Poland’s Donald Tusk declares war on beavers

Step aside Jarosław Kaczyński, Donald Tusk has found a new arch enemy.
As Poland struggles under the weight of deadly flooding caused by heavy rains across Central Europe, the Polish prime minister blamed beavers for exacerbating the problems.
At a recent crisis team meeting Tusk raised the issue of dam and dike safety — which, he said, is being threatened by the furry animals.
Beavers create their own dams to make a comfortable home for their families while protecting themselves from predators — but, according to some researchers, with whom Tusk seems to agree, those dams can damage riverbanks, weaken levees through burrowing and cause a buildup of water.
“Sometimes you have to choose between love for animals and the safety of cities, villages and the stability of dikes,” Tusk said, adding that infrastructure must be defended from beavers and that the government will allow any action, within the law, against beavers to safeguard levees.
“Do whatever you have to do, I will defend these decisions. The dikes are an absolute priority today,” Tusk said.
Exceptional rainfall in September resulted in devastating floods across Central Europe. At least 16 people lost their lives as a result, with cities across the Czech Republic and Poland evacuated, roads closed and events cancelled.
The Polish government deployed the army to the areas most affected in scenes similar to previous catastrophic floods in 1997 and 2010. 
Andrzej Czech, an environmental biologist and beaver expert, said Tusk’s remarks are “nonsense” and the Warsaw government is using the beavers for “purely political” goals. “This was announced only to prove that the government has found an effective and quick scapegoat for the floods,” Czech told POLITICO.
Moreover, hunters and farmers are a powerful lobby within one of Tusk’s coalition partners, the agrarian-conservative Polish People’s Party (PSL), Czech said. “Farmers are usually against beavers because they sometimes flood fields and crops,” the biologist continued, adding that “only 2 percent of beaver sites” are problematic.
“Hunters are interested in improving their bad public image by being seen as rescuers and problem solvers, and they hope to get taxpayer money for shooting beavers, just as they did for shooting wild boars during African swine fever,” said Czech. “Common people will be happy that something has been done fast — and hunters will receive taxpayers’ money.”
However, the expert thinks a beaver hunt will lead to “mass destruction of habitats created by beavers, reduction of natural retention, violation of regulations and general anger. This is not the way to go.”
Czech suggested a simpler way to protect embankments from beavers: place a net around them. The expert admitted that it’s not a flashy solution, but it’s a lot cheaper than paying people to hunt beavers.
Ecologists have argued that beavers are not a contributor to natural disasters such as floods, wildfires and droughts — but a key part of the solution by facilitating healthy wetland systems which in turn sequester carbon and slow down river flows.
In the late 90s, beavers were on the verge of extinction in Europe. As a result, “beaver bombers” across Europe have taken to “beaver black ops”: illicit reintroduction efforts of the mammal to waterways, according to a report by Coda Story.
Back from the brink, there are now more than 1.2 million beavers across the continent, Rewilding Europe reported.
“Beavers work for free, they work weekends, they work round the clock increasing the groundwater and being a motor for biodiversity,” Gerhard Schwab, a wildlife manager based in Bavaria — known as the “Pablo Escobar of beavers,” due to his efforts to reintroduce beavers across Europe — told Coda Story.