In 'Beaverland,' Leila Philip credits the beaver with building America

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Journalist Leila Philip first became interested in beavers when she saw a group of rodents building a pond near her house. Her fascination with what they were doing led her to research and report her new book, Beaverland, which takes a closer look at the animals' impact on North America, from the earliest transatlantic beaver fur trade to today's river restoration efforts. Philip spoke with NPR's Michel Martin about how learning their long history on our continent can highlight beavers' ongoing economic and environmental contributions, especially when it comes to water conservation.

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's book at the day. I'm Andrew Limba. Today's author makes a pretty
0:07.7	convincing argument that the humble beaver had a major role in the creation of America,
0:13.7	that we wouldn't be here today as a nation, if not for these weird little dudes chipping their
0:20.3	way through forests for centuries.
0:23.2	And before you beaver defenders come at me, I'm not the one calling them weird.
0:27.6	Journalist Lila Phillips New Book devoted to beavers is called Beaverland,
0:32.0	how one weird rodent made America.
0:34.6	And she talked to NPR's Michelle Martin, not just about how indebted
0:37.5	we are to beavers for our past, but also about how we have to look to them if we are to see a
0:42.9	viable future. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:49.3	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new new show, Sources and Methods. NPR
0:56.2	reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant
1:00.9	events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get
1:06.7	your podcasts. In the next few minutes, we're going to tell you about an animal that has played a bigger
1:13.5	role than any of us might have imagined in building this country. And I'm going to
1:17.5	describe it the way our next guest does. When they dive, they see more like marine mammals than
1:22.6	land animals, but their forepaws look surprisingly like ours with five fingers and a naked
1:27.4	palm. They groom their fur like cats, but their forepaws look surprisingly like ours with five fingers and a naked palm. They groom
1:29.0	their fur like cats, but their beauty ends in goose-like hind feet and ends with a tail that
1:34.8	looks like the result of a terrible accident. Yes, it's the beaver we're talking about. Before
1:39.7	colonists and fur traders arrived, beavers numbered in the hundreds of millions in North America. Their dams and canals created a system of wetlands we can hardly imagine today. They were nearly wiped out by fur traders, but they're slowly making a comeback, one that holds hope for us all, according to a new book. We learn all this in this book called Beaverland, how one weird rodent made America.
2:02.2	And it describes how important the beaver has been to our history and how it could help mitigate the worst aspects of climate change in the future.
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