This isn’t just a review, it’s a review of a review.

I recently listened to a Science Talk podcast from Scientific American. The podcast was titled A Breakdown of Beavers and it was a conversation between Science Talk host Steve Mirsky and Ben Goldfarb who wrote the book: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.

One thing that I liked a lot about the conversation was its inclusion of an ecosystem perspective; they didn’t just talk about beavers’ physical characteristics and Latin names, or what their pelts used to be worth. Instead, a large part of the conversation was about their various relationships with other parts of the ecosystems in which they live.

For example, why am I talking about beavers on a web site that usually focuses on our marine world? If you guessed that beaver dams impact the flow of sediments and chemicals into our oceans, you would be right. Beaver’s dams are also a benefit to some of the fish that travel from the streams to the oceans and back.

And of course, beavers are a significant part of our Pacific Northwest. And even though most of the references to locations in the podcast was East-coast-centric, there were a few references to beavers “out West.” But I think that most of the conceptual parts of the discussion were very relevant to us here in the PNW.

So visit the Scientific American web site and listen to this podcast: www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-breakdown-of-beavers/

It’s 40 minutes long, and it might even entice you to take a look at Ben’s book: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.