I watched some documentary about an attempt to restore wetlands from a previously drained agricultural area that had been put into conservation.
the restoration project process was being frustrated by beavers, who kept building dams in old weirs and channels that would potentially cause catastrophic flooding if some old berms gave way when too much water was held back. there wasn't enough money to make the huge changes to the earthworks necessary to diffuse the danger of catastrophe, nor was there enough labor to clear the beaver dams faster than the beavers could rebuild them.
so basically they had to figure out a behavioral way to get the beavers to want to build their dams where it would help the larger project, which ended up being through the use of speakers playing the sound of running water near where they wanted the beavers to build.
once they realized that, the conservation efforts rapidly converted the area back to wetlands at almost no cost by working with the beaver instincts and finding a common ground.
rodent STRONG
