I'm John Batchel with the author and professor Lila Philip.

Her book is Beaverland, the one we're discussing now, a one weird rodent made America.

And once you meet beavers in storytelling, they never leave.

But this is a story from right now.

Lila, I boasted that I was speaking to you to a good

colleague of mine of CBS News, Jeff McCausen, who knows the Gettysburg Battlefield well. He gives

tours there to his colleagues. These are all veteran soldiers who, you know, from their wars,

want to go back to 1863.

One of the most famous places on Gettysburg is Little Roundtop, held by a combination of

regiments during that second day of Gettysburg.

At the bottom of Little Roundtop is something called Plum Stream or Plum Creek.

It was small enough, Jeff tells me, to step across.

It never, nobody ever thought about it.

Arrives a family of beavers, okay?

Uh-oh.

So now, not only can you not step across it, it's no longer a creek at all.

It's a pond built by beavers. However, the park is now

managed by a park ranger who is also a biologist, a botanist and a biologist. And the park ranger

boss has ruled, leave the beavers alone. She says this is nature at work and we're not going to deport the beavers.

There's beavers in real life. Now you tell me, you've been dealing with other river systems that

want beavers also want to leave them alone, but they want them to be useful in restoring rivers.

Is that correct?

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