he gets cussed or complimented for it depends upon where he 

 does that face-lifting. 



For free, some western irrigation farmers get generous bonuses 

 every summer from beaver ponds high up in the mountains. The 

 bigger those ponds, the happier the farmers downstream. "Every 

 one's worth a thousand dollars," remarked one farmer. 



Some mountain ponds have a mile of shore line and contain 

 many millions of gallons of water. 



On the other hand, plugged ditches, flooded fields, washed-out 

 roads, and trees across phone lines are some of the results of 

 beaver eagerness close to civilization. In some logging districts 

 bridge piling has to be coated with tin against beaver choppers. 



Try discouraging a "nuisance beaver" and you'll learn the real 

 meaning of perseverance. Tearing holes in his dam, even dyna- 

 miting it, is but a routine annoyance. One rancher hung out a 

 lantern to annoy the night shift. It was chucked into the dam 

 along with everything else the beaver could float or drag. A 

 beaver never admits defeat. So he gets carted off to some lonely 

 meadow where his swimming pool will not bother anyone. 



This policy of resettling nuisance beavers is building up the 

 population. Centuries of ruthless trapping have reduced our 

 one-time hordes of nearly half a billion to pitiful thousands. 

 Thanks to wise game management, you now can find beaver 

 workings on streams that haven't seen any since Indian days. 



Locating a leak in his precious dam is a beaver specialty. There 

 he has the super-sensitivity of a Geiger counter. When trappers 

 learned this, they created leaks and set their traps by them. 

 Beavers soon were dragging pieces of brush across those traps 

 before repairing the leaks. 



A beaver's choppers are so formidable that the Indians 

 mounted them on handles for cutting tools. With short, power- 

 ful strokes, a beaver can chop down a tree in about the time it 

 would take a man using a dull axe. 



Around a ton of limbs goes into the underwater winter food 

 cache for each adult. Aspen and poplar are favorites. Alder, 

 maple, lodgepole pine come next. A beaver will eat cedar and 

 the firs, but he thinks they're spinach. 



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