Beavers: Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers

by Frances Backhouse

By cutting trees and building dams, beavers shape landscapes and provide valuable wetland homes for many plants and animals. These radical rodents were once almost hunted to extinction for their prized fur, but today we are building a new relationship with them, and our appreciation of the benefits they offer as habitat creators and water stewards is growing. Packed with facts and personal stories, this book looks at the beaver’s biology and behavior and illuminates its vital role as a keystone species. The beaver’s comeback is one of North America’s greatest conservation success stories and Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers introduces readers to the conservationists, scientists and young people who are working to build a better future for our furry friends.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature

128 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2021

About the author

Frances Backhouse is a veteran freelance journalist who has written for Audubon, New Scientist, Canadian Geographic and numerous other magazines. Her training and experience as a biologist inform her environmental writing, including her books about owls and woodpeckers. Her other three books reflect her ongoing fascination with Klondike gold rush history.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ya'll, this book was SO GOOD. Beavers are so darn CUTE, it's hard to do a bad book about them, and they are just so INTERESTING. At least, this book was just so immersive and educational about beavers and their place in the ecosystem and had really adorable pictures, I can see this being a HUGE hit for children, and adults, who are into learning about animals and nature.

I can't stress enough that the pictures in this book are SQUEE worthy, so be prepared. My heart almost couldn't take the cuteness overload!

Also, as is unfortunately the case with all animal/nature books, there is a LOT about how humans almost hunted the beaver to extinction. Necessary to teach, learn and never repeat again (too late for many animals...sigh), but SO hard to read about.

BUT, they also include what WE can do, on a personal small scale and on a larger scale, to help humans and beavers to get along. There are some really amazing examples of it in the book, especially when beavers moved into an area occupied by humans, they caused a bit of a ruckus, and the local government decide to exterminate the beavers, civilians took a stand and the beavers now co-exist with the humans around them. YAY COMPASSION FOR THE WIN!

This book is one I would HIGHLY recommend for maybe middle readers on up, especially if they love animals/nature, and for adults who have beavers as neighbors and want to peacefully co-exist with them, rather than have them exterminated. Lots of helpful tools on how to learn more in-depth about beavers, to understand what drives them to do what they do and how to live peacefully with them.

5, beavers are a cornerstone species and just TOO CUTE, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Orca Book Publishers for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beavers: Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers by Frances Backhouse is not a book for young readers. This book is chock full of facts, information and wonderful images. If you want to learn about beavers, their habitats, habits, family life, dangers, and conservation, then pick this book up. For my granddaughter, we looked at the images and read the captions. For a five year old, that was plenty. The eight year old wanted more, so we read some of the sections titled Beaver Backers that shared about how to help the beaver and its conservation. As an adult, I read the whole book and learned a lot about beavers, especially their comeback. This is an educational book that would be a great addition to public, school and classroom libraries. It is geared to older students (ten and up) but could be used with younger students sharing some of the information available.

[Caztor Ssc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is the most recent book about beavers, at least in my digital bookshlef. Published by Orca is part if it's Orca Wild Series. You can get the printed version as well as pdf or epub versions. It's not the first book written by Frances Backhouse about beavers but the most recent. The title is suggesting. Calling beavers radical rodents makes you think why these quiet animals could be like that. Then, many people have the idea of beavers as great builders but calling them as ecosystem engineers sounds a big title. In this book we'll find the reasons for that titles.
Divided in four parts, we get a complete explanation of beavers from biology to ecology. This means we have a first part basically describing beavers from biology but in easy words. Parts of their body, where do they live, how do they live and survive. The second part tells us about the building work of beavers and how their dams let them configure a new environment for a new ecological community. The third part is about history. Beavers were hunted for a long time, almost got wiped out. Now their population is growing back. This means that they will appear eventually near human cities more often. Part four is the one explaining how could people coexist with beavers when they get this new neighbors. There's a glossary for those beginner readers. A few resources to get online are listed too.
This is a great book (forget I'm a beaver fan). Nice and easy to read, so it is recommended for young readers too. Not just theoric explanations, you can find short stories, anecdotes, project experiences and short interviews too. A detail for some readers, if you want to get the references of cites you must download them from the publisher's website.