If you had to pick a single paper in the nation that features the most accurate beaver stories, you would be hard pressed to find one more engaging and reliable than the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont. They were the first ones to cover the lovely, intimate field notes of Patti Smith who went on to author the Beavers of Popples pond, and they are always quick on the draw to follow the important work of Skip Lisle.
Now they are fielding Ben Goldfarb’s book which talks about their 0wn homegrown hero.
Nature’s Carpenters
Resourceful rodents create entire ecosystems
GRAFTON — In the 1960s, if you lived in Vermont, you had to go to a zoo to see a beaver.
Not any more.
Author Ben Goldfarb, whose book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter” was published last month by Chelsea Green Press of White River Junction, was in Grafton Friday afternoon to meet up with one of the subjects of his book: Skip Lisle of Grafton and Beaver Deceivers International.
“We want beavers to keep creating wetlands,” said Lisle, who Goldfarb describes in his book as “the world’s foremost castorid conflict mediator.”
Translation: Lisle knows a lot about helping beavers co-exist with humans and avoiding fatal wildlife conflicts.
Lisle earned his place in Goldfarb’s book by inventing the anti-trap: a wire and wood device that he calls the ‘beaver deceiver’ that keeps road culverts free and flowing.
Lisle said when he was a kid, his parents took him to a New Hampshire wildlife zoo to see a beaver.
That certainly isn’t the case in 2018, as Lisle’s corner of Grafton has a thriving beaver community, and according to Lisle, all forms of wildlife are thriving thanks to the beavers.
The wetland was full of vibrant wildflowers, birds flitted from touch-me-not to touch-me-not, the concentric circles from rising fish dotted the wetland, and countless songbirds flitted constantly. Wood ducks, Canada geese and hooded mergansers also made the large pond home. Before the beavers, Lisle said, it was a field.
“Now it’s just teeming with life,” he said, to the plunking of wood frogs and a chorus of birdsong.
It’s Martinez hero and our old friend Skip Lisle! Hi Skip! And hey look Ben Goldfarb is right beside him! Wasnt he just here at the beaver festival? It’s amazing when you think about it how many beaver paths go through Martinez.
Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb visits Grafton resident Skip Lisle, a beaver expert, during a book tour for Goldfarb’s book “Eager” on Friday, July 20, 2018.
Lisle, a wildlife biologist by training, said he wishes flow devices would be accepted and put into use to save more beavers.
He said he built his first deceiver out of his father’s garden fencing.
He travels all over New England installing the ‘deceivers,” which are wire contraptions built around culverts or other drainage pipes and which prevent the beavers from damming the culverts. In essence, the ‘deceivers’ create permanent leaks in a beaver’s dam, allowing water to drain at a slow rate and thus avoid the ire of highway engineers and public works directors.
“He’s a pretty big figure in the beaver community,” Goldfarb said of Lisle.
Goldfarb, an environmental writer whose work has appeared in Mother Jones and Audubon Magazine, as well as High Country News, recently moved from Northhampton, Mass., to Spokane, Wash. He and Lisle acted like old friends. They share a devotion to the sleek, nocturnal mammal and its pivotal role in the environment. Goldfarb, like Lisle, is a ‘beaver believer.’
To Lisle and Goldfarb, it is nothing short of murder the practice in which some state highway departments and road foremen trap and kill beavers rather than find a way to co-exist and prevent damage to roads and other infrastructure.
Beavers have played an even more important role out West in creating wetlands and restoring some of the ecological balance, and co-existing with cattle grazing.
Goldfarb was on his way to Manchester for a book signing event at the Northshire Bookstore. He has traveled all over the United States and even to Scotland to research and write his book, which was commissioned by Chelsea Green.
Do you think a beaver book has ever made a bigger splash? Even though there was a flurry of press around Glynnis Hood’s book debut and Francis Backhouse still gets good coverage, I never saw anything like this sustained, cross country beaver benefits tour. I don’t even want to think about how depressed I’m going to be when this is over. Carpe Diem!
Beaver dams do pose flood risks, he said, but they are also “forces of flood mitigation.”
“I’ve been battling this for 25 years,” said Lisle, who said he has hopes that Goldfarb’s book will open people’s eyes to the importance of the beaver.
It’s wonderful to see Skip get ‘founding father’ status. He should. And it’s great to see yet another persuasive voice for Ben’s book. Aren’t you curious how it’s doing already in sales? Well, it’s off to a bang up start, that’s for sure. Ben’s book is headed to the Washington Post this weekend and booked locally for Terra Vera KPFA radio on friday. Where, as it turns out, I will also be serving in a minor role discussing the historical California conundrum. So far I don’t get the impression the host doesn’t seem to like me very much so I’m expecting to be mostly ignored, but who knows? 
Four hundred years after the beaver was hunted to extinction in the UK, two of the mammals have been reintroduced on government land in an English forest as part of a scheme to assess whether they could be a solution to flooding.
Turns out she had just finished reading Ben’s book and had loved every last word. She was glowing with beavers and even though I had made myself promise never to mention a future beaver festival until a full month had passed,, I decided to mention that if she was ever crazy enough to want to decorate a beaver festival again we would love to have her.
