Three pensioners have been rescued from a forest in Russia's Kostroma region after beaver dams flooded a river and trapped them on an isolated patch of land.
The women had travelled into the woods to forage for mushrooms, but found themselves cut off from the bank when the water levels rose around them.
The incident occurred in the Sharyinsky district, a forested area in the western part of the country. A search operation began when the three women failed to return home by the evening.
Volunteers from LizaAlert said they managed to establish telephone contact with one of the missing women. They learned that all three pensioners were alive, had remained together, and had successfully lit a campfire for warmth. The women told the search team they thought they were stranded on an island in the middle of a swamp.
LizaAlert is a widespread volunteer search and rescue organisation in Russia. The group regularly coordinates large teams of citizens to locate missing people, frequently conducting operations in the dense and often hazardous forests that cover much of the country.
River dammed by beavers
Emergency workers and volunteers travelled to the coordinates and discovered the three women waiting on a small island in the floodplain of a forest river. The search team noted that the river had been heavily dammed by beavers, creating the sudden flooding that trapped the foragers.
Beavers naturally construct dams across waterways using logs, branches and mud. These structures create deep ponds that protect the animals from predators, but they can also cause streams to break their banks and flood large expanses of surrounding land.
The rescue group said the three women were exhausted after a difficult ordeal. Despite their fatigue, the pensioners were able to walk out of the woodland themselves, supporting and helping each other along the way.
This rescue follows a similar recent incident in the Perm region of Russia, where a local woman spent a week surviving in a forest among swamps.
The search for that missing woman required a massive coordination of resources before she was brought to safety. More than 300 people participated in the operation, spending 200 hours searching and covering over one thousand kilometres of terrain.
