Whenever we ask the question, “What if every time we built something, the world got better?” — my mind jumps to beavers.
Beavers often catch the imagination of people interested in regenerative design because they show how one species, while meeting its own needs, can have a disproportionately positive impact on their environment.
In the UK, beavers were hunted to extinction, but where they are reintroduced they are creating stacked, multiple benefits in their ecosystems. To protect their homes — or lodges — beavers dam rivers to raise the water level, creating a defensive moat. To build these dams, beavers fell trees, remove their branches, drag them into the riverbed and hold them down with mud and stones. Incredibly, where the trees are too far away for them to be moved, beavers have been seen to dig a canal which they then use to float their materials to site.
Where beavers build their dams, aquatic and invertebrate life goes up. The flow of water is slowed and downstream flooding is reduced. The land around beaver dams stays wetter, which increases the amount of carbon dioxide it can sequester. In droughts you can see from the air where beavers are active — these are the places that stay greener for longer.
Beavers are examples of what ecologists call a keystone species — leading to a massively positive impact on their ecosystems.
It is ironic that where once we hunted them to extinction, we are now inviting them back to manage our flood defences and increase the resilience of our living systems. I wonder who they’ll invoice?
This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.