oh my god look at this

its gorgeous

when you need to save crops and cattle from the deepest drought

who you gonna call?

call a beaver

controlling water is what beavers have been doing for thousands of years

No one does it better

every beaver family is dedicated to the job

excavating, logging

building channels and dams

They build whole landscapes for hundreds of other creatures

In 2002, we had the worst drought on record

The only places where we had water was where we had beaver

So after we nearly eliminated them,

Some very interesting people are working to bring them back

I am a hairdresser, honey. I like HBO I want a toilet that flushes

But for some reason when there's wild life involved, especially beaver, I'm kind of fearless

Now I'm a hairdress, and a live beaver trapper

Hi! Who's this sweet little

Come here sweetie, come here sweetie

With the other animals that I've rehabbed, you want to limit your contact

but for the beaver because they're so family-oriented they need to feel nurtured

We brought you some new family members

I'm delighted I'm not sure how many there are

hopefully they'll be babies. Yeah yeah this is good

wonderful

North America's fertile landscape is the work of one animal more than any other

but building a garden of Eden isn't easy

you must fell hundreds of trees to dam a river

then build a castle with a moat filled by a flood that spreads over several acres

yet beavers don't look like the kind of animal that can change the world

somewhat blind and slow they seem like simple folk

but this overgrown rodent is an extraordinary engineer

the landscapes of Europe, Asia and North America

were once dominated by millions of these hard-working builders

beavers are vegetarians

they gnaw through bark to eat the sugary layer underneath

which makes them orange

they grow continuously and even self sharpen

the pond makes it easier to move around the heavy logs they need to build their dams

out of the water, it's a struggle

stones help way down the base

the whole family works together, carefully interlocking the timber

they dredge mud from the pond bottom to seal the damn

each pond trap several inches of sediment every year, so there's plenty of it

the young act as apprentice builders learning the tricks of the trade

the final results are impressive

in the Rocky Mountains beaver dams slowly filter billions of tons of water

the ponds build up soil and nutrients and help prevent floods and droughts

but hundreds of years ago, beavers were most valued for something else

when Europeans arrived in North America

they found beavers dominating the landscape, from Mexico to the Arctic

they were said to be industrious enough to hold the Niagara Falls

but their fur made fantastic felt hats

for 200 years they were trapped near extinction

then fashions changed and we lost interest

only a few beavers survived

now they are recovery, but they're finding a changed world full of houses and farms

as beavers reclaim their ancestral ponds they flood hundreds of human homes

anywhere with a rich soil was probably once a beaver pond now housing

developments golf courses and farms find that beavers are just a problem though

half the soil maybe thanks to beavers farmers prefer the land under their control

but beavers don't give up

in Canada clearing dams from culverts under Rhodes is the job of highway

maintenance

that's thousands of cubic meters of water that we have to get rid of if we

can't get rid of it here where it's supposed to go

it's going to end up on the infrastructure it's going to end up in

the ditches it's going to end up backing up into basements it's you know it's

gonna end up everywhere

they are excellent hydro engineers and they will figure out ways to work around

just what everything we all know the water doesn't always go where we want it

to the beaver has a very amazing way of getting getting it to work for

we don't always know that if we could learn more about their practices and how

to get that to work i did it would be great if you could train them to put it

where you need it

that would be ideal if if you could simply put up a little arrow sign or a

water this way it would

yeah but you'd be smiling but unfortunately they don't read very well

and they just kind of do what they want to do

there is one place where the beavers do seem to be reading the signs and doing

more or less as instructed

in gatineau park near ottawa the local beavers follow the directions of

self-styled Bieber whisperer

Michelle eclair fit in the hours even better

but you still have ear all around so 30 years ago

leclair was hired to stop beavers from the flooding roads around the 140 square

miles of Gatineau Park the only solution then was to kill the animals and destroy

their dams

some people call them equal zero some people go them

pest so dependable

it's all about how much program you have to do with them and when you have work

program with them and you don't know how to resolve them they are not be very row

