Okay, hear me out, I was just looking at pictures of beavers and thought to myself, what if someone used a beaver dam for hydropower? I mean my first thought is of course that wouldn't work...unless? I mean I know nothing about dam construction or hydropower, so I can't actually disprove this to myself. Why wouldn't this work? Or could it?
Usually beaver dams are designed to disperse water more broadly into a landscape, turning a stream into a wetland. Humans often do the opposite, digging a trench to turn a marsh or swamp into a stream, and then sometimes damming that stream into a lake or reservoir.