To "work like a beaver" is an almost universal expression for
energetic and intelligent persistence, but who realizes the magnitude
of the beaver's works? What he has accomplished is not only monumental
but useful to man. He was the original Conservationist. An interesting
and valuable book could be written concerning the earth as influenced
and benefited by the labors of the beaver. The beaver is intimately
associated with the natural resources, soil, and water. His work is
not yet done, and along the sources of innumerable streams he will
ever be needed to save soil, to regulate stream-flow, and to provide
pools for the fish.
The beaver's conservation work is accomplished by means of the dams he
constructs across streams of flowing water and the ponds that are thus
formed. These dams and ponds render a number of services: first, they
save soil; second, they check erosion; third, they reduce flood
damage; fourth, they store water and help to sustain stream-flow;
fifth, they provide water-holes for fish; and sixth, they are helpful
in maintaining deep waterways by reducing the extremes of both high
and low water, and also by reducing the quantity of sediment carried
down into river-channels.
I had enjoyed the ways of "our first engineers" before it dawned upon
me that their works might be useful to man, and that the beaver
through his constructive handling of the natural resources might
justly be called a conservationist. One dry winter the stream through
the Moraine Colony ran low and froze to the bottom, and the only trout
in it that survived were those in the deep holes of beaver ponds.
These ponds offer many advantages to fish multiplication. Much food
acceptable to the fish is swept into these ponds. Altogether a beaver
pond is an excellent local habitation for fish.
One gray day while I was examining a beaver colony there came another
demonstration of the usefulness of beaver ponds. The easy rain of two
days ended in a heavy downpour--a deluge upon the mountainside a mile
or so upstream. There was almost nothing on this mountain either to
absorb or delay the excess of water which was speedily shed into the
stream below. Flooding down the stream's channel above the beaver
pond, came a roaring avalanche of water, or water-slide, with a
rubbish-filled front that was five or six feet high. This expanded as
it rolled into the pond, and swept far out on the sides, while the
water-front, greatly lowered, rushed over the dam. A half a dozen
ponds immediately below sufficed so to check the speed of this water
and so greatly to reduce its volume that as it poured over the last
dam of this colony it was no longer a flood.
The regulation of stream-flow is important. There are only a few rainy
days each year, and all the water that flows to the sea through
river-channels falls during these few rainy days. The instant the
water reaches the earth it is hurried away by gravity, and unless
there are factors to delay this run-off, the rivers would naturally
contain water only on the rainy days and for a little while
thereafter. A beaver dam and pond together form a factor of importance
in the keeping of streams ever flowing. The pond is a reservoir which
catches and retains some of the water coming into it during rainy days
and which delays the water-flow through it. A beaver pond is a leaky
reservoir, a kind of spring as it were, and if stored full during
rainy days the leakage from it will help maintain stream-flow below
during the dry weather. Beaver works thus tend to distribute to
streams a moderate quantity of water each day. In other words they
spread out or distribute the water of the few rainy days through all
the days of the year.
A river which flows steadily throughout the year is of inestimable
value to mankind. If floods sweep a river, they do damage. If low
water comes, the wheels of steamers and of factories cease to move,
and a dry river-channel means both damage and death. Numerous beaver
colonies along the sources of countless streams that rise in the hills
and the mountains would be helpful in equalizing the flow of these
streams. I hope and believe that before many years every rushing
care-free brook that springs from a great watershed will be steadied
in a poetic pond that is made, and that will be maintained by our
patient, persevering friend the beaver.
In the West beaver are peculiarly useful at stream-sources, where
their ponds store flood waters that may later be used for stock water
or for irrigation purposes. There are a number of localities in New
Mexico, South Dakota, and elsewhere in the West where beaver receive
the utmost protection and encouragement from ranchers, whose herds are
benefited by water conveniently stored in beaver ponds. A few power
companies in the country have commenced to stock with beaver the
watersheds which supply them with water. They do this because they
realize that countless small ponds or reservoirs are certain to be
constructed by these little conservationists.
Running water dissolves and erodes away the earthy materials with
which it comes in contact. The presence of a beaver pond and dam
across a stream's highway prevents the wearing and the carrying away
of material. They not only prevent erosion or wearing away, but they
take soil and sediment from the water which comes to them and thus
cause an upbuilding. Hence the presence of beaver ponds along streams
causes an accumulation of sediment and soil. In time these fill rocky
channels and cañons, widen and lengthen valleys, and thus extend the
productive area of the earth.
Beaver ponds are settling-basins, and in them are deposited the
heavier matter brought in by the stream. In time the pond is filled,
and if the beaver do not raise the height of the dam, the accumulated
earthy matter becomes covered with flowers or forests.
On the headwaters of the Arkansas River in Colorado some placer miners
found gold in the sediment of an inhabited beaver pond. In washing out
the deposit of the pond they broke into an enormous amount of loose
material beneath, that apparently had been piled in there by glacial
action. This material, when removed, was found to have been resting in
an ancient beaver pond that was about thirty feet below the one at the
surface.
[Illustration: WHERE BEAVER FORMERLY LIVED AND SPREAD SOIL]
A few centuries ago there were millions of beaver ponds in North
America; most of these were long since filled with sediment. Since
then, too, countless others have been formed and filled. This
soil-saving and soil-spreading still goes ever on wherever there is a
beaver pond.
Many of the richest tillable lands of New England were formed by the
artificial works of the beaver. There are hundreds of valleys in
Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and other States whose rich
surface was spread upon them by the activities of beaver through
generations. In the Southern States and in the mountains of the West,
the numbers of beaver meadows are beyond computation. The aggregate
area of rich soil-deposits in the United States for which we are
indebted to the beaver is beyond belief, and probably amounts to
millions of acres.
The beaver have thus prepared the way for forests and meadows,
orchards and grain-fields, homes and school-houses. In the golden age
of the beaver, their countless colonies clustered all over our land.
These primeval folk then gathered their harvest. Innumerable beaver
ponds, which then shone everywhere in the sun, slowly filled with
deposited, outspreading soil,--and vanished. Elm avenues now arch
where the low-growing willow drooped across the canal, and a populous
village stands upon the seat of a primitive and forgotten colony.
A live beaver is more valuable to mankind than a dead one. As trappers
in all sections of the country occasionally catch a beaver, it is
probable that there still are straggling ones scattered along streams
all the way from salt water up to timber-line, twelve thousand feet
above sea-level. These remaining beaver may be exterminated; but if
protected they would multiply and colonize stream-sources. Here they
would practise conservation. Their presence would reduce river and
harbor appropriations and make rivers more manageable, useful, and
attractive. It would pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights.
Beaver would help keep America beautiful. A beaver colony in the wilds
gives a touch of romance and a rare charm to the outdoors. The works
of the beaver have ever intensely interested the human mind. Beaver
works may do for children what schools, sermons, companions, and even
home sometimes fail to do,--develop the power to think. No boy or girl
can become intimately acquainted with the ways and works of these
primitive folk without having the eyes of observation opened, and
acquiring a permanent interest in the wide world in which we live. A
race which can produce mothers and fathers as noble as those beaver in
the Grand Cañon who offered their lives hoping thereby to save their
children is needed on this earth. The beaver is the Abou-ben-Adhem of
the wild. May his tribe increase!