This lovely headline has been making the news in the past couple days. I’ve seen it in Europe and the US. And for obvious reasons. Everyone likes to make fun of policies and permits.

In the Czech Republic, beavers built a dam in two days, a construction that was planned for years.

Beavers built a dam in the Czech Republic in two days, which local authorities had spent 7 years planning. The animals saved 1.2 million dollars on the territory restoration project. This is reported by the publication Money.pl.

It is noted that beavers built several dams and returned the area, where construction was planned, to its natural wetland state. The administration of the protected area planned a reconstruction and already had permits, but the animals did it themselves – and in a very short Time.

Yep that sounds like beavers. Working hard and working smart. Well not smart necessarily but not wasting their time doing something that doesn’t work.

Moreover, beavers chose the perfect place for building the dams – a drainage canal that the military built on a former training ground to dry the area. The restoration project envisaged returning everything to its previous state, but now there is no need to carry out this work.

The beavers created the necessary biotope conditions practically overnight. The Military Forestry Directorate and the Vltava River Basin had been negotiating the implementation of the project and resolving land ownership issues. The beavers surpassed them, saving us 30 million korunas. They built the dams without any project documentation and at no cost – Fišer told Radio Prague International.

Biotope? “A biotope is a region with consistent environmental conditions that provides a home for a specific community of plants and animals. The term is similar to “habitat”, which is more commonly used in English.”

OOOHHHHHH.

Zoologist Jiří Vlček added that the local administration cannot compete with such beaver activities. Beavers can build a dam in one or two nights. Meanwhile, people have to obtain construction permits, approve a building project, and find the money for it, Vlček noted.

Ecologists who monitored the entire situation emphasize that the beavers’ actions have significantly improved environmental conditions. The wetlands and water pools they create will serve as excellent habitats for rare species such as stone crayfish, frogs, and other organisms that thrive in wetlands.

I love that stories like this flurry over the airwaves. Yes the real subtext is that mean permits take too long and we should let our workers work better.

But the effect is that beavers rock.

And they do.