Derek Gow - Bringing Back the Beaver

PRAISE FOR

BRINGING BACK THE BEAVER

Bringing Back the Beaver is a hilarious, eccentric and magnificent account of a struggle against bureaucracy, pigheadedness and sheer human irrationality, in order to reintroduce a species crucial to the health of our ecosystems. Derek Gow is an extraordinary character, whose writing is as colourful and dynamic as he is. He has done more to restore our missing fauna than anyone else in Britain. This is his astonishing story of what it takes.

G EORGE M ONBIOT

It is wonderful to see that beavers are now officially back on the list of native species, having been absent for so long far too long! They are without doubt one of the worlds best natural engineers with their ability to create new wetland habitats, which then become home to many other creatures who need a watery landscape in which to live and survive. This is a winwin situation for wildlife providing of course, reintroductions are carried out with the blessing of the surrounding landowners and the local community.

D AME J UDI D ENCH

Derek Gow might be the most colorful character in all of Beaverdom a wry, profane truth teller who is equal parts yeoman farmer, historical ecologist, and pirate. Bringing Back the Beaver is a swashbuckling saga whose banks overflow with semi-legal hijinks, ribald jokes and hard-won scientific insight. Its also a keen lament for the nature weve stamped out, and an impassioned ode to rewilding that will inspire Beaver Believers in Britain and beyond.

B EN G OLDFARB , author of Eager

Derek Gow has produced a fearless work friends and foe alike feel the witty sting of his barbed tongue. Do not mess with him! Above all though, this book is important an accessible insight into what can be achieved when rewildling is taken out of its gilded cage and given a pragmatic kick in the backside. Beavers are back thanks in large part to Derek. Read the story, learn why beavers are vital to our ecology and, above all, have fun.

H UGH W ARWICK , author and ecologist

Beautifully written, passionate, blunt, uncompromising and very, very funny; not many books make me laugh out loud, but this one had me in stitches. Derek Gow is a man after my own heart, with no interest in diplomacy, but with single-minded determination and a clear vision: to bring beavers back, and to bring nature back, to Britain.

D AVE G OULSON , author of A Sting in the Tale and The Garden Jungle

Bringing Back the Beaver is brilliant: passionate, humorous, inspiring and full of hope. Its not just about beavers its about humans, too, and how, when we really set our minds to it, we can make a difference. I already loved the idea of beavers being brought back to the UK, but by the time Id finished reading Dereks book, I was ready to chain myself to the railings outside 10 Downing Street to help make it happen.

B RIGIT S TRAWBRIDGE H OWARD , author of Dancing with Bees

A wonderfully entertaining account of the battle to return the Eurasian beaver to the British countryside from the Beaver Man himself Derek bloody Gow. No one has done more to promote their return to Britain and it is entirely fitting that it is he who reports on the sorry and sadly still ongoing catalogue of endless bureaucratic procrastination and adversarial clutching of straws that has prevented us from embracing the most blindingly obvious catchment restoration tool known to man.

P ROFESSOR A LASTAIR D RIVER , director, Rewilding Britain

Gripping, illuminating, informative, amusing and inspiring in equal parts I loved it. Bringing Back the Beaver is not only a ripping yarn with interesting and funny characters, tension and drama, it is an important tale of tenacity, the tenacity we need much more of to repair our depleted land.

L UCY J ONES , author of Losing Eden and Foxes Unearthed

In our age of massive wildlife depletion, British lovers of nature have long been crying out for major change. Cometh the hour, cometh the man and his beast. In his fact-filled, funny and irrefutably argued book, Derek Gow sets out a powerful case for the return of a creature that will transform our wetlands for the better. I urge you to read his book. It will make beaver believers of us all.

M ARK C OCKER , author and naturalist

A tail-slapping yarn, interwoven with emoji-faced farmers, blundering officials, gothic scientists and his own unwavering mission to restore the beaver, Britains bringer of life. Derek is a naturalist with a strong case of beaver fever shared effusively with equal doses of charm, belligerence and artistic genius. May his beautifully illustrated story bust the dams of progress in these hot and stormy times.

J AMES W ALLACE , director, Beaver Trust

In characteristic punchy style, Derek Gow has given us the full saga of beaver reintroduction to the UK. Throughout a shameful tale of ministerial ignorance and dithering, Derek has charted his own remarkable role in ensuring this vital keystone species is restored to our wetlands. The book is a triumph of determination over bureaucratic obfuscation, an essential read for everyone interested in nature conservation.

S IR J OHN L ISTER- K AYE , OBE, naturalist and nature writer

Like his subject, Derek Gow is industrious woodily, wetly and deeply committed to his project. To have beavers back in Britain gives all of nature us included a second chance at happier times. Gow tells us this with the clear-sighted and good-humoured energy and purposefulness of the animals he has come to love as well as admire. We all should be converted to his cause.

T IM D EE , author of Landfill and Greenery

The fun of Derek Gows book comes from the way it weaves together the reintroduction of beavers to Britain with his own rollicking life in the cause of ecological restoration. Its upshot, to borrow a word from Aldo Leopold, is Gows depiction, at once comprehensive and specific, of wetlands importance in restoring what had become a simplified, dwindling countryside. In his highly engaging way, he conveys beavers essential role in the landscapes biological health and diversity: it needs them and without them would fade swiftly away.

J OHN E LDER , author of Reading the Mountains of Home

Derek Gow assails officialdom in this unsparing and funny memoir, recounting the long struggle to bring wild beavers back to Britain. A witty and passionate guide, hell have you rooting for the rodents from page one, but the real stars of the story may be the colorful characters working on their behalf, including the author himself. Highly readable and highly recommended.

T HOR H ANSON , author of Buzz

Bringing Back the Beaver

The Story of One Mans Quest to Rewild Britains Waterways

Derek Gow

Foreword by Isabella Tree

Chelsea Green Publishing

White River Junction, Vermont

London, UK

Copyright 2020 by Derek Gow.

All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations copyright 2020 by Derek Gow.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone

Commissioning Editor: Jonathan Rae

Developmental Editor: Michael Metivier

Copy Editor: Marisa Crumb

Proofreader: Angela Boyle

Indexer: Shana Milkie

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Printed in the United States of America.