Gnawing through red tape

NICK EICHER, HOST: A million-dollar project to dam a river in the Czech Republic hit a wall ... of the bureaucratic sort. Permits, environmental studies … all grinding progress to a halt.

But while officials haggled over every Latin phrase in the legal code, a team of engineers just got busy—Castor fiber, to be precise. That’s Latin for the Eurasian beaver. They needed no permits. No committees. No delays. Just results.

In the very spot where conservationists planned to build a wetland, the beavers just built one.

Maybe next time, public works ought to start with a pile of sticks, not a pile of paperwork.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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