The beavers are part of an unlikely effort to bring back a vanished species and help Britain adapt to a very modern problem: climate change. Britain is famous for drizzle, but climate change is making rainfall heavier and more erratic. Places that didn't used to flood are now waterlogged. So scientists have enlisted some of the animal kingdom's best flood engineers — beavers — to help.
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"They effectively turned this site into a giant sponge that can take heavy rainfall and slowly release water back into the landscape, creating a lot more resilience for flooding," explains Sean McCormack, a local veterinarian who started the Ealing Beaver Project, named for the London borough of Ealing, where it's located. Not only has the local Tube station stopped flooding, but the beavers have also coaxed back other species.
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In Britain, humans hunted beavers to extinction more than 400 years ago. By the early 20th century, only about 1,200 native beavers were left in Europe and northern Asia, surviving in parts of Norway, France, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia and China. Sweden reintroduced them in the 1920s, and other countries followed — part of a broader effort to restore native species.
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While the United Kingdom overall is getting wetter, some areas — including parts of Scotland — are getting drier, even seeing a growing threat of wildfires. Beavers ensure this rainforest stays wet and, thus, abundant. That's especially important at a time when wetlands are disappearing, with many drained for development. "Wetlands are one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world," Creech notes. "The U.K. has lost over 95% of its wetlands, and now we're frantically trying to put them back."