I discussed this book on my Youtube channel (just under 12k subscribers as of December 5, 2018). Please see link provided.

Magazine issue: Vol. 194, No. 3, August 4, 2018, p. 28

Eager
Ben Goldfarb
Chelsea Green Publishing, $24.95
Most people probably don’t think of beavers until one has chewed through the trunk of a favorite tree or dammed up a nearby creek and flooded a yard or nearby road. Beavers are pests, in this view, on par with other members of the order Rodentia. But a growing number of scientists and citizens are recognizing the merits of these animals, science writer Ben Goldfarb explains in his new book Eager. Beavers are industrious architects, key engineers of healthy ecosystems and a potential solution to a host of environmental problems.

Neither the American beaver, Castor canadensis, nor its Eurasian cousin, C. fiber, are endangered. But by the 20th century, both species had been wiped out from many parts of their ranges, Goldfarb writes. The animal’s luscious, thick fur — with up to 126,000 hairs per stamp-sized patch of skin — was prized by hatmakers. Hunters and trappers killed beavers by the hundreds and thousands for their valuable pelts. To picture the scope of the damage, consider the haul of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1875, its biggest pelt-trading year: The company took in more than 270,000 beaver furs, largely from Canada.

With this level of hunting, whole swaths of continents were left bereft of beavers and their buildings. Beaver dams are more than just stoppages for waterways. “The structures come in an almost limitless range of shapes and sizes, from speed bumps the length of a human stride to a half-mile-long dike, visible from space,” Goldfarb writes. The lodges, dams, burrows and other structures offer the animals shelter from predators and weather, as well as storage for food. And the structures turn fast, narrow streams into swamps, wetlands and marshes that host a wide range of wildlife, from fish to insects to birds. These aren’t classically pretty ecosystems, but they are incredibly diverse and provide benefits such as water storage and pollution control.

Restoring beavers to landscapes where they’ve been missing could help with many environmental problems, Goldfarb says. He describes how beavers can help landowners survive drought and flooding, and provide shelter for young salmon and other economically valuable fish. Beaver structures also trap pollutants and excess nutrients before they cause problems downstream, and perhaps even trap extra carbon in sediment and plants and thus help mitigate climate change.

Goldfarb backs up these benefits with a pile of scientific studies. Still, he notes, ranchers, farmers, politicians and others can be hard to convince: When beaver and landowner interests collide, some people are still more likely to grab their guns than call in a beaver control specialist (yes, they exist). In some localities, there are even conflicting policies, some promoting beaver restoration and others encouraging beaver eradication. But despite those challenges, conservation efforts have been successful, and beaver populations are on the rise in many places where the animals had nearly disappeared.

Goldfarb’s writing shines with beautiful language and colorful stories — like that time dozens of beavers were air-dropped into Idaho in one of the most successful beaver restoration projects in history. That tale and others make Eager an especially pleasant read. The mountains of evidence of beavers’ ecological benefits provided within the book’s pages just might make a “Beaver Believer” out of you.

The story of beavers is the story of water, and is also the story of trees. Here in Ireland I have just visited a restored mill pond and seen the healthiest, happiest aspen trees I've ever found; some trees flourish near standing water. I saw heron, duck of a few species, moorhen, small birds, dragonfly, and various water plants including bulrushes. I did not see any beaver, because we don't have any. This look at beavers mainly in North America, but also with a chapter on Scotland and Devon, explains the wider picture of how hydrology and geomorpology are affected by the eagerly working beaver. Where dams are, ponds form, and sediment is deposited, floods are contained and ground water is absorbed. Life flourishes.

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.

Rivers now eroded banks, dams rotted or were removed, silt was carried downstream, land and aquifers dried out and gullies were incised. We see the decline of habitat and of the creatures dependent on it. No coincidence that forest fires became more frequent and the continent warmed. The author tells us that ecology is a new science. Darn right. While at school we were visited by a gentleman trying to sell us girls on places at Trinity College. I said "I want to study ecology." He said "We don't have any courses in ecology." Nor did anywhere else. So I went out and became a working tree surgeon.

