The beaver is North America’s largest rodent. As such, it is a close relative of two creatures that are not held in particularly high regard by most connoisseurs of wildlife, the porcupine and the rat. Even so, the beaver has several qualities that endear it to people: ii is monogamous and lives in a family unit; it is gentle and clean; it is absolutely industrious.

The beaver's legendary capacity for hard work has produced some astonishing results. In British Columbia, for example, one ambitious creature felled a cottonwood tree that was 11.1 feet tall and more than five feet thick. In New Hampshire, beavers constructed a darn that was three fourths of a mile long and the body of water it created contained no fewer than 40 lodges In Colorado, beavers were responsible for the appearance of a canal that was a yard deep and ran for 7511 feet. Each adult beaver in Massachusetts, according to one researcher’s calculations, cuts down more than a ton of wood every year.

Beavers appear to lead exemplary lives. But the beaver's penchant for building dams, lodges, and canals has got it into a lot of hot water lately. People who fish in the Midwest and New England are complaining about beaver dams that spoil streams for trout and. in the Southeast, loggers object whenever the animals flood out valuable stands of commercial timber. But some beaver experts champion a more charitable view. Historically, they say, this creature's impact on the environment has been tremendously significant, and its potential as a practical conservation resource is receiving more and more attention.