The Beaver Whisperers

The world’s next environmental crisis is predicted to be a water shortage. Who would have guessed that the humble beaver could be the ecological superhero that saves us all? The Beaver Whisperers reveals what makes beavers such brilliant hydro-engineers and explores how they are being recruited to accomplish everything from nding water in a bone-dry desert to recharging water tables and coaxing life back into damaged lands. Shot in full HD, this lm also contains stunning and rarely seen underwater footage of the beavers in action, capturing a variety of compelling behaviour.

Beavers are an astonishingly resilient species. They have been on the planet for roughly 30 million years, surviving through all manners of predation and climate change. Today’s beaver somehow managed to survive the great Ice Age while its larger cousin, Castoroides ohioensis, did not. But how can we learn to love something we once nearly exterminated, and which many people still regard as a pest?

In our own age of global warming, beavers may offer us some kind of environmental second chance, courtesy of their ability to conserve water resources, mitigate drought and boost bio-diversity.

By helping them, we help ourselves.

The Beaver Whisperers will revisit the industrious rodent and see it through the eyes of experts as they explain the ways in which the presence of beavers transform and revive landscapes. It’s the beaver’s avid dam-building that makes it the darling of conservationists. Castor Canadensis is the whole package: part diviner, part hydro-engineer.

The presence of beavers means nine times more water than in ponds without, and in times of severe drought it’s nothing for a beaver to dig down ten meters to find, collect and redirect water to where it’s needed. These activities have been evolved to perfection over millions of years.

The film will illustrate exactly how beavers raise the watershed, decrease the negative impact of soil erosion and increase bio-diversity. And if that’s not enough, a recent study found that beaver dams, loaded with bacteria and acting as natural filters, even clean up factory pollution. The humble Castor Canadensis just might be the ecological superhero we need to confront one of the greatest environmental threats in our lifetime.