Derek GowBringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man's Quest to Rewild Britain's Waterways

Abstract

Books in Review Derek Gow Bringing Back the Beaver:The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways London. Chelsea Green. 2020. 208 pages. READERS OF NATURALIST nonfiction will feel at home in Derek Gow’s Bringing Back the Beaver. They will find familiar elements : narrative, passion, research, urgency , ecological significance—right down to the pen-and-ink illustrations for each chapter . Engrossing discoveries lie within, but what may delight readers most is just how often Gow is laugh-out-loud funny. Bringing Back the Beaver is about restoring this enormous, endearing, eponymous rodent to the United Kingdom. Gow’s book is full of fascinating facts about beavers from antiquity up to the recent past; beginning with the tale of St. Felix of Burgundy , who was shipwrecked on the River Babingley. Felix was purportedly saved from drowning by a colony of beavers out of Norfolk and, in thanks, made the leader of the beavers a bishop. Most of the time, humans have been far more thankless. Gow notes that beaver-bishops aside, they have no patron saint. To a North American reader, it seems incredible that beavers could have been so utterly destroyed in the first place, until one remembers how intense the trade in pelts was here. So perhaps the first surprise for the beaver novice is how old the trade in beaver is, and that the most valuable part of the creature wasn’t always the pelt but rather the scent glands. These glands could contain a high amount of salicylic acid, depending on the creature’s provender, and thus were highly desired as medicine. In addition, beavers were also used as a Lentapproved foodstuff. Few people familiar with the landscapes that beavers create can imagine the vitriol Gow has experienced in response to his and others’ reintroduction attempts. Much of this is due to misunderstanding and resistance from gamekeepers, anglers, and estate-holders who fear that the beavers will block the passage of migratory fish (they won’t) or eat game (they’re vegetarian). Gow exposes many old misconceptions such as the belief that beavers were fish (they’re not), had four testicles (they don’t), and could self-amputate their castoreumbearing cods in order to escape pursuit (just, no). He also describes more recent discoveries such as the Eurasian and “Canadian ” beavers cannot interbreed due to a different number of chromosomes. Gow has looked for the beavers’ traces in histories, stories, and place-names across Britain and seen the fading, obscure signs of their engineering upon the environment . He has searched for their living kin in Poland and Bavaria. Without resorting much to ecological terms such as keystone species or trophic cascade, Gow makes a strong case for how much the beaver’s DEREK GOW Reney, grapples with the familial patterns handed down to her from her grandmother , Lula, and her mother, Justine. The book unfolds inside thirteen stories separated into three sections. It begins with Justine at age fifteen negotiating parameters of the Holiness Church under the rule of males in her family and reinforced by her mother, Lula. Justine’s rebellion against strict dogma results in her being compromised by an older male, forcing Justine to become a mother when she is still a child herself. Reney is born at the center of numerous crossroads. One, her grandmother’s overrighteous religious beliefs clash with her mother’s need to rebel against Christian constraint. Two, Reney, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, struggles with overcoming historical trauma associated with a brutal colonization process. And three, Reney moves between Oklahoma and Texas, negotiating southern Bible Belt norms as she attempts to pull herself out from underneath the weight of toxic familial patterns. Despite history and environment, each generation exemplifies communal strength as grandmother, mother, and daughter find in each other a source of power. In the first story, Lula and her mother, Granny, climb into a vehicle with Justine, coming together —“For now, that little car filled with three—almost four—generations flew”—in an act of matrilocal rebellion against patriarchy . Similarly, Justine, as an adult, consistently moves Reney back to Lula’s home in Oklahoma when she leaves the undesirable men...