Books
All proceeds from any sales go to support the Refuge.
Beaversprite: My Years Building an Animal Sanctuary
by Dorothy Richards with Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci
2nd edition published 1983 by Heart of the Lakes Publishing, Interlaken, NY, ISBN: 0-932334-66-0
Over forty years ago Dorothy Richards was given a pair of beavers imported from Pennsylvania by the State Department of Environmental Protection. Dorothy and her husband Al lived on a land that was lush with creeks in the headlands of the Hudson River, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The land was wooded with poplars and sugar maples. It was a perfect place for beavers to live and yet there were none in the entire state of New York. They had all been killed by trappers for that beautiful fur.
The Richards began with just that one pair, named Samson and Delilah. They simply protected them and let them live. The beavers dammed the spring that the Richards called Middlesprite and then lived naturally, producing litter after litter of kits. Dorothy sat on the bank of the beaver pond and waited until the animals knew her and trusted her enough to eat apples from her hand. Each beaver, she found, was an individual with a special personality. She came to know them, love them, and to realize that she would dedicate her life to saving them from merciless killing. She has spent over four decades devoted to making Beaversprite a safe place for animals. She has dedicated her life to conservation and this book to that first family.
— from the dust jacket
Note: Ms. Richards is no longer alive, but her work is being carried on by Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife.
Best of the Beaver Defenders
by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci
published 1994 by Unexpected Wildlife Refuge
This is a compilation of stories, letters, news items and illustrations taken from The Beaver Defenders, which was the official publication of Unexpected Wildlife Refuge for many years.
In these pages, you can learn about much of what has happened at the Refuge over the last couple of decades, the kinds of trials, tribulations and successes that were had, and the ways in which the work at the Refuge touched the hearts and souls of others throughout the country and beyond. The book is richly illustrated with pen and ink sketches by the author.
Hoofmarks
by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci
published 1994 by J.N. Townsend Publishing, Exeter, NH
As a child growing up in Watertown, New York in the early 1900s, Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci loved to be surrounded by animals and nature and to explore the world around her, drawing pictures of what she saw. Life then was not easy, as these memoirs recount. She and her family — her mother and two brothers — worked hard to glean a living from their land. Young Hope’s desire for a horse of her own and to go to school as her brothers did required enormous diligence and back-breaking work. Eventually, however, both dreams were fulfilled.
Taking us through the first twenty years of her life, Hope introduces us to an amazing cast of characters: her grandmother, tough and resourceful, but gentle and forgiving as well; her mother, religious and hard working, but suffering from loneliness and frustration; her father, an artist and naturalist who encouraged her love of nature.
And, of course, all of the animals she loved — cats, dogs, cows, and above all, horses. How she and her beloved horse Chub worked together, skidding logs and plowing fields, is at the heart of this story.
Through Hoofmarks we see the way life used to be and we share in an extraordinary woman’s earliest recollections. Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci grew up to become a protector of wildlife, a write and artist.
— from the dust jacket
Hour of the Beaver
by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci
published 1971 by Rand McNally & Company, Chicago
Bear in mind the publication date as you read this excerpt from the dust jacket:
The author and her family have created a wildlife refuge — a modest 250 acres of stream-fed New Jersey marsh and woodland. Its most distinguished inhabitants are a handful of rare and remarkable beavers. In the author’s desire to observe, then know, and finally defend the beavers, the whole ecological crisis in America is reduced to the immediacy of a single plot of ground and a single species threatened with extinction.
The author’s wildlife observations are illuminated by a respect for living things in their natural environment. Through patience and persistence, she shares with the beaver family the cycles of the seasons and of birth and raising their young, of working, foraging, and family play. In her evolution as an activist conservationist, she conveys a sense of the importance of preserving even “useless” wildlife.
Over this idyllic setting hovers the constant threat of disaster. “Sportsmen” and fur trappers are determined to invade the sanctuary. One even deliberately sets a fire that threatens both wildlife and the author’s home in a particularly irresponsible act of resentment against the sanctuary.
Coping with the “power structure,” however, is even more frustrating. Whether it is through the destruction-by-indifference of a county road project or the curiously warped approach of a “conservation” agency dominated by wildlife-reduction pressure groups, “progress” is the beavers’ most inexorable enemy.
In Hour of the Beaver, Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci lifts the banner of hope that the struggle to preserve this embattled species is not yet hopeless. Her plea echoes from the New Jersey woods to a threatened bog in Illinois, to Hells Canyon and the California Redwood forests ... for the author makes clear that even if we never see a beaver or a Redwood, we need — somehow — to know they are still there outside our urban forests of concrete and smog.
Note: Although this book is out of print, you may be able to locate it in some libraries or through a dealer. If you are in southern New Jersey, you can see a copy by visiting the Refuge.
Unexpected Treasure
by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci with Hans Fantel
illustrated by John Pimlott
published 1968 by M. Evans and Company, Inc., New York, NY
Bear in mind the publication date as you read this excerpt from the dust jacket:
Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci lives with her husband and children on her own 250-acre wildlife refuge in southern New Jersey. There, on land abounding in beaver, grouse, quail, duck, deer and many other varieties of animal life, this remarkable woman has fulfilled a dream that began in childhood — a dream of establishing a sanctuary where wildlife of all kinds would be free and secure; a dream that stayed with her during the first five years of her marriage when she went to live with her husband in his native Turkey. Unexpected Treasure is the heartwarming story of the Buyukmihcis — Hope, Cavit, and their three children — and the animal friends who fill their lives.
The refuge was not always peaceful and serene. Hunters invaded the area by night. A drought nearly killed the beavers, and a forest fire threatened to bring Hope’s dream to an end. But the friendship of a pair of beavers very different in personality — the presence of a ravenous squirrel who lived in a tree from which she watched the family’s daily activities, and the trust of the other animals have made Hope’s difficult task continually rewarding.
Unexpected Treasure is a book full of delights and surprises. For admirers of Sterling North, Gavin Maxwell or Robert Murphy, this story of courage, love and commitment to a special way of living is must reading.
Hans Fantel is a frequent contributor to magazines, including The Reader’s Digest. He is the author of two previously published books.
John Pimlott has illustrated many books including King of Squaw Mountain by Hal Borland and A Certain Island by Robert Murphy.
Note: Although this book is out of print, you may be able to locate it in some libraries or through a dealer. If you are in southern New Jersey, you can see a copy by visiting the Refuge.