Hot Dam: Why beavers are Britain’s new climate heroes

**Ayesha Rascoe** (0:00)
I'm Ayesha Rascoe, and this is The Sunday Story, from Up First. Today, we're headed to London.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (0:10)
To a tube station underground.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
Platform three, the train now approaching is to Bepping. Please stand back from the platform edge.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (0:22)
This particular tube station is lined with sandbags, because for years, it had a big problem. Flooding.
Whenever it rained, the floor of the ticket office would fill with water. Now, the sandbags aren't really needed. The flooding problem has been solved by some newcomers who were determined to halt the water. To do it, they labored at dawn and dusk, and even put their children to work. One day this spring, NPR's Lauren Frayer decided she needed to meet these industrious problem solvers, so she crept up to the family's muddy doorstep.

**Lauren Frayer** (1:07)
So this is their house here?

**Elliot Newton** (1:09)
This is their home, yes.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (1:10)
With a local named Elliot Newton.

**Elliot Newton** (1:13)
So it might just look like a pile of sticks, but this is actually an incredibly complex architectural feature.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (1:21)
A pile of sticks. A strange creation, but completely normal for who Lauren had come to see.
Beavers.

**Elliot Newton** (1:30)
You can see the amazing wetland engineering that the Beavers have been doing. I think this is one of the most impressive dams that they've built. So it starts all the way over there at the back, and then it sort of meanders through this tree, snaking through it, and goes all the way off over to our right.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (1:44)
Today on The Sunday Story, Lauren reports on how Beavers in Britain are being put to work to stop flooding from climate change, and how scientists brought them back from extinction to do just that.

**Pete Creech** (1:58)
We haven't seen this in the UK for 400 years. This is a Beaver creative weapon.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (2:05)
Stay with us.

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**Ayesha Rascoe** (3:17)
We're back with The Sunday Story and NPR's Lauren Frayer talking beavers in Britain. So Lauren, welcome.

**Lauren Frayer** (3:26)
Thanks for having me, Ayesha.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (3:28)
Before we get to all of the beavers and what they're doing in Britain right now, I know this might sound silly, but what exactly is a beaver? I know they got the buck teeth and the tails. That's what I know them for.

**Lauren Frayer** (3:44)
Beavers are rodents. Yeah, they are semi-aquatic rodents. Actually, the second largest rodent in the world, if you know your rodents, second largest after capybaras. I had to look that one up. But you're right, they have big buck teeth, these tiny little hands, webbed back feet, and these big flat tails that they use to swim, splash, and critically build dams.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (4:08)
They are pretty cute. Like I will say, they're adorable animals.
Why did they disappear in the first place? Britain seems like it would be like a really ideal environment for them because they have all that rain, and these are water creatures.

**Lauren Frayer** (4:26)
Yeah. I mean, the UK is a wet wonderland here for beavers, and it's getting wetter with climate change. But humans wanted their waterproof fur, wanted their meat, and trigger warning here, I hope you haven't just had lunch, this might gross you out.
Humans hunted beavers for their anal secretions, something called castorium. You know how dogs or other animals leave their scent places? Well, beavers do the same thing, and what they squirt out of their bums was actually used in medieval times in perfumes. It has this vanilla scent. The Romans even ate it as aspirin. They believed it had medicinal properties. By the early 20th century, humans had hunted beavers to extinction here. Only about 1200 beavers were left in Europe and Northern Asia.