While the focus is on North American beavers, the author also offers a brief look at a sister species in Great Britain and conservation efforts there. As he reports, the disappearance of beavers altered the landscape dramatically, drying up wetlands, killing off species, fostering erosion, and changing the courses of streams. 'Unlike a children’s book that makes beavers seem like cute little dam builders, this one takes a serious look at the creatures and their critical importance to ecosystems across North America. Goldfarb, a freelance environmental journalist with a master’s degree in environmental management, takes readers from the days of the fur trade, which drew trappers and then settlers across the continent and saw beavers killed by the millions, to current conservation efforts. Dear reader, prepare yourself to be awed by a rodent!” -Tom Wessels, author of Reading the Forested Landscape and Granite, Fire, and Fog

“There are a number of books that focus on a single species, but the amazing story of the beaver, as told by Ben Goldfarb, is in a class all its own.

Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet. Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”-including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens-recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers.

Eager by Ben Goldfarb