WORCESTER – If someone were to name the animal that built America, you would probably think of some type of domesticated animal like a horse or maybe a cow – one as a beast of burden during construction, the other as an important economic animal.
You wouldn’t imagine beavers. But that’s what they are – the animals that literally and economically built America.
“They shaped our country’s environment and started capitalism on this continent,” said Leila Philip, a professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, who also teaches in the Environmental Studies Program, and author of “Beaverland: How One Weird. Rodent Made America ,” which went on sale earlier this month.
North America’s watersheds and geology were both affected by beavers for millennia and the demand for beaver pelts created a transatlantic industry. However, the fur trade, which killed millions of animals, “severely damaged the water condition of the continent and weakened the river system – North America was once a beaverland.”
Philip has spent the last six years studying beavers and their influence on our country’s history and how they can help us in the future by mitigating the effects of climate change. In “Beaverland,” he explains why we need beavers, dispels the myths about them and how to use them in natural solutions for climate resilience.
Philip’s most important takeaway was that although he realized that not only beavers have shaped the continent, “they have a new role to play in helping us deal with the biggest problem of our generation – climate change.”
‘The best comeback story ever’
He calls beavers “a great comeback story” after being nearly wiped out by the fur trade. The fur was “the Gore-Tex of its time – shiny and thick and a postage stamp-sized piece with more hair than a human head.” Fur is durable, waterproof and made famous by George Washington’s tricolor beaver hat.
“We need to think of them as millions of highly trained engineers,” he said, “they can bring water, they can prevent droughts, fires and floods.” In a nation where billions of dollars are spent each year to deal with floods, heat and drought, beavers can be used to reduce these disasters. “It’s a low-tech restoration or a nature-based restoration or a natural climate adaptation plan,” said Philip, adding that the value brought by beavers has been documented and in some cases even quantified.
“They’re a keystone species for a reason,” Philip said, as beaver wetlands have one-third the biodiversity of wetlands without beavers, according to studies. He cites a 2009 study that showed that beaver wetlands hold nine times more water than non-beaver wetlands. A 2021 study of river basins found in the Milwaukee River watershed, calculated that 5,473 beavers in 900 square miles of uninhabited areas could store 1.7 trillion liters of water, annually translating to a value of $3.3 billion.
But how can an animal just over 3 feet tall manage to make such a change? When beavers move into a creek or stream, they create a dam, causing the water to swell. Soon the creek or stream becomes a series of pools, “looking like beads on a chain if seen from above,” Philip said. Beavers will then dig canals out of the ponds so they can get in and out of the nearby woods. When there are storms, water spreads to the ground through the channels and has time to settle and sink into the aquifer as a reservoir.
Around the ponds form a swamp that acts like a large sponge, holding water during droughts and absorbing water during floods. The pond not only holds but also cleans the water of pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.
Conflicts arise when humans expect the river system to behave as it is used to – staying in a channel with defined edges and flowing in one direction – but this is a damaged state of the ecosystem of the water state, Philip explained, as it is. not fulfilling the role of the natural hydraulic system.
“Beavers can be pests in some cases,” he admitted, as infrastructure can be damaged by flooding due to dams suddenly appearing downstream. Although residential construction cannot be moved, there are a number of places where water can be allowed to move naturally such as recreational areas. People may be used to seeing a hiking trail somewhere and can learn to tolerate seeing that hiking trail flooded from time to time.
Philip said, “At my land trust, they often break dams because they want a certain way to be dry. We need to give up some level of control that we’re used to – let the beavers do what they do best.” Usually, one cannot have beaver flood roads and rails, where beaver decoys or dam ladders can be used. There are organizations dedicated to providing education and services on non-lethal methods of controlling beavers.
Dispel the myth about beavers
In the book, Philip argues for dispelling common misconceptions about beavers that often lead to their removal: They don’t feed on trees but they need those to build their dams; they don’t eat trees aggressively but they chew them to prevent their growing teeth on the ground; they don’t heat up the water and harm the fish (in fact, beaver ponds increase salmon populations by creating deep, cold pools for trout and salmon); they do not reproduce like rats but more slowly and stabilize their population. Like others, he believed the fact that they ate trees was the reason to remove them but they eat underwater plants and the bark below.
Beavers, according to him, are more important for us to help with climate change than as a pelt. “I still have a lot of respect for the hunters,” he added, who have used their skills to do conservation work. If a beaver must be removed, he said, it should be done by a trapper who does it humanely and uses the pelt. and meat than someone killing it and throwing it away.
“Beaverland” is ultimately about climate change, which is a big subject, but Philip felt that “stories of hope and resilience will help us find our way into a shared future.” He emphasized that we are in an interesting time in terms of thinking about animal behavior – humans need to reset their relationship with the natural world but one needs guidance for that. “Beavers is a great lens through which to view not only American history but how we see the natural world and become better for it.”
