54 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!" 



of the buffalo. However, game laws protect the beavers now, even outside 

 the parks. Western beavers imported to some of the eastern states 

 have so increased in numbers that they are a problem to the parks and 

 forests. The most numerous beaver colonies in the national parks are 

 in Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Rainier 

 National parks, where water is plentiful and where streams run all 

 year long. No beaver can live happily without the daily opportunity to 

 build or patch up the dam. As 'most everyone knows, the beavers live 

 in a house built of logs and sticks surrounded by fairly still water, but 

 they also burrow into stream banks in places, instead of constructing 

 houses. If a lake doesn't exist, the beavers make one by damming a 

 stream. The top of their house projects well above the water, but the 

 entrance is always under water, and the beavers have to swim home 

 and then go upstairs to dry quarters. 



"Busy as a beaver." This figure of speech has amused many a 

 Dude, after watching the ways of beavers in the parks. Beavers do 

 their work at night. They sleep all day, which is unfortunate, for it 

 makes it hard for visitors to get a good glimpse of them. The beaver 

 does most of his work with his long, sharp teeth. With them he cuts 

 down trees much as a woodsman would do with an axe. Aspens and 

 other species of cottonwoods are the beaver's favorite trees. The bark, 

 especially the inner layer of bark, is food, while the logs go to make 

 his house bigger or his dam higher. 



A colony of from thirty to fifty 

 beavers can accomplish an amazing 

 amount of work. In Beaver Lake Valley, 

 near Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone Park, 

 they have erected a dam which is a third 

 of a mile long. After they had cut all 

 the trees in the lake they had formed, an 

 operation which took several years, they 

 cut the dam to let the water out, probably 

 in order that the trees might grow again. 

 The park service wanted to keep the lake 

 there for exhibition purposes, so engi 

 neers repaired the dam the beavers had cut. The beavers cut it again. 

 The engineers repaired it again. The beavers cut it once more. The 

 engineers finally gave up the contest. The beavers are the only form 

 of life in the national parks that can defy the rangers and get away 

 with it. Incidentally, outside interests are not allowed to build dams in 

 the park for irrigation purposes, but the beavers do it right along and 

 kill and cut thousands of trees. There is nothing to do about it. The 

 beavers stay right on the job and rebuild their dam as often as the 



