We Let Beavers Transform an Old Farm.

What if there was a surprisingly simple way to more than double biodiversity, boost water quality, and prevent catastrophic floods and droughts? Right now a movement is taking shape to bring back long-lost ecosystems in record time using the power of beavers. And we thought, well, that looks like fun. Let's try it ourselves. This place we're standing at, it used to be a giant fish farm until very recently. And now it's abandoned and doing absolutely nothing for nature. But that's going to change big time. Because the Planet Wild community is buying this entire dried-up piece of land and turning it into a massive beaver playground. A beaver population has already been spotted nearby, and if everything goes to plan, they will transform this barren wasteland into a thriving ecosystem much, much faster than any human construction crew ever could. Join me on a fascinating journey to learn all about nature's number one ecosystem engineers, the crazy comeback story they've had after near extinction, and how they will turn all of this into this. We're Planet Wild. Welcome to Mission 41. Everything you see here around me was created by one creature. Introducing even a single beaver into a landscape creates an explosion of biodiversity, far more than what we see with any other living thing. And that's simply because they bring water into the landscape, turning dry land into a mosaic of deep ponds, complex canals, and shallow wetlands. These are perfect breeding grounds for fish and amphibians. The wooden dams and the still water attract millions of insects, providing a feast for all kinds of birds. The abundance of water and diverse vegetation also attracts larger mammals like elk, deer, martens, and even wolves. All of this makes beaver wetlands pretty much impossible to replicate artificially. What beavers do can help restore our landscape much better than we can do with our engineering. This is Frauke. She's worked alongside beavers for the last 17 years, and she's part of our friends at Rewilding Oderdelta, who are doing pioneering work to bring back Europe's most iconic wildlife species, including lynx, sea eagles, elk, and even the European bison. But now it's the beavers' time. Three years ago, together with their Polish partner, they purchased a piece of land to turn it into a nature reserve and restore its lost wetland. The plan? Create a protected area and then simply step back and let the local beavers take the reins. And as I got to see firsthand on my exploration with Frauke, the plan actually worked. But now we have our eyes on a new piece of land, just a few miles away, that desperately needs a makeover. A long time ago, this was a natural marshland. Then, like with so many wetlands, it was completely drained to be used for agriculture. Years later, the opposite happened. This concrete log was installed, damming up the drainage water to create a gigantic artificial pond with millions of farmed fish, where chemicals, growth hormones, and fish food polluted the water. After all of this, the land is in a pretty bad state. But that's going to change soon. The beavers are already taking a curious look at this area. I am very sure they already made some plans what they can do there. The fact that we even have beavers living here is an absolute miracle. Just 70 years ago, beavers were considered functionally extinct in the wild here in Poland. Today, their population here has grown to over 100,000 individuals, making it one of the largest beaver populations in all of Europe. But this is still a tiny number compared to the hundreds of millions, yes, hundreds of millions of beavers that used to cover almost the entire northern hemisphere. Just imagine that world for a second. It looked something like this. In fact, studies have shown that the presence of beavers in an area can triple the biodiversity there. And yet we came this close at wiping them out completely. And it was all because of this. In the 1600s, it became super fashionable across Europe to wear hats and coats made from beaver fur. Which style you chose actually said a lot about your status in society. What's even weirder, beavers produce a vanilla-smelling scent from a gland right next to their butt that people turned into perfume and ice cream. I promise I'm not making this up. And sadly, for these reasons, demand for beavers absolutely skyrocketed. Once the European beaver population was depleted, the fur industry expanded to North America. And over the course of around 200 years, 99.9% of the world's beavers were hunted and killed. And at the turn of the last century, only 1,200 individuals remained in Europe. The impact on nature was catastrophic. Without beavers and their dams, that complex, biodiverse landscape was drained away. And with it, all the life that depended on it. But there is hope. Because in recent decades, beavers have made a remarkable comeback. And it's largely thanks to some unconventional projects. In 1948, conservationists in Idaho packed 76 beavers into wooden crates, strapped them into World War II parachutes, and literally airdropped them into the wilderness to restore the wetlands. And the crazy plan actually worked. In Scotland, beavers were completely extinct until a few of them mysteriously appeared in the wild. Nobody's entirely sure if these beavers were illegally released or if they escaped from captivity. But today, nearly all Scottish beavers are descendants from this gorilla population. All over Europe, beavers have bounced back in one way or the other. From those 1,200 individuals to over 1.5 million. And yet, wetlands are still disappearing way faster than beavers can rebuild them. So every piece of land that we can give back to them is a win for nature as a whole. That's why the Planet Wild community is helping to purchase 20 hectares of degraded land and turning it into a gigantic beaver playground. And the best part? We don't actually have to do anything. Because the beavers