Alan Gofinski

High five!

Scooping out trash by the huge garbage bag full.

And eventually, someone very powerful joined in, too.

Hello, hello.

A congressman.

His name was Jose Serrano.

With a big, friendly smile and a bigger, bushy mustache.

who directed millions of dollars to the cleanup project, ordering in trucks with big cranes to fish out refrigerators and cars, and helping to change the rules over where factories could dump their toxic waste.

And soon, the river began to respond.

The water got cleaner, and the forest began to regrow around it, bringing in more bugs and birds, until...

a little creature popped its whiskered head out of the water.

Jose!

And so they named him Jose in honor of that congressman who'd been an early beaver that a little awkward human effort could make a big difference.

And the fact that Jose the beaver showed up in the Bronx River wasn't just a sign that the water was getting cleaner.

Because beavers clean the river too, just by being there and being beavers.

See, there's a hidden power to beaver dams.

they actually make everything around them healthier.

So first, there's the water.

The dams act like purifiers that filter out pollution like trash and even chemicals from agriculture, which get trapped in the dam and drop down into the soil instead of getting carried out to sea.

Second, dams cool the air.