Beavers, Willows, and Fashion Hats

Rivers and streams are Earth's most damaged habitats. Long ago, they were healthier thanks to the beavers that lived in them. Beavers were once hunted to near extinction in Europe and North America due to the demand for fashionable hats made from their pelts. Fueled by fashion vanity, the demand for beaver fur led to a beaver trapping craze, exploitation of Native Americans and their lands, and even war between nations. Critically, it led to the near-extinction of the Eurasian beaver and the North American beaver in succession. 

Through building dams and lodges, beavers are considered keystone species because they slow and spread water out maintaining it on the landscape for maximum benefit. Beavers are crucial to their ecosystems because the ponds and wetlands they create by using willows and other plants support a significant variety of life. Without them, our landscapes have become drier, we've lost valuable wetlands, faced more flooding, lost water security, and become less resilient to climate change.

Willows are amazing plants - as a preferred food source and dam-building material for beavers, they also have the quality of “coppicing” - or resprouting new stems from their root base, allowing them to be harvested sustainably. Despite reintroductions and natural expansion, beavers still have yet to return to many places where they used to live, and many of these areas could use more beavers to heal and restore our headwater streams to the rich hydrated landscapes they once were. Today, fashion hats are back in style, even those made with beaver fur yet the dark history of fashion hats is not known to most. As hat lovers, we are linked to a history where beavers were trapped for hats, and vast landscapes across our continents became degraded. At Headwater Hats we aim to use a portion of proceeds from our sales to write a new chapter in the fashion hat story by working with Forever Our Rivers to fund projects that use willows and beavers to restore our critical life-giving headwater streams.