When Emily Fairfax, a geography professor and beaver expert at the University of Minnesota, checked her email inbox and found a message from Pixar Animation Studios, she didn’t believe it.

“I thought it had to be spam or a joke,” Fairfax said. “Why would Pixar email about beavers?”

Fairfax had just spoken at the 2021 California Beaver Summit, which members of Pixar’s production team attended to conduct research for its new movie, Hoppers. To ensure the film would be scientifically accurate, they needed a beaver expert to guide their production.

One introductory email with the Pixar staff became multiple Zoom calls, culminating in a weeklong beaver-sighting expedition led by Fairfax.

“It was interesting for me as a scientist to take artists out into the field,” Fairfax said. “I’m pointing out interesting ecological processes ... and they’re pointing out the color palettes of the landscape, and the way it sounds, and the different textures there are.”

Going on such nature adventures wasn’t new for her. As a Girl Scout, she enjoyed the nature trips she went on throughout her native Indiana, giving reprieve from the landscape of cornfields scattered across the Hoosier State.

“I was enamored with these wild and exciting places where people and animals and plants were all together,” Fairfax said. “Versus, like, people and corn.”

While studying physics in college, Fairfax became a Girl Scout wilderness trip leader and guided scouts through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where she encountered her first beaver dam. The enormous scale and complex engineering of the dam filled her with awe.

“That was the first time I saw an animal engineer something that I couldn’t,” Fairfax said. “And I was a physics major.”

Recognizing that the Boundary Waters and wetlands she explored as a child were shaped by beavers, Fairfax began thinking of studying the furry aquatic rodents professionally.

While working as a systems engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fairfax came across a PBS Nature documentary called Leave It to Beavers. Seeing the unique role beavers play as ecosystem engineers inspired Fairfax to change careers.

“I was like, well, the heck with it, I’m going to go to grad school, study beavers, and student loans will be what they are,” Fairfax said. Since then, Fairfax has published work highlighting the crucial role beavers play in mitigating wildfire impacts by creating more drought-resistant ecosystems. She is currently creating a new Boundary Waters guidebook that shows how beavers affected different wildfires throughout the area.

Through her collaboration with Pixar, Fairfax was invited to the movie’s premiere in Los Angeles and walked the red carpet with Hollywood stars such as Jon Hamm and Bobby Moynihan. There’s even a character inspired by her named Dr. Samantha E. Fairfax, and the notes written on her blackboard in the movie are Fairfax’s actual classroom notes.

Fairfax hopes Hoppers can teach kids and their parents the importance of beavers in battling climate change and encourage human coexistence with the captivating rodents.

“There’s a joke in the beaver science community that if you have a problem, there’s a beaver for that,” Fairfax said.

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