The Solska Forest is burning. Could beavers have saved it?

The Solska Forest is burning. Hundreds of firefighters, helicopters and aircraft are taking part in the firefighting operation, and one of the pilots flying a firefighting plane was killed during the mission. This tragedy is serious enough not to turn it into an easy journalistic metaphor. Yet one question deserves to be asked out loud, because it keeps returning more and more often: Poland is drying out, so can we really afford to thoughtlessly eliminate everything that retains water? Beavers are not a miracle cure for drought. They will not replace sensible water management policy, changes in agricultural practices, or abandoning the paradigm of draining water from the landscape as quickly as possible. But they are one of the elements showing just how lost we have become in our thinking about water.

Fire, drought and a very uncomfortable question

The fire in the Solska Forest broke out on May 5, 2026, in the afternoon, near the village of Kozaki in Biłgoraj County. Initially, reports stated that the fire had spread across approximately 300 hectares. In the latest statement, the State Forests announced that the fire area is now estimated at around 750 hectares of land under their management and approximately 200 hectares of private forests. Firefighters, foresters, Dromader aircraft and firefighting helicopters are participating in the operation. Firefighting efforts began under extremely demanding conditions: strong winds, difficult terrain and dry forest litter. During the operation, tragedy struck when a firefighting aircraft crashed and the pilot was killed.

In such circumstances, it is difficult to write about the fire without caution. Not as a pretext for a striking thesis, but as an event revealing something more than the tragedy of one place. Because almost simultaneously with reports about the fire, the issue of beavers returned to public debate. A few weeks earlier, the Józefów Forest District had applied to the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Lublin for permission to cull 35 beavers and dismantle seven beaver dams in the Dębowce and Kalina forest divisions. Ultimately, the culling did not take place, the application was withdrawn and the proceedings were discontinued.

And this is where we reach the heart of the matter. Not the question of whether beavers could have stopped the fire. Not a simple and convenient story suggesting that leaving a few dams intact would have saved a burning forest. Such a narrative would be too easy and therefore dishonest. The real issue is different: why, in a country increasingly affected by drought, do we still so often treat water retained in the landscape as a problem to be removed?

If forest litter has the moisture level of a sheet of paper, if successive hydrological bulletins report low water levels, if farmers are counting losses and cities are preparing for shortages, then every decision to dismantle beaver dams ceases to be merely a local administrative matter. It becomes part of a much larger puzzle. The same puzzle in which, for years, we straightened rivers, deepened drainage ditches, dried out land and taught nature that water should disappear from the landscape as quickly as possible.

Today, that system is responding with drought.

Drought is not caused only by lack of rain

Spring 2026 in Poland began with a clear deficit. As I wrote in Wodne Sprawy, the beginning of the hydrological year brought below-average precipitation, snow cover did not translate into a lasting increase in river flows, and by mid-April approximately 64 percent of gauging stations recorded low water levels. There were also 23 stations with flows below SNQ, the long-term average low flow threshold.

In a report published at the beginning of May, IMGW-PIB forecast further stabilization and an increasingly clear downward trend in river water levels. The institute also warned that the risk of hydrological drought would continue to grow and that forecast precipitation would not significantly improve the situation across the country.

Drought, in all its forms, is a consequence of insufficient rainfall, but not only that. It is also the result of the way we have organized the landscape. We straightened rivers, drained wetlands and accelerated runoff from fields and forests, treating it as order, progress and rational management. Today, the price of that approach is becoming increasingly visible: low flows, dried-out soils, disappearing small streams and forests that become ever more vulnerable to fire during rainless periods.

The most difficult change concerns agriculture

It is easy today to say: protect beavers. And it is true that in many places they should be protected far more wisely than they are now. But beavers will not carry the entire burden of drought adaptation for us. They will not replace soil retention, wetlands, buffer strips, mid-field tree belts, restoration of natural depressions or changes in the functioning of drainage systems.

The biggest and at the same time least popular change should concern agricultural land. If we continue primarily financing the consequences of drought while providing insufficient support for measures that reduce its scale, we will return to the same point every year. What is needed is a gradual shift in priorities: from compensation payments for drought losses toward incentives for retaining water.

This is not about punishing farmers. Farmers cannot be left alone with the costs of transformation, especially since for decades the system rewarded drainage and the maximum productive use of land. The point is for public funds to begin supporting concrete practices: maintaining buffer zones along waterways, restoring tree cover, slowing drainage ditch outflow, improving soil retention, protecting ponds and mid-field wetlands, and limiting surface runoff.

Water retained in a field, ditch, depression or wetland is not a loss. It is protection against increasingly long rainless periods.

Not every beaver dam must remain. But every dam serves a function

In Polish practice, the question too often asked is: does the dam obstruct drainage? The question should instead be: what will we lose if we remove it? Will we lower the local water table? Will we accelerate runoff? Will we eliminate a flooded area that fed shallow groundwater? Will we expose habitats to drying out? Is removing the dam truly necessary, or merely convenient?

This is not about banning all intervention. There are places where infrastructure, buildings, roads, levees, culverts or genuinely used land must be protected. There are also intermediate solutions: stabilizing water levels, protecting trees, relocating conflict zones away from infrastructure instead of eliminating entire habitats. But in a country facing growing drought, dismantling beaver dams cannot be a thoughtless process.

Posts by experts and activists, including examples recently cited from the Olszanica River, reveal yet another problem: deep distrust toward administrative practice. If decisions authorizing dam removal are issued broadly while oversight of their implementation remains weak, the impression emerges that the state writes water retention strategies with one hand while removing water from the landscape with the other. Such an impression is deeply damaging to the credibility of Poland’s water policy.

Could more beaver dams have saved the Solska Forest?

We do not know. And we will probably never hear a direct answer to that question. What we do know is more important: wetter and more diverse landscapes, with wetlands, floodplains, slower runoff and higher shallow groundwater levels, are less vulnerable to drought than drained, simplified and dried-out landscapes. We also know that beavers can create local retention conditions faster and more cheaply than people who spend years waiting for documentation, permits and funding.

The Solska Forest is burning in a country that has spoken about retention for years, yet still too often operates according to the old protocol: clear, unblock, drain away. That system must change. Not because beavers are likable animals, but because hydrology is unforgiving.

If we do not begin retaining water on agricultural land, in forests, ditches, wetlands and small catchments, we will increasingly hold similar discussions during future fires, hydrological droughts and reports of losses. Beavers can help many small ecosystems. They can support retention where humans have weakened it for decades. But their activity will not replace the effects of the decision Poland still avoids making: that water should remain where it falls instead of disappearing from the landscape as quickly as possible.

Today we need not only more retention, but also more careful discussion about it. National media, activists, public administration and experts all have the right to ask difficult questions, but they should not replace analysis with simplistic accusations. The case involving beavers in the Józefów Forest District deserves attention not only in the context of the Solska Forest fire, but because it exposes a much broader problem: the lack of coherent thinking about water, drought, agriculture, forests and local conflicts. If we want to act effectively, we must see the entire system, not just the fragment that fits most easily into a headline.

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main photo: mł. asp. Krzysztof Pisz/Państwowa Straż Pożarna