Bringing Back the Beaver by Derek Gow
Bringing Back the Beaver is a short, passionate book describing the hunting to extinction of the beaver from British landscapes and the dogged attempts to reintroduce it.
Anecdotes keep the text vivid, and the language is down-to-earth and chatty.
In eight chapters ecologist and farmer Derek Gow covers the beaver fur and castoreum trade, how beavers replenish and reshape landscapes, wildlife reintroduction projects, beaver import, quarantine conditions, and the wily ways numerous projects - most projects - were scuppered by the government.
“We have created and continue to create in Britain through our own actions a landscape so utterly devoid of opportunity, so stripped of the life resource that even the tiny creatures can no longer exist.”
Though his message is serious, Gow is an affable, cheeky writer. Anecdotes keep the text vivid, and the language is down-to-earth and chatty. This is not a dry, academic read, and no prior knowledge or enthusiasm about beavers is required. I found the pages flying by, and my sympathy kindled.
The accounts of government drives to cull beavers who successfully mated in the wild are disheartening, as are the discoveries of illegally burned lodges and shot-ridden beaver carcasses. It seems preposterous that anglers, for example, manoeuvre against beavers because they fear the impact on their hobby, when the greater picture is that beavers will better Britain.
Bringing Back the Beaver is a quick read for those who enjoy nature-writing, but also for the urban reader who has little daily contact with the countryside and its wildlife; for the reader who has, perhaps, never seen a beaver in the wild.
Derek Gow is a farmer and nature conservationist who has reintroduced water voles, beavers, and the white stork to Britain. He is now working on reintroducing the wild cat.
Many thanks to Chelsea Green Publishing, Derek Gow, and NetGalley for my advanced reading copy.
On September 14, Chelsea Green Publishing and Beaver Trust hosted a panel discussion to mark the publication of Derek Gow’s book and to discuss the issues around reintroducing beavers to the British countryside. Not all panelists were on the same team, and their locking of horns is telling.
“We are the asteroid of destruction,” Gow says, as he urges less talk and more action from those with executive roles. “The problem is our own inertia.”
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