know much better than us how to do it. But how are they actually doing it? Let's take a look. It all starts with the surrounding trees. Beavers love to eat the inner bark of tree branches. But instead of learning to climb up, beavers decided to bring the trees down to them. Using their self-sharpening iron-enforced teeth, they can fell a tree in a single night. Strategically cutting the trunk so the tree falls into the water, where it can easily be cut up and transported. And because beavers only eat a small portion of the tree, there's a lot of building material left to create this. Dams. And they are really good at them. In Canada, they've built a dam twice the length of the Hoover Dam. Just chew on that for a moment. I mean, look at this dam right here. It's fairly new and its construction is absolutely remarkable. Like with any good construction site, beavers follow a clear plan. First, they search for a perfect location to maximize the dam's impact, choosing narrow streams and flat valleys so that even a small dam will flood a large area. Then they start digging big logs firmly into the riverbed and anchor them with rocks to build a foundation. This then gets layered with branches, mud and leaves to create a sturdy wall. Beavers actually monitor the sound of the water as an indicator of how well the dam stops water flow. If they still hear running water, they must keep building until it's done. All of this is absolutely fascinating. But one question remains. Why? Why go through all of that work just to flood a valley? Well, take a look at this medieval castle. It's not just protected by strong walls, but by moats of water. Beaver dams create exactly such moats to protect them from wolves and other predators. And right in the middle of it sits the beaver's lodge, like a castle. In German, we actually call them Beaver Castle, Beaver Burg. And there is one right over there. The German name really is on point as this thing is built with a multi-room layout and mud-plastered walls that are impenetrable to predators. Beavers enter through a secret tunnel that opens into a lower wet chamber for shedding water. In my anthropomorphizing mind, that's where they take off their rubber boots and hang their raincoats. From here, they retreat to a dry upper living area, where the family sleeps and stays warm, including, wait for it, a built-in ventilation shaft that acts like a chimney. In winter, you can even see steam rising out from the top because their body temperature and the decomposition of the organic walls act like a central heating system, while the water below is used as an in-house fridge to keep the food fresh during winter. If they see something that they really like, they dig it up and they transport it closer to their mound, sometimes even in front of the mound, and they stack it into the soil there, so they have their little garden around their beaver mounds. By the way, if you ever encounter a beaver or a beaver lodge in the wild, absolutely don't approach it. These are wild animals that should be left alone. The only reason why we could get so close was because we were on location with an expert, making sure we would not disturb them. Back to the video. We're back at the fish farm and we're already seeing the first signs of beaver activity. You can see right here that they have started damming up the old log again. What did I say? No human construction crew needed. It's incredible to see how quickly things are happening already. Just a few weeks ago, all of this was just brown. With the beavers coming back and raising the water levels, it's already turning green again. Seeing how effectively beavers are restoring landscapes, we were asking ourselves, why isn't this being done much more? Well, it turns out beavers are a bit too good at claiming land. Beavers are causing problems. Beavers. Beaver. It's causing quite a few problems. As beaver populations expand, they can clash with local communities, blocking drainage ditches, flooding agricultural fields, and chewing down trees that we prefer kept standing. Often, this doesn't go down too well. So, if we want beavers to survive, we have to actively help humans to live alongside them. Luckily, Frauke has a plan for that too. We're going to broker peace between beavers and humans by planting 9,000 willow trees. Willows are a preferred snack of beavers, distracting them from old growth trees. They never fully eat them, instead leaving small stumps that quickly sprout again, providing an ongoing food source. In fact, the number of willows will naturally grow over time. On top of that, we're helping locals to protect their property by providing them with non-toxic anti-bite glue, low-voltage electric fencing, and these wire cages to protect valuable trees. In the long run, our 20 hectares of land will positively impact about 400 hectares of surrounding land by hydrating the forest ecosystem, preventing wildfires, filtering the water, and creating a vital stepping stone habitat from the smallest to the biggest species. For me personally, it's always joy. It fills me immediately with joy when I see beavers being there, doing what beavers do, and I can fully trust them that they do everything for a good reason. For centuries, our relationship with beavers was defined by hunting and conflict. But looking at this project, you can see what happens when we finally decide to become their allies. By allowing beavers to return, we aren't just saving a species, we are letting them save our landscapes. And if you want to become part of projects like this, join Planet Wild as a backer. Every month, we go on a mission to bring back endangered species, clean up our oceans, and rewild entire landscapes. And it's all community-funded. As a backer, you're directly supporting people at the front lines of nature protection. And you can see your own impact here on our channel. There's a QR code over here and a link down in the description. See you all again next month. Over and out.