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The John Batchelor Show

BEAVERS AWAKEN SPRINGTIME! 8/8: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, News, Society & Culture, Arts

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

BEAVERS AWAKEN SPRINGTIME! 8/8: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip

https://www.amazon.com/Beaverland-Weird-Rodent-Made-America/dp/153875519X

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

1866 Beaver Dam

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Bachelors, Professor Lila Philip, her book is Beaverland how one weird rodent made America.

0:10.0

Two huge rainstorms and then a hurricane named Ida.

0:14.0

We're now at an Edwin Wei Teel's sanctuary for he's a naturalist who's left us,

0:21.0

but behind is a sanctuary for all manner of creatures including beavers, and one day

0:27.2

the Beaver Dam that is constructed, a series of beaver dams, but the big one is breached and the floodwaters pour into the neighborhood.

0:35.8

And the phones start ringing.

0:38.1

And there is a solution and we call upon Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions and what is the solution

0:45.2

professor what does it look like when we don't have enough beavers and we have to

0:48.7

deal with climate change upon us? Well this is a really interesting example of where just the director of that

0:58.8

local Audubon, Sarah Hemenweh, was educated about beavers and she understood their value in

1:06.2

bringing water and biodiversity. She knew that particular spot in particular is a

1:11.6

migratory stopover for a lot of important migratory birds.

1:16.4

She also had been watching the water and so when people were calling up and saying you got

1:21.5

to kill the beavers because this is too

1:23.7

dangerous I mean it was dangerous nine million gallons of water came out of that

1:28.6

breached dam you know overnight the caretaker said it sounded like a train had gone through the

1:35.5

forest so this can happen and instead of trapping out the beaver and breaking the dam and taking the pond apart,

1:46.0

she called this company Beaver Solutions where they specialize in putting in what are called flow devices. So what they basically did, I watched them, they put a 40 foot pipe through the dam.

1:59.0

They've figured out that if they put this pipe 40 feet out, if the inlet is 40 feet from the dam,

2:06.0

the beavers don't stop, try to stop it up with sticks.

2:10.3

They put a cage around the end, so the beavers, even if no animals get in, etc.

2:15.8

They know exactly how to do this, so it works.

...

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