NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 85 



were left in that district. With total legal protection given 

 them in 1911, however, "they had bred up and had become 

 numerous enough to endanger the levees along Cache Slough, 

 and in that year seventeen beavers were trapped there, under 

 special permit." Ten years later beavers had greatly increased 

 in the Merced River bottom in the region about Snelling and 

 became something of a nuisance to ranchers by stopping up 

 irrigation canals. In 1925 legal protection of the golden 

 beaver was removed, and during the two years following the 

 population was severely reduced. From that time until 1931 

 the "decrease has continued until it seems possible that 

 eventually this species may be eliminated entirely from the 

 Great Valley of California ... if protection is not 

 restored." 



In agricultural areas in California the damage done by 

 beavers is summed up by the authors quoted under six heads: 

 Burrowing into levees or dikes of reclamation work; burrowing 

 into banks of irrigation canals; obstruction of drainage canals 

 by dams; flooding and waterlogging of land; gnawing at head 

 gates of irrigation canals; and cutting down of fence posts and 

 fruit trees. They also mention the complaints of certain 

 ranchers that beavers damage alfalfa fields and fruit trees in 

 their use of these products as food. On the other hand they 

 may, in regions not under immediate use, be of much value in 

 the activities of storing water, and instances are mentioned in 

 which the water held in beaver ponds has saved crops from 

 drought, or their ponds may be utilized by installing pumps to 

 distribute water for irrigation. "One rancher states that 

 beavers have saved him several hundred dollars each season in 

 this way ... In several known instances, beavers have 

 lived in streams and ponds of pasture lands among cattle and 

 hogs . . . with little or no competition with" the stock. 

 "There appears to be no good reason why beavers, through 

 their fur value, could not be made to yield a regular income on 

 such ranches." The authors of the "Fur-bearing Mammals 

 of California" "believe that much of the waste, dredged-over 

 land along the Merced, Tuolomne, and American rivers, 

 wherever these animals are not already reestablished, could be 

 used to support beavers and thus be made an asset to the 

 entire State." 