The next chapters are more cheerful as we look at the people working to restore beavers, famously in Yellowstone where along with reintroduced wolves (which ate elk that ate trees) they restored habitat. Where beavers collide with people, towns or cattle, advocates have to work harder, coming up with beaver baffling pipe guards and culvert clearers. Cattle wreck stream banks and eat trees and forbs that hold soil together, so banks had to be fenced off before beavers could return. But when they did, right away the land started ponding and soaking in more water, so in drought summers the cattle didn't need water fetched, there was plenty.

This book touches on the same points as 'Once They Were Hats', a history of beavers written by a Canadian, Frances Backhouse, even looking at the furs, though not for a whole chapter, and the look at beaver-related place names is here confined to California to confound a claim that western California didn't have beavers; it did, but they were trapped out by sailors before white settlers arrived across land. I found more emphasis on the people and the work of restoring habitat, and how beavers help us and wildlife. We read about many amphibians and fish enjoying beaver ponds and bank burrows within a year.

Technical terms such as rewilding, flow devices, sexual dimorphism, incised stream channels, hyporheic exchange (where water above ground percolates and mixes with subground water, in losing streams, some of the latter coming to the surface in gaining streams) are written in italics the first time they are mentioned, and well explained. Anyone with a little knowledge of nature can follow this book, it is so well written, with so many people interviewed to explain their points of view. You will be inclined to Google images - I Googled the devil's corkscrew, fossilised beaver burrows, and the Beaver Deceiver contraption. While this is not a scientific textbook it includes many studies and projects, from the early twentieth century to 2017, and will be a source of fascination and inspiration to ecologists.

Notes and references in my e-ARC P249 - 272. I found 104 names which I could be sure were female. My version does not have any photos (apart from an author photo) though it does have some beaver range maps.
We are told that the author holds a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The fact that he is an environmental journalist is probably a great assistance in presenting such a readable book.

As a librarian living and working in the Beaver State, I feel certain that our patrons will enjoy this extensive history of the native dam builder. Well-researched and presented in a reader-friendly narrative.

A detailed account of the beaver's key role in waterway ecology.
The beaver is an animal that most people, regardless of where they live in the world, know about. But how much do people actually know about this industrious little creature? This book is an eye-opening discussion on the crucial ecological importance beavers play. Misconceptions about these charismatic rodents mean they are frequently the object of misplaced animosity, and within these pages you will find the truth and how a change in perception would benefit the environment, and the humans who use or visit it.
The author's enthusiasm in championing beavers is obvious, but he presents his evidence without bullying you into thinking his way. Instead you are lead along a path (or perhaps a hiking trail?) where the scenery does all the talking and convincing.
Far from a dry read, this is often as much about connection and emotion as it is beavers. Although obviously targeted at a North American audience, anyone with an interest in ecology and/or beavers will find this an interesting read.

I love a book that explores underdogs and this does just that does beavers. Learning abut them was fascinating and the author did an excellent job researching and crafting his findings into an articulate and engaging nonfiction book.

A mesmerizing and thorough examination on why beavers are a true keystone species, as they are often overlooked, vilified, and sorely misunderstood.

Many animals have their inherent value, to be sure, but Goldfarb issues his proof that the ability for so many species to thrive hinge upon the ability of beavers to do what they do best, even if their efforts seem to produce nothing less than chaos and less-than-aesthetically-pleasing views of nature (I suppose that also depends on who's looking).

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...

If there's a hang-up for a reader in this book, it's around the middle where Goldfarb may seem to go in circles: He'll hang out with a conservationist/scientist/beaver enthusiast, you'll read of them restoring a habitat, the data will show some sort of improvement, and you'll be treated to at least some level of a conclusion. That happens several times, but please allow me to state that much of the frustration experienced by those who are pro-beaver must be the issuance of positive scientific results being met with sustained resistance against their cause; I imagine Goldfarb is doing his best to amass a most convincing stack of examples to help dispel as much doubt as he possibly can.

The passion for not just the co-existence but the full inclusion of beavers within our waterways is on prominent display here, and it's convincing, charming, logical, and so very worthy of your time. A super-fantastic read.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.