The largest rodent in North America, the beaver is nothing if not a force of nature, a critter constantly at work and brilliantly adapted for its aquatic environment. With orange teeth, a flat, paddle-shaped tail and an insatiable desire for cutting trees and building dams, beavers are, as one biologist put it, equally fascinating and frustrating. An old saying: A beaver in the right place is an ideal conservationist; a beaver in the wrong place is a nuisance.
So begins a glossy new article in the Star Tribune which is in equal parts a review of Ben’s book and a review of beavers themselves. “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll tear your hair” – kind of thing.
Appreciating the place of the beaver, which fascinates and frustrates
“Beavers are the most important natural resource in our country’s history, and I don’t think that’s well-known or appreciated enough,” said Ben Goldfarb, author of the book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”
“Beavers are intimately intertwined with American history and most important historical events before the Civil War were motivated to secure more land to trap beavers. So we have the Fur Trade as this great historic event, and we also have this great ecological event that is still playing out today. How do we balance the enormous good beavers do environmentally with some of the problems they cause?”
You can just tell the author of this article is bracing himself for all the nice things he has to say about beavers. Either it’s against his grain or he is worried it will be against the readers grain. Either way I’m sure there are definitely grains involved.
Steve Windels is a wildlife biologist at Voyageurs National Park, headquartered in International Falls. He is one of several scientists who have conducted beaver research at the 218,000-acre park. Roughly 50 research papers have been produced since research began there in 1983. Windels said the cumulative research shows Voyageurs might contain the highest density of beavers in the United States.
“They’re a keystone species … and their removal can result in a cascade of changes for other species in the system,” Windels said.
Indeed, Windels said beaver research at the park suggests that at least 124 bird species, mammals, reptiles and amphibians use “beaver-created wetlands,” — or about 38 percent of the park’s inhabitants.
Did you get that? 38% depend on beaver! And the other 62 percent just drink the water. Pay attention, here comes the money shot.
Beaver coexistence
Goldfarb said the federal government in 2017 killed 23,646 “problem” beavers. He said beavers are blamed for far too many problems and would like to see more nonlethal strategies for dealing with so-called nuisance beavers. “If I learned one thing from researching my book, it can be done,” he said. “Beavers don’t have a lot advocates, but they furnish us with numerous ecosystem services that support a vast menagerie. Do some beavers cause such problems that they need to be dealt with? Yes. But I think we’ve gone overboard.”
Well said Ben. It’s true that beavers don’t have a lot of advocates, but the ones they DO have are AWESOME. Coming soon to a book store near you.
