Bison, wolves, and the passenger pigeon are some of the better-known examples of animals that were virtually extirpated, but there was an equally lively trade in beaver pelts. To understand how we got to where we are, Goldfarb recounts the heydays of the American frontier times, when white settlers fanned out over the USA, killing, trapping, and hunting anything that moved.
If humans are now said to be a geological force to be reckoned with, birthing the term Anthropocene, our persecution of beavers led to the loss of another geological force.Įager mixes equal measures environmental history with reportage on ongoing conservation and wildlife reintroduction programmes. Shame on me, as environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb presents a serious, incisive book that shows just how important beavers and their dams are for biodiversity, ecosystem health, and hydrology. I cannot deny that the first thing that came to my mind upon seeing this book was Leslie Nielsen’s slightly smutty beaver joke in Naked Gun. And ultimately, it s about how we can learn to co-exist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travellers on this planet.
It s a powerful story about one of the world's most influential species, how North America was settled, the secret ways in which our landscapes have changed over the centuries and the measures we can take to mitigate drought, flooding, wildfire, biodiversity loss, and the ravages of climate change. Across the Western Hemisphere, a coalition of "beaver believers" – including scientists, government officials, and farmers have begun to recognize that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them, and to restore these industrious rodents to streams throughout North American and Europe.
In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that everything we think we know about what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is inaccurate a historical artefact produced by the removal of beavers from their former haunts.
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