Making space for beaver activity
Beavers feel at home in a forested stream valley. They are water engineers who shape the water cycle to their will. With beaver dams and gnawed trees in the stream, they create delays, backwater and water storage. In nature reserves where there is space for the dynamics of the water, the activities of this engineer are very welcome and help prevent flooding downstream. The stream bed is also better protected.
Natural solutions
- Developing natural grasslands
- Developing natural forests
- Food forest
- Making space for beaver activity
- Making room for natural floodplains
- Making room for meandering
- Raising the stream bed
- Lowering banks
- Removing drainage systems
- Planting scrub hedges and copses
- Standard orchard
- Wide infiltration strip
- Grafts
- Swales
- Keylines
- Converting (maize) fields on slopes into grassland or woodland
- Wadi
- Intercepting runoff on (sunken) roads