Join your friends and neighbors in reading & discussing EAGER, journalist Ben Goldfarb's award-winning look at why beavers matter, during the One Book Steamboat community read

One Book Steamboat banner features book cover to Eager and author Ben Goldfarb.

Each year Bud Werner Memorial Library presents a community read in Steamboat Springs. We call it ONE BOOK STEAMBOAT. This winter, the Yampa Valley community is invited to read and discuss the award-winning nonfiction book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, by journalist Ben Goldfarb. In addition, the Library is offering a series of events to enrich your reading experience and a Yampa Valley-wide conversation about resilience in our local environment,  culminating with a live talk by author Ben Goldfarb on March 18 at the library.

Get your copy of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

The Library has ample copies of Eager circulating locally in our collection (including digital, audio and print copies). Books are available so everyone is able to check out a copy, read it and participate in the community conversations.

Borrow Eager as a book, audio book or ebook from Bud Werner Memorial Library.

Buy Eager from Steamboat Springs' independent bookstore, Off the Beaten Path.

The book ~ Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

Eager

WINNER of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”—including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens—recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet.

Reviews:

“A marvelously humor-laced page-turner about the science of semi-aquatic rodents…. A masterpiece of a treatise on the natural world.”—The Washington Post

“Eager takes us inside the amazing world of nature’s premier construction engineer…and shows us why the restoration of an animal almost driven to extinction is producing wide-ranging, positive effects on our landscapes, ecology, and even our economy.”―National Geographic

“This witty, engrossing book will be a classic from the day it is published.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"[Goldfarb] shares his findings in lucid and entertaining prose….Filled with hard facts and fascinating people (and animals), Eager is an authoritative, vigorous call for understanding and action."―Kirkus, Starred Review

The author ~ Ben Goldfarb

Ben Goldfarb

Ben Goldfarb is an award-winning environmental journalist who covers wildlife conservation, marine science, and public lands management, as well as an accomplished fiction writer. He is the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His nonfiction writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The Guardian, High Country News, Outside Magazine, Smithsonian, bioGraphic, Pacific Standard, Audubon Magazine, Scientific American, Vox, OnEarth, Yale Environment 360, Grantland, The Nation, Hakai Magazine, VICE News, and other publications. His fiction has appeared in publications including Motherboard, Moss, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Hopper, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize. His nonfiction has been anthologized in The Best American Science & Nature Writing and Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age at the End of Nature. He holds a master of environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and was a 2018 North American Congress for Conservation Biology journalist fellow. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Elise, and his dog, Kit — which is, of course, what you call a baby beaver.

Additional Beaver Resources

Beaver logo.
Our official One Book Steamboat beaver mascot illustration by Steamboat Springs artist Julia Ben-Asher.
  • Our StoryWalk this winter features The Lodge that Beaver Built by Randi Sonenshine! Our busy librarians channeled their inner busy beavers and built a StoryWalk worth the walk all winter long! The Lodge That Beaver Built brings to light the habits of this fascinating, important creature. Located along a side path off the Yampa River Core Trail near the Stockbridge Transit Center, Steamboat StoryWalk is an innovative way for families to enjoy stories together in the outdoors as you meander between parts of a deconstructed story that is placed at intervals along a walking trail. 
     
  • Check out some beaver basics from Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW). CPW announced plans to form an internal working group to initiate the beaver management planning process at the April 5, 2024 meeting in Denver, where Governor Polis expressed his support for CPW’s beaver conservation efforts. The state’s support for inclusive beaver management planning will set Colorado on a path to improve climate resilience while addressing critical social and economic considerations.
     
  • Learn more about the Colorado Beaver Working Group. If you want to stay up to date on all things beaver happening here in Colorado, including the Beaver Working Group's newsletter and info about upcoming meetings, join their Google group here.
     
  • READ MORE! Ben Goldfarb writes about beavers and beaver analogs in the Kawuneeche Valley (the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park), hopes for reinvigorating and rehydrating that wet valley ecosystem, and the obstacles of moose, humans and other environmental/political factors.
     
  • The Beaver Restoration Guide published by the US Fish & Wildlife Service is available to download the pdf or read online.
     
  • The Beaver Institute provides tons of resources to learn about beavers, restoration efforts and our mutual habitat

Photo gallery: EAGER community read spawns a 2025 Winter Carnival beaver ice sculpture, “Illuminating the Yampa’s Best Friend” by Friends of the Yampa

Overhead view of ice sculpture beaver
Overhead view of ice sculpture beaver tail detail
Side view of ice sculpture beaver

One Book Steamboat Events