May, 1922 
FOREST AND STREAM 
203 
THE CASE AGAINST THE BEAVER 
THEY HAVE INCREASED TO SUCH ALARMING PROPORTIONS IN THE 
ADIRONDACKS THAT THEY ARE FAST DESTROYING THE TROUT STREAMS 
T he conclusions arrived at in this 
article are the result of twelve 
years’ residence and some twenty 
summers passed within the Adi- 
rondack Forest Reserves of New York 
State. During that time I have seen the 
gradual decline of the trout fishing, and 
within the last few years I have seen, 
and seen with dismay, the almost total 
extinction of the trout in many waters. 
I have been constantly thinking why this 
should be, and I believe I can now point 
to the chief agency responsible for this 
sorry state of affairs. The few pairs of 
beavers, so harmlessly introduced into 
the Adirondacks some twenty years ago, 
have increased to such alarming propor- 
tions that they have become a serious 
menace to the trout streams. 
I thought for a good many years that 
the beaver were improving the fishing, 
but the work of the beaver is very in- 
sidious; while apparently improving, he 
is in reality destroying the fishing. When 
beaver first put a dam in a trout stream 
or river they make a pond varying in 
size from a few square rods to many 
acres in extent ; in this pond are enclosed 
sometimes quite a large number of trout 
and the usual amount of bait-fish that 
inhabit the stream. The dam makes what 
is generally known as a flow, which, in 
its main features, consists of the bed of 
the stream, fairly deep and a more or 
less expanse of shallow water on each 
side. This shallow water warms up un- 
der the rays of the sun very rapidly, and 
as the tree foliage dies it takes away the 
shade, thereby warming the water each 
year to a still higher temperature. Also, 
the vegetation, decaying more rapidly all 
the time, has the effect of polluting the 
water to a greater degree each year. 
For the time being the trout get a good 
deal of extra feed and grow rapidly. We 
go there a few years later and, getting a 
big catch, we give three cheers for the 
beaver which have made such good fish- 
ing possible; but if we were honest 
with ourselves we would allow that we 
had not done anything very wonderful, 
as any duffer can catch trout in a beaver 
flow when they are there. 
Now let us see what has happened 
since then. The year after the arrival 
of the original beavers they had several 
children who had to be provided for. 
The beavers’ idea of providing for their 
children consists in kicking them out ; so 
they proceeded either up or down the 
stream and built themselves a house and 
another dam. 
Now we will suppose that they went 
up the stream. What happened? The 
trout in the original pond had been get- 
ting along quite nicely because they had 
access up the stream and a good supply 
of cool water coming in ; directly the 
second dam was built they were cut off 
By A. B. BEAKBANE 
Beaver cutting 
from the cool water from above at the 
time they needed it most, namely, a dry, 
warm time, when water was low. 
A S a digression I ought to state here 
for the benefit of those of my readers 
who do not know the work of the beaver 
that the dam is built for the purpose of 
making a pond in which to float the pop- 
lar and alder timber to their houses, on 
the bark of which they live. 
After the timber in the flooded area 
was cut, if the contour of the land was 
favorable, which it generally is, as they 
have a good eye for this feature, they 
raised their dam, thereby flooding more 
and more ground until the dam in low 
water had a perpendicular height of 
from three to five or six feet and a dis- 
tance from the foot of the apron to open 
water above of from eight to fifteen feet, 
a distance which no trout could jump. 
Now we have seen that our trout in 
the original flow were prevented from 
going up the stream, so they had only 
one course to pursue. If there was no 
cold water coming into their flow, after 
the water got above a certain tempera- 
ture, viz., 65 degrees Fahrenheit, they 
had to either go down the stream, leap 
over the upper dam, which possibly they 
did the first year it was in, or die. 
These three things they could have 
done — go up, down or die. We will allow 
that for a few vears they were able to 
overcome the difficulties and live, but 
what has happened since then ? The 
beavers have been doubling in numbers 
each year and have built dam after dam. 
all the time increasing the height of the 
old ones, until they finally have the en- 
tire .stream blocked both up and down. 
As there are a lot of young beavers to 
be taken care of, they move off, trying to 
find another big stream where they can 
pursue their labors; but wherever they 
go they find the land and water pre- 
empted by other beavers, so they come 
back to the stream on which they were 
born and go up and down the banks, dam- 
ming up every little brook and trickle of 
cold water coming into it, so that in a 
day’s march you are many times hard 
put to it to get even a drink of cold 
water. iUeantime, what have become of 
the trout? In a good many instances 
they have been caught by fishermen; 
in some instances they have died. Mr. 
Charles \'andenburg, of Blue Mountain 
Lake, and myself, found large numbers 
of dead trout in various flows in one 
day’s fishing last .August. Mr. brank 
Wood, proprietor of the Cedar River 
House, in Hamilton County, informs me 
he found eight dead trout in a beaver 
flow in the Unknown pond stream, flow- 
ing into Cedar River. Four of these 
trout were over 12 inches long. In some 
instances the trout have found cold 
springs in the bottom of some of the 
flows and have survived. 
N OW we are approaching the crux of 
the matter: Why is there such a 
dearth of young trout in all these beaver 
flows? Among the guides and old fisher- 
men of the Adirondacks I constantly hear 
the question : “W'hcre have all the little 
fellows gone?” 
I propose to tell you where they have 
gone. In the 1920 report of the Conser- 
vation Commission appears these words : 
“After a few years it often happens that 
such ponds (beaver ponds) produce very 
few trout, Init if they contain minnows, 
chubs or other warm-water fishes, the 
latter become very numerous, consuming 
the food of the young _trout as well as 
the trout eggs and fry.” 
In all the beaver flows visited by me 
(others report the same condition) last 
vear, there were immense quantities of 
minnows, chubs, horned dace and. in a 
large majority of them, a great many 
small ])erch, sunfish and bass. As they 
are a warm-water fish they have natural- 
ly thrived in the large expanses of shal- 
low waters created by the heavers and 
have increased tremendously. .\nd they 
are all perfectly ravenous. I believe that 
here is where your trout have gone — all 
the fry eaten np by the hait fish. Here 
is an agency perfectly competent to ac- 
count for the facts. Of course, it will be 
only occasionally that we will catch bait 
fish with trout in them, as the bait fish 
probably outnumber the trout l.d69 to 1, 
(Coutiiiucd on pofje 2.56) 
