Re:Beavers back in London after 400-year absence
by meristohm on Sunday March 20, 2022 @01:57PM
(#30744927)
Relevant book: Eager: the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, by Ben Goldfarb (2018) [0]
"The arrival of Europeans warped indigenous peoples’ relationship with beaver from subsistence and kinship to extraction, turning many tribes, as Harold Hickerson put it, into “a vast forest proletariat whose production was raw fur.”12 The trade began innocuously enough in the 1500s, with European cod fishermen casually exchanging goods for pelts during their spells ashore in Newfoundland. When Henry Hudson found the Mohawk eager to trade in 1609 in modern-day New York, the rush was on. Europe was then in the process of exterminating nearly all its own beavers, and the untapped source of pelts proved irresistible."
Beavers help the land retain water. Our current, predominant agricultural system in the United States requires significant energy towards irrigation and fertilization. There are other systems that I see as better, and which would include beavers.
I'm a "landowner" in the current legal system, and while you likely don't really know me, I welcome a pond here, especially if the surround land also has plenty of insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals (and all the others). Mosquitoes are not much of a problem around here, but I've lived places where the air is thick with them. Maintaining balanced diversity (including human population) is important to me.
Some of my neighbors have beaver families on their land and appreciate what they do. Some of those neighbors also grow food for themselves and others.
"The arrival of Europeans warped indigenous peoples’ relationship with beaver from subsistence and kinship to extraction, turning many tribes, as Harold Hickerson put it, into “a vast forest proletariat whose production was raw fur.”12 The trade began innocuously enough in the 1500s, with European cod fishermen casually exchanging goods for pelts during their spells ashore in Newfoundland. When Henry Hudson found the Mohawk eager to trade in 1609 in modern-day New York, the rush was on. Europe was then in the process of exterminating nearly all its own beavers, and the untapped source of pelts proved irresistible."
Beavers help the land retain water. Our current, predominant agricultural system in the United States requires significant energy towards irrigation and fertilization. There are other systems that I see as better, and which would include beavers.
I'm a "landowner" in the current legal system, and while you likely don't really know me, I welcome a pond here, especially if the surround land also has plenty of insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals (and all the others). Mosquitoes are not much of a problem around here, but I've lived places where the air is thick with them. Maintaining balanced diversity (including human population) is important to me.
Some of my neighbors have beaver families on their land and appreciate what they do. Some of those neighbors also grow food for themselves and others.
[0] https://www.worldcat.org/title/eager-the-surprising-secret-l...