The beaver provided pelts that became the basis of a
trading economy. Their sculpting and building abilities
changed landscapes and created habitats. But their
populations were severely threatened and are now
recovering. Frances Backhouse gets her hands wet in an
extraordinary account, ONCE THEY WERE HATS: IN SEARCH OF
THE MIGHTY BEAVER.
In the written accounts by David Thompson, who mapped a
sixth of the North American continent after his arrival in
1784, beavers were to be found on every body of water
except the Great Lakes, and the alligator swamps of
Florida. One dam he crossed was a mile long. Fur hunters
spent two hundred years killing beavers. By contrast, Jean
Thie researches landscapes using satellite images, and he
has dubbed a spot in Canada the Beaver Capital, a densely
populated network of dams, ponds and lodges visible from
space. He has also picked out the world's longest beaver
dam, in Alberta. Backhouse tells us how
she travelled to see these structures that were hidden in
densely forested, marshy lands, in National Parks or near
Native lands.
Place names containing the French or Spanish word castor,
the Cree word amik, or beaver are found in over 2,000
locations in America and Canada. Backhouse shows us the
first study of how beavers and their ancestors gnawed wood,
with chiselled tooth marks in a four-million-year old stick
in a Quebec museum. Beaver ancestors arose in North America
and like the early horse, crossed the Beringia landbridge
to Eurasia. They were present in Britain where their sticks
have turned up in Viking age wood, and Chaucer mentions a
beaver hat in the Canterbury Tales, but they were hunted
out by the 1700s. Paeleobiologists and hydrologists have
been tracing how they affected landscapes on both
continents.
Aspen trees respond to intense beaver cutting by producing
a chemical with a taste beavers dislike. Clearly beavers
have been cutting aspens for a long time. They hoard
sticks underwater for winter food, which with the warmly
built lodge enabled survival in prehistoric bitter winters.
Researchers believe that stone-age people found beaver
lakes a suitable home environment, full of plants, ready-
cut wood, fish and birds. Not to mention fur-bearing
animals. The fascinating folklore from First Nations people
contains beavers. Sadly, the snug fur proved too saleable to
European merchants and their profits from felted beaver
hats assured the decimation of the iconic creatures.
Then we explore the gradual dawn of a conservation movement
and Canada's national parks. James Watt created the first
beaver preserve in the 1920s with the aid of Cree locals,
who agreed to trap a limited number only when the
population had been restored. Eric Collier went further by
restoring old beaver dams - which brought back waterfowl -
until he could acquire some live beavers to take them in
hand.
Hat making past and present is described, and the fur trade
discussed. A trip around an auction warehouse disturbed
Backhouse more than she'd realised. I confess to skipping
the part about skinning. Frances Backhouse gains my
admiration for investigating every part of this story
herself, including the Skagit Delta where a researcher
proved that the tidal pools created by beaver dams provided
a low-tide habitat for fish such as juvenile salmon. The
canny creatures also dig canals to swim from one place to
another safe from predators.
Beaver landscaping can work even faster than suspected and
can change the face of a river valley. I found this section
extremely interesting, having read books about water
issues. Without dams, a river flows fast and incises its
way down steeply into rock, and the water table of the land
drops. Dammed rivers spread, deposit sediment and seep
water down into aquifers, which may be what a warming,
drying world needs. The plants supported in the shallows
also recycle water through evapotranspiration, providing
rainfall; dammed peatlands don't dry out and shrink; rivers
don't flash-flood. Hydrologists are only now studying how
keystone species beavers, which used to live in every
headwater stream, alter watersheds, and I found the results
to date fascinating. Astonishingly Idaho beavers have been
literally parachuted in to new locations by the Fish and
Game Department; other park managers have developed systems
to keep water levels manageable rather than kill beavers.
Anyone interested in learning about beavers, from the
historical aspect to the keystone species aspect, will be
captivated by ONCE THEY WERE HATS: IN SEARCH OF THE MIGHTY
BEAVER.
Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and
creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent’s most
ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the
northern tundra. Wherever there was wood and water, there were beavers — 60 million (or more) — and
wherever there were beavers, there were intricate natural communities that depended on their activities. Then
the European fur traders arrived.
In ONCE THEY WERE HATS, Frances Backhouse examines humanity’s 15,000-year relationship with Castor
canadensis, and the beaver’s even older relationship with North American landscapes and ecosystems. From
the waterlogged environs of the Beaver Capital of Canada to the wilderness cabin that controversial
conservationist Grey Owl shared with pet beavers; from a bustling workshop where craftsmen make beaver-felt
cowboy hats using century-old tools to a tidal marsh where an almost-lost link between beavers and salmon
was recently found, Backhouse goes on a journey of discovery to find out what happened after we nearly
wiped this essential animal off the map, and how we can learn to live with beavers now.
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