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The author had a similar journey. She had a beaver pond near her house in Connecticut, and she used to go and watch the beavers. She had questions, and she set out looking for answers. Her search took her across the country. She read a long list of books, and interviewed a long list of people. She followed most of them out into the field, sometimes wearing rubber wading boots. The book goes into the paradisical, if messy, waterways that faced early trappers and settlers. North America ran fat with beaver, bear and moose; rivers ran silver with fish and were filled with fowl. Rivers were often not navigable due to snags and drowned trees, giant wood and beaver dams. (See 'Beyond Control' by James Barnett Jr.) But salmon and trout found their ways happily up and down, showing us how salmon developed the skill of leaping. We then get the disastrous tale of slaughter. I find this hard to read, but it's not the author's fault. The beaver underpelt was used to make hats. The climate was colder in those days, so men wore hats more in America, China and Europe, and the markets were served. I can see this book not being quite enough to win over the majority of cattle ranchers (if any would read this book in the first place), but it definitely won me over and made me hopeful that eventually we can all get to a place where we think more critically about how interconnected nature is and how attempting to just eradicate species can lead to some nasty unintended problems down the line. Leila Philip becomes interested in beavers when she discovers them living in a pond near her house in Connecticut and when they disappear she is alarmed and wants to find out what could have happened to them. This leads her down the rabbit hole of all things beavers. She never really finds out what happened to her beavers, but does find out a whole LOT about beavers and how helpful they are to the environment. This wasn't as bad as the other books mentioned above however, as it generally did stay on topic. The only issue I have is that I've read a book that did what Philip was attempting, but much better. "Eager" is another Nonfiction book on Beavers that Philips herself even references. In my opinion Ben Goldfarb did a MUCH better job in his book of having a more coherent focus on his writing in the book and telling a more interesting story overall when describing the essentialness of Beavers in the environment.
Anyway, I also learned how beneficial they are for the control of water--easing drought, easing flooding, building up the water table. IF they are in an area that has not been overgrazed and are allowed to build dams unimpeded. And there are lots of ways to somewhat control their dam building with flow devices to keep them from flooding things you don't want flooded. I really wanted to like this book, but I had to force myself to finish it. Yes, there were some interesting facts and people in the book, but it was pretty dry and not really an engaging read. I read Eager: the surprising, secret life of beavers and why they matter by Ben Goldfarb a few years ago and LOVED it. He really brought all the beaver information to life and showed just how important they are to the environment especially when it comes to water. Philip tried to do the same, but it just came across very dry and there were lots of chapters with her trekking around with trappers and scientists in the woods. I also felt like she spent WAY too long on trapping and I still couldn't really get a good read on why trappers want to trap instead of hunting. Hunting for food I can totally understand. Trapping for fur I don't and as much as I liked Herb, the trapper she followed, I still think it's a terrible practice. The book wasn't all bad - she had some good points and highlights, but overall it was dry and long and not nearly as engaging as Eager by Goldfarb. Yellowstone River, which they followed north and west' Actually it lies south of the Missouri. Wikipedia says they followed the Missouri to its headwaters and the continental divide at Lemhi pass, which suggests they ascended the Jefferson and then Braided from the Missouri - hard to get to from the Yellowstone. Of course, I'd longed to see a beaver from the time I was six, when our Dad read us "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". I was about that age when our Dad's younger brother, a game warden, came by with a beaver in a cage. I remember the strong smell and heavy fur, and our Uncle warning us not to put our fingers near the mesh lest the beaver bite us. Sometimes we saw beavers on the South Saskatchewan River or down at Gardner Dam. We found beaver dams in the little valleys that cut their way through the prairie. I rarely saw them. Usually, I just saw a V-shaped wake cutting through the water and, if I got too close, a loud splash. I didn’t need any more books to tell me how important beavers are to the ecology of this continent, but I enjoyed this one nonetheless.One of the things that I enjoy most in life is reading a book, and thinking, or most likely speaking aloud to myself, who can I give this to because I really want to talk about this book right now. Another thing I enjoy is just walking up to