Becky Cushing Gop is an award-winning environmental educator and director of Mass Audubon West, encompassing 18 wildlife sanctuaries, conservation partnerships, and widespread community and school programming. She is based at the 1,400-acre Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Lenox, home to a healthy population of the North American beaver.
Becky’s new book, What Goes on inside a Beaver Pond?, takes kids on a journey through a year in the life of a young beaver (called a "kit"). This is an exciting year as the young beaver leaves her family lodge and moves throughout the Yokun Brook waterways, seeking a new home for herself.
Throughout the seasons, the book reveals the hidden inner-workings of a beaver lodge, how beavers fell trees with their teeth and create a wetland habitat, how they collect food and ward off predators, and what daily life is like within a beaver colony.
