It’s a beaver affair! Beavers may seem like humble creatures, but it turns out they are quite an influential species that have played a major role in shaping the American landscape.
To set the record straight about these little critters, today guest host Jonah Chester spends the hour with Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author of the award-winning book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.
They talk about the history of beavers in the U.S. and the government’s environmental policies around them, the Idaho paratrooping beaver experiment, and why they are “beaver believers.”
Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist and author of the book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018). He is currently working on his second book, on the ecological history of roads, which received the Whiting Foundation’s 2020 Creative Nonfiction Grant and is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
Cover photo: Beaver at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash