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October· ovember
1970
The
PLAIN TRUTH
Wíde World
Photo
Beaver dam (left) is
curved
into stream flow for odded strength against
onrush ing waters. Beavers hove been using such principies for centuries.
Long Sault Dam of New York (right) utilizes this same engineering principie.
broken. And as always, when physical
laws of nature are broken, man suffers
the conseguences.
In the eyes of its planners, the Aswan
Dam represented a solution to Egypt's
growing food crisis. But before com–
pletion in
1970,
Egypt's burgeoning
population was already demanding
more food than the newly productive
laods irrigated from Lake Nasser can
supply.
Many people today are seeing that
big dams like the Aswan for irrigation
are not the solution to the world's food
problems. The solution is found in
our free educational booklet
Famine -
Can We Survive?
Write for your free
copy.
It
makes plain the problem and
shows the
JOiltfioll
to the world food
crisis.
Nature's
Oam
Builder
It
is a rather sad commentary on our
technological age that man's attempt to
harness power, control Aoods, and
provide irrigation has been a costly
intrusion into the balance of nature.
On the other hand, there is the bea–
ver, a dam builder whose dams are
really
beneficia/
-
for the present and
for future generations. In fact, the
beaver is characterized as having the
ability to build a
petject
dam!
And even though this construction
engineer weighs only 50 pounds or so,
and waddles along on 4 legs, he's com–
pletely qualified for the job at hand.
In very special ways, he's qualified.
For example, his metabolism allows him
t(J swim undcrwater for one-half mile,
and hold his breath
15
minutes in emer–
gency, though normally five minutes is
the limit. And four chisel teeth which
can fell a 5-inch aspen in
5
to
L5
minutes.
"But wait a minute," you're saying.
"Man-made dams may have their prob-
23
Jems, but beaver dams are nothing like
the great dams man can build."
Yes, correct. The beaver's dams are
much different from man's big dams.
For sorne very good reasons. In fact, it
is thi s
diffemtce
which makes the bea–
ver dam important. Coosider the fol·
lowing guestions.
Which dams - man's or beaver's -
are really the
mo1t
efficient,
pound for
pound? The most beneficia!? Has man
really made any engineering improve–
ments over beaver dams? What are the
henefits
of beaver dams?
Beavers Build Land
Take land building, for example.
Beaver dams build up the land. Man's
big dams in many cases inundate thou–
sands of acres of already productive
farm lands aJong river bottoms. 1l1e
beavcr is instrumental in
creation
of rich
soil whcre formerly only rocky stream
beds existed.
There was the case of a New York
truck farmer who dug a drainage ditch
across his onion patch. He was shocked
to find rich loamy soi
1
12
to
15
feet
deep! He couldn't understand how all
that rich soil got there - and why it
was so deep. As the ditch reached the
end of his field, diggers ran into the
remains of an ancient beaver dam.
Sticks were dug up which were easily
defined as beaver cuttings.
Immediately the answer was dear.
Years, possibly centuries earl ier, a bea·
ver colony had dammed a stream. Slowly
over the years, the pond behind the dam
gradually filled up with silt. As the
pond got shallower, the beavers raised
the dam. This went oo until eventually
it was no longer practica! for the bea–
vers to raise the dam further. They sim–
ply abandoned the dam, moved on and
cbose another site to start all over again .
Once abandoned and untended, the old
dam broke, leaving behind the rich silt.
Here grasses quickly sprung up and a
rich meadow was formed. Ycars later
the New York truck farmer bought the
land and planted his crops. And much
to his benefit, the beavers had actually
created
a rich plot of earth for him.
This is no isolated example. Natu–
ralists find that beavers have created rich
(Text contimted
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page 26-
photos
011
pageJ 24 and 25)