that's for sure

they passed the major problem is is flooding rules

the beaver dam accumulates water and if the water pressure is too big

the beaver dam just bust and then there's a big out through water that

cuts rose in half

what happens is that the road just gets cut off complete

gatineau park has hundreds of miles of roads threatened in many places by

beavers damming up culverts my starting eight hours a day and breaking them and

the first day I came here

82 time well equipped teams dismantled dams by day but the Beavers rebuilt them

every night

what the hell's the problem

what they do and what they did it and you're going to fight against them

you want to be a war and i'm sure i'm not sure if you're going to win that

sure mclaren his colleagues trapped a thousand bieber's a year in the wildlife

park and beavers were the only ones caught

great blue herons turtles hotter

you never know what you're going to get in your trap so I didn't like it very

much

it was horrible leclair wanted to find another way and thought that beaver

behavior might offer a solution

first thing is a song of water running

he places a recording of a running stream on top of the beaver dam

so now you're going to see what the beaver reactions and the beavers gonna

dance or it over the night

a small tree takes a few minutes

it's perhaps an hour for bigger trees and branches

and half the night for a 12 inch thick trunk

aspen poplar and Willow are usually the favorites

Bieber's have been crushed by falling trees but that doesn't happen often

over the course of the year they may clear several acres of trees most

rodents have a high work rate but beavers are probably the busiest they

have a reputation to keep up

the dams owners have buried the stereo with branches and mud that they made

that sounds very exciting for them

that's exactly the same here that's all it's time to work

running water is to a beaver like the sound of the plug being pulled draining

their pond

leclair thought he could use this knowledge to stop beavers from gamming

inside culverts and flooding nearby rose

he spoke to a supervisor Shelby am

the technique was a bit odd but it made sense to us so let's try to go ahead and

do it because we can't travel constantly in the park we have to do something else

so that's what we did

McLaren's idea was to shift the sound of the running water

he puts in posts 15 feet away from the culvert the Beavers obliged by building

their damn in the new location

not under the road

he also lays down sections of pipe and the Beavers incorporate them into the

damn i going to open that pipe over there to the water water when the water

gets a little high

Michel simply pulls the plug for a short time and lowers the level in the pond

ok

you have to be a plumber yeah I'm a plumber of the beaver dam i put drink

like you do I can house to the garage door water running

if its work here is gonna work all over the place so we are just at the turning

point where we have to spread that knowledge and the bigger they are p cost

last less work and everybody's happy that way

in the Rocky Mountains the benefits of a Beaver's pond are seen most easily in

spring millions of acres of wetlands provide safety and food for many birds

and mammals a thousand years ago almost every creak would have had chains of

dams down each valley

for many animals they are still essential

moose make special trips to beaver ponds to eat the water weed

it's full of nutrients like sodium and potassium that are often scarce in the

surrounding forest

for the Beavers the pond helps to keep out bears and wolves

one of the parents tail slaps to sound the alarm

the beaver family provides protection for all the residents like a kindly

landlord and the deeper the pond

the safer they are

and

even good swimmers such as Grizzlies are out of their depth beavers excavate deed

channels as escape routes they can stay under hidden for 15 minutes

secret entrances and exits are the only way in and out of their fortified lodge

inside safe are the young called kits

it's May and they are a few weeks old and supplementing the richest milk of

any land mammal with fresh green leaves

unlike most rodents beavers take years to grow up

there's a lot to learn to become nature's greatest engineer

they'll receive toilet training to using one of the underwater doors

the one year olds help in the nursery by washing the bedding outside is a

two-year-old

he's like a teenage apprentice getting the final lessons before leaving home

his father is demonstrating some basic repairs but even when the lodge and damn

are watertight

there are major job still to do as spring progresses the nearby trees are

felled one by one

it is the beginning of the creation of a broad meadow rich with silt

new pods are created and canals Doug to reach the more distant trees

channels wide enough for branches may reach out hundreds of yards from the

original river families may end up with over a dozen dams and an intricate maze

of waterways by the nineteen nineties scientists began to investigate the

wider effects beavers were having on the landscape

dr. Glennis hood has made them her lights work

she lives on the edge of shelter island national park in Alberta a hundred and

fifty years ago

the beavers here were all trapped and killed for the fur trade

they were reintroduced in 1941 seven rivers were brought up from about by

train and put into the park and the beaver population was able to

re-establish itself the park kept meticulous records

I had these great old maps that the wardens have done by hand marking down

the active and inactive sites of beaver ponds as she traveled through 54 years

of data a pattern emerged

it was assumed beavers built their homes where there was already lots of water

and their presence wouldn't actually increase the total amount of water by

much

what we found was the opposite

and this is when science gets really exciting is when you're proven wrong

the unexpected results are the ones that make you take a second look and I we

calculated everything just to make sure I wasn't making a numerical error

because the results they were spectacular

the ponds with active beaver in them had nine times more open water in them than

those exact same ponds when the Beavers weren't there

how they did that in part was they were digging these channels the bottom of a

beaver pond is really really convoluted like flying through the Grand Canyon

where you've got these deep world valleys and dynamic on bottoms deeper

pause keep more water because you have less evaporation coming off of them

well beavers were using that to their advantage there digging deeper and

deeper and allowing water to focus in here so the plans with fever had water

the plants without beaver didn't

plain and simple in 2002 we had the worst drought on record