Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, by Leila Philip (2022)

As Sy Montgomery, author of ‘The Soul of an Octopus’ commented in her review of this book, ‘Beaverland’ is a “lyrically written, meticulously observed, and exhaustively researched” account of the American Beaver (Castor canadensis). Philip’s book begins with a prologue that recounts the Algonquian “deep time story of Ktsi Amiskw, Great Beaver” from a time when “men were as animals and the animals as men”. Although the book touches on the history, ecological role, human-related conflicts, and conservation status of beavers throughout North America, its geographical focus is New England, specifically the small community of Woodstock, Connecticut, where the author lives. The book’s early chapters center on the fur trade. Philips spends time in the field with a local trapper and ventures into his private domain, the “shack” where he skins the beavers and processes their pelts. She recounts conversations with everyone she meets during an annual spring fur sale held in Herkimer, New York, and takes us along on a road trip through Michigan as she attempts to relocate a large beaver dam photographed by a naturalist, Lewis Henry Morgan, in the 1860s.  Philips addresses the cultural importance of the beaver to Indigenous peoples and the devastation caused by colonization, including the fur trade, on Native Americans. Later chapters focus on the beaver’s role as a keystone species – explaining how beavers work together, industriously, collectively, to slow the flow of water through a watershed, in the process, enhancing habitat complexity and species biodiversity, and reducing soil erosion and discharge of sediment to downstream areas. Philips visits several wetland restoration sites where beaver establishment and survival are being encouraged and measures to mitigate their adverse effects (e.g., loss of productive land due to flooding) have been incorporated successfully. For those interested in further details, there is an epilogue documenting the “story of the book”, as well as a comprehensive list of sources.

Reviewed by Pat Miller