Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb (4 stars)

This is an excellent piece of non-fiction that has me convinced that we need the help of beavers to rescue North American ecology. I came to this book after listening to a fascinating interview with Ben by Chris Morgan on KUOW's podcast The Wild.

the geological mass we call North America might, as Frances Backhouse put it, more accurately be termed Beaverland

Ben Goldfarb tells the story of beavers using a cast of interesting characters and anecdotes that makes it very easy reading. I think the only downside of the novel is that I was fairly convinced about how important beavers are early on, and things started to feel a little repetitive by the end.

I find myself looking at streams and rivers in a whole new light: have they been eroded down to bedrock, do they meander? What do the banks look like. And I'm now super curious about every piece of possible beaver infrastructure I come across.

Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.

Here's to nature's hydrological engineers!

4 stars.