friends, family and companions and talking about fun things that I have learned from a book. Most people I know are used to it, and I hope kind of enjoy my enthusiasm. However I don't think people were prepared for all my discussions about dams, river purification, fur trapping, Indigenous lore, and John Jacob Astor and his what seems to me traitorous actions during the War of 1812. Nor all the facts that I was sharing about an animal I consider one of the most remarkable of creatures, the beaver. Leila Philip has in Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, written one of the most engaging, fascinating, fun, informative science and outdoor sports books that I have read in quite a while. the continent west of the Mississippi was still unexplored and uncharted territory and French' Actually Brits and French had explored and charted a lot, and Spanish (mostly in Mexico, but also up the west coast), and Russians in Alaska, and, most importantly, native peoples who had explored it all. The continent does not end at the latitudes that now define the USA. Goldfarb writes of the beaver's integration within the history of many parts of the world (most notably North America), reminding us that the pelt trade was an important one in its time, and fueled so much of our conquest of any slab of untamed forest and stream. As the book progresses, you learn of many, many attempts to re-incorporate beavers into failing landscapes & watersheds, the installation of artificial dams meant to simulate the presence of the animals, and the struggles through which honorable proponents of beaver-kind have to navigate to simply get a fair consideration of data proving that the animal is definitely more help than hurt, which brings me to the next point... This is an excellent popular science book about beavers, water, engineering, climate, biodiversity, and why we need beavers. Fascinating, nifty, easy to understand. Recommended."
The first few sections were a little more focused on people than I would have liked. No offense to anyone depicted it's just that I was more interested in knowing more about the animal and its doings. The high point was the chapter on the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and how some of the environmental benefits attributed to them are actually the result of beaver activity. Lots of interesting examples and good bits of nature writing by the author.
Beaver dam and divert water, stomp water into the earth. When beaver are allowed to do what beaver do, we have mud bogs and artesian wells; we have diverted water and contained water, we have filled rivers and creeks which draw Life to themselves. Beavers were a significant force in shaping North American geomorphology before being largely hunted out, and could be again. "Guesstimates" of somewhere between 15 and 250 million beaver ponds! --before the European fur trade largely cleared them out. . Now as a forewarning, one cannot really look at the history of beaver in North America without looking at trapping. For me this is sad but true. Beaver were nearly decimated and the process of reintroducing began in the early twentieth century. In one attempt to reintroduce them to parts of Idaho they were parachuted from a plane. The most enjoyable book I've read this year! I had no opinion one way or another about beavers when I started this after an intriguing excerpt in The Sierra Club magazine, but by the halfway mark I was ready to join the ranks of Beaver Believers.
The writing is really beautiful. Warm, friendly, informative and endlessly fascinating. Philip can writer about her mother's health, fur auctions, walking through wetlands, the make-up of a beaver's tail, and corporations that work on flooding conditions with the ideas that beavers bring to their dam development. Philip never loses the narrative, nor puts too much information in that slows things down or overwhelms the reader. That is a rare gift. Readers can feel that this is an important subject for Philip and one she wants to get right, and share to the most people. She makes the reader care about every character from her dog, to trappers, scientists, and engineers. And of course the animals, who are so interesting, and so important. p.166-7 - 'Beaverland...when 60-400 million beaver lived in North America...today...estimate is something like 6 million, less than .05%' Actually, 6/(60 to 400) = 1.5 to 10%
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On top of all that, Ben is a really engaging writer. Entertaining, fresh, and always ready with a turn of phrase or apt vocabulary choice (several times sending me to a digital dictionary). When I talked to Ben over the course of writing this book, he often talked about how he had become a "Beaver Believer"--someone who thinks that the mass eradication of beavers from the American landscape had a profound effect on the bodies of water where they used to live. In fact, the iconic rivers and streams that we see in glorious vistas and photographs? Most of those "should" actually be much slower-flowing, ponded, and dammed, thereby providing habitat for the numerous wildlife species (amphibians, reptiles, fish, mammals) that used to depend on them.
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