Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for decisive action against beavers, suggesting the industrious rodents are partly responsible for the severe flooding across the country.
The prime minister made the remarks on Saturday during a meeting with cabinet members and local officials at a crisis headquarters managing the flood response in the southwestern city of Glogow. Tusk called for quick action to tackle the disaster, urging municipalities to swiftly report their needs as well as to closely monitor the condition of dams still standing.
A sizable part of his speech, however, was dedicated to beavers, with Tusk suggesting the critters were partly to blame for the disaster and that action against their presence at man-made earthworks was needed.
“Sometimes, we must choose between our love for animals and the safety of cities, villages, and the integrity of dams,” Tusk stated, invoking the catastrophic 2010 floods and the alleged role beavers played in them. At the time, the Polish government accused the animals of causing great damage to levees.
“Within [the existing] rules, do everything you have to, I will defend these decisions. The dams are an absolute priority today,” Tusk stated, urging officials to take action against beavers. The prime minister promised to deliver any legislation needed “within a week” should the existing legal framework prove to be insufficient for flood prevention.
“I know that it will not help much with this flood, but it will certainly help with repairing the dams and controlling the situation in the future,” he said.
The catastrophic flood hit Poland as well as other Central European nations in mid-September amid heavy rainfall generated by Storm Boris. The flooding caused widespread destruction in the region, with multiple dams overspilling or rupturing. So far, over two dozen fatalities have been reported in the region, with the tally expected to grow further, since the flooding is still ongoing and the damage has not been fully accessed.
Beavers, as well as their smaller digging rodent counterparts, have been repeatedly blamed for floods worldwide. The animals are known for clogging man-made canals, digging tunnels through levees and weakening the earthworks from the inside. Environmentalists, however, believe such animals to be an important part of the ecosystem and actually prevent both floods and drought rather than cause them through regulating the downstream flows of rivers.
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