In this story we speak with Mike Potter in Pickering, a market town in North Yorkshire which was flooded four times in eight years between 1999 and 2007. The final flood caused an estimated £7 million in damages. The town is located at the bottom of a steep gorge which drains much of the North York Moors, so when it came to building concrete wall defences in 2007, the cost was estimated to be around £20 million, which the authorities could not justify by the size of population to be protected from flooding. There were calls for proposals for alternative means of addressing the flood risk in Pickering, and the result was a partnership between academics, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, and local residents – one of whom was Mike. He was instrumental in developing what is now known as the “Slow the Flow” scheme, which combined an engineered dam with Natural Flood Management (NFM). We went to Pickering to speak with Mike about how NFM could be a cost-effective mitigation for flooding nationwide, and how introducing beavers into the upper catchment of rivers can help slow the flow of water while improving biodiversity. He also stresses how regardless of flood defences, climate change could lead to unmanageable flood risks.