In Beaver World Part 8

Apparently, too, holes of this kind are bored through, or a section cut through the dam to the bottom, for the purpose of completely draining the pond. As this appears to be most often done with ponds that are full of stagnant water, or water almost stagnant, this draining may be a part of the beaver's sanitary work,--done for the purpose of getting filth and stale water out and also that the sour bottom may be sterilized by sun and wind.

Conditions determine the length of time before the dam is repaired and the pond refilled. In some cases this is done after the lapse of a few weeks and in others not until autumn. Ponds that have large pure streams running through them do not need this emptying, but occasionally they accidentally have it. Most beaver colonies are deserted in summer, and fall thus into temporary decline.

By late summer or early autumn the beaver have a.s.sembled at the place where the winter is to be spent. There are patriarchs, youngsters, and those in the prime of life. Around the old home are many who set forth from it when the violets were blooming, when the gra.s.s was at its greenest, and when mated birds were building. During the summer a few perished, while others cast their lot with other established colonies.

A few of the younger make a start for themselves in new scenes,--found a new colony. Again the dam is repaired and the house recovered; again the harvest home, and again a primitive home-building family are housed in a hut that willing hands have fas.h.i.+oned. Again the pond freezes, and again the snow falls upon a home that stands in a valley where countless generations of beaver have lived through ice-bound winters and the ever-changing happy seasons.

The Original Conservationist

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 a.s.sociated 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 acc.u.mulation of sediment and soil. In time these fill rocky channels and canons, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 was.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 n.o.ble as those beaver in the Grand Canon 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!

THE END