Are you a “beaver believer”? You may become one, as you journey through “Beaverland — How One Weird Rodent Made America” (Twelve), as author Leila Philip leads you through the long history of this remarkable creature, its impact on the shaping of our environment, its recovery from near-extinction and the growing appreciation of its potential to mitigate some of the worst consequences of climate change.
Her saga begins at the beaver pond near her home in Woodstock, CT, where the author spent hours observing them rushing to repair breaches in their dam, and hearing the thump of their tails on the water’s surface to warn others of the author’s approach, and to warn the author to keep her distance. In large measure, her sadness at discovering they’d moved elsewhere prompted the years of research that lead her to write “Beaverland.”
The book’s title refers to the time that the forests of North America were being shaped by the activity of beavers, specifically the North American beaver, or Castor canadensis, for 11,000 years before the arrival of white settlers and the rise of the fur trade decimated the beaver population in America and Canada, radically altering the ecological balance in the process.
Before colonization, the author states that estimates of the beaver population in North America run as high as 400 million. Considered a keystone species, beavers shape their environment more than any other species except humans. For centuries, they went about their work unimpeded, busy as… well, you know, gnawing down trees at an incredibly rapid pace, building dams, creating ponds, building lodges, raising their young.
The engineering of their lodges is awe inspiring. Philip reveals that the largest known beaver dam spans over a half-mile, the largest known structure on Earth built by an animal. As time passed, the abandoned ponds dried up, meadows appeared and forests sprang up, and the decaying plant material enriched the soil and, as their food sources diminished, they moved on and repeated the cycle elsewhere.
Of course, all this damming and flooding, so vital to the retention of water, mitigation of catastrophic flooding, and the enrichment of the soil was not seen as a benefit to those new to these shores and eager to profit from exploiting the resources they found here. That mindset continues in large measure to this day; the author points out that in 2019, beaver activity was cited as the cause of an estimated half-million dollars in damage from flooding roads, train tracks, septic systems and farmland in Massachusetts alone.
But in the 17th and 18th centuries, Philip details that it was the value of the beaver’s fur that attracted the attention of the Colonists, followed by the large-scale trading and trapping operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company and John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, nearly driving the North American beaver to extinction. It’s easy to paint these companies as villains (in many ways they were), but what about the huge number of so-called civilized people who demanded hats and coats fashioned from beaver fur?
On a more optimistic note, Philip introduces us to the late Dorothy Richards, the “beaver lady” who had as many as 14 beavers living with her in upstate New York in the 1930s, and who established a beaver sanctuary that continues to this day. And we learn about a Washington State relocation project to help mitigate fire risk in coniferous forests, a project in Oregon to assist with the recovery of the salmon population, engineering studies of beaver dams that are leading to more effective flood control and water conservation practices, and much more.
So, will “Beaverland” make a “beaver believer” out of you? Regardless, you will never look at this amazing, resilient creature in quite the same way.
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