Tarter Source

Smokey the Bear has served as the nation’s camp conscience since 1944 while Woodsy Owl has been urging folks to give a hoot for decades. But maybe it’s time for another forest creature to guide us.

Having just read Beaverland by Leila Philip, I nominate Beaver Sam to become the voice of reason when it comes to the nation’s wetlands.

Before crediting beaver believers like Philip and Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager, I must mention Clare Howard, who wrote In the Spirit of Wetlands, a book published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022 with photographs by David Zalaznik.

Having worked alongside Howard at the Peoria Journal Star, I took her environmental concern for granted. I failed to understand the benefit of wetlands, even taking the medieval approach to the subject.

“For hundreds of years, people generally thought of swamps, bogs, marshes and moors as unproductive land—even menacing and foreboding land,” stated Howard. But wetlands serve a number of benefits. They help filter fertilizers and pesticides from the soil. They can help prevent rivers from flooding. They also serve as sanctuaries for wildlife and they store carbon.

And guess which animal helps maintain those wetlands? Nature’s environmental engineer, the beaver, that’s who.

By doing what they do, felling trees, making dams, creating ponds and swampy areas, beavers transform their environment, making it possible for other types of plants and animals to prosper.

Both humans and beavers “are wildly creative tool users who settle near water, share a fondness for elaborate infrastructure and favor fertile valley bottoms carved by low-gradient rivers,” noted Goldfarb, who added this in his book:

“Thanks in part to beavers, ours was a watery country, a matrix of ponds and swamps, marshes and wetlands, damp mountain meadows and tangled bottomlands. But the same luscious fur that made beavers so well adapted for this aquatic world would soon prove their downfall—and the undoing of the ecosystems they helped create.”

Beaver fur not only lined hats, fashionable chapeaux bearing names like Regent and Wellington, but blankets, coats and other garments, sought after not only in Europe, China and points around the world.

Tycoon John Jacob Astor created a trade empire on the backs of beavers, noted Philip, who also pointed out the struggle Native Americans had when it came to the beaver. “Why some indigenous peoples participated in the fur trade is complicated,” she said.

One has to remember, said Philip, what came with the fur trade: war, disease and new technology with a growing European presence in the New World.

One thing is clear: the number of beavers in this country was dramatically reduced between 1600 and 1900. Estimates are that 60 to 400 million beavers were living in North America prior to 1600. Less than 1 percent of that number remain but Philip calls the beaver’s story a positive one.

Efforts are now being taken to insure that the beaver’s role as a wetlands creator and water diverter are being supported. “We’re bringing beavers back. California is leading the country in free-thinking beaver policy, moving beavers where they can help in watershed restoration,” she said.

So take it, Beaver Sam, as we focus on problems of climate change, remind us why you’re so important.

Interview with Clare Howard (Peoria public radio):

https://www.wcbu.org/local-news/2022-07-05/peoria-duos-new-book-celebrates-wetlands

Interview with Leila Philip (Read Beat):

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1950812

Les Castors du Roi by Kent Monkman, 2011, Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

(“More than a beaver hunt, this scene alludes to the complex political, social and cultural histories of Turtle Island.”–New York Times)