As ecosystem engineers, beavers have been active in the North American landscape for millennia. Their ability to mitigate some effects of climate change suggests that beavers could play an important role in the future.

Join us at the Kestrel House on Saturday, October 14th, 9:00-11:00 AM, when Jennifer Lovett, conservation biologist and author of Beavers Away!, will present a slideshow, Beavers: Our Allies in a Changing World. Her talk will focus on the role beavers play in ecosystems, their biology, lifecycle, history, and the environmental impact of the beaver in North America. Following the presentation, we’ll walk around Plum Brook Pond (adjacent to the Kestrel House) to view the effect of recent beaver activity!

Beavers Away!  (published in 2016) is based on the true story of the 1948 Idaho beaver parachute drop. It involves a game warden named Elmo Heter who solved a complicated problem in a novel way. He managed to devise a method in which beavers, removed from populated areas, were safely re-introduced into a remote wilderness that they had inhabited long ago. The re-located beavers were able to quickly restore the eroded and barren landscape and create lush habitat that provided food and shelter for many other types of animals. This remarkable story of Elmo and Geronimo is significant today as we confront the effects of the climate crisis and try to protect and conserve wetlands and the wildlife that depend on them.

“This rousing story reminds us that beavers are not just the animal world’s great engineers but its great environmentalists, busy building buzzing wetlands season after season.”  –Bill McKibben

Jennifer Lovett, a former art museum curator and art teacher, is a conservation biologist who lives in Starksboro, Vermont. She learned about the amazing true story of Idaho’s parachuting beavers while working on her master’s degree in environmental studies at Antioch University New England.

Space is limited and registration is required with a sliding-scale donation. Families and children welcome!