Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. An eight-page photographic insert further brings beavers and their world to life.įilled with hard facts and fascinating people (and animals), this is an authoritative, vigorous call for understanding and action.Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence. It’s vital, he writes, that we learn to coexist with these ecosystem engineers because they can help restore our rivers, forestall the loss of biodiversity, and reduce the damages of climate change. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon runs, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.” The author consistently convinces readers of the truth of this assessment.
Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Beavers, he writes in his introduction, “are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. To research this book, Goldfarb traveled widely with scientists, activists, naturalists, wildlife managers, engineers, cattle ranchers, and beaver rescuers and re-locaters, and he shares his findings in lucid and entertaining prose. While the focus is on North American beavers, the author also offers a brief look at a sister species in Great Britain and conservation efforts there.
As he reports, the disappearance of beavers altered the landscape dramatically, drying up wetlands, killing off species, fostering erosion, and changing the courses of streams. Goldfarb, a freelance environmental journalist with a master’s degree in environmental management, takes readers from the days of the fur trade, which drew trappers and then settlers across the continent and saw beavers killed by the millions, to current conservation efforts. Unlike a children’s book that makes beavers seem like cute little dam builders, this one takes a serious look at the creatures and their critical importance to ecosystems across North America.
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