a floodplain about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento. In that case, the beavers’ work also helped local officials save money. “All they had to do was let the beavers be there,” Dr. Fairfax said. In other cases, beavers often did work that went unacknowledged. “We sort of have a blindness for beavers,” she said, noting that they were often considered a nuisance because of their alarming size and capacity to rapidly change the landscape.

Now that is nice. Highlight Lincoln which by the way is killing their beavers right now as we speak. And then give this

“Oftentimes we don’t want to allow the beavers to make the choices, because it’s hard to plan around that uncertainty; it’s hard to turn over control to a giant water rodent,” she said. “But that’s when beavers are at their best.”

And SCENE! As an avid reader of every possible quote said about beavers, I can honestly say that’s one of my favorites. Good job.

And really really like this too: