Beaver are aquatic mammals weighing 18 to 27 kilograms. They live in family groups in lodges of sticks and mud constructed in the middle of shallow ponds created or deepened by the beaver's habit of constructing extensive dams to block the flow of water. Beaver were originally found in every part of Canada except north of the boreal forest. Safe from most natural enemies as a result of their size and habits, they were vulnerable to hunting by man. Before the coming of Europeans, Indians hunted beaver selectively for food and for pelts to be made into warm robes. This hunting had little apparent impact on beaver numbers or distribution. In the seventeenth century, as European demand for beaver fur grew, the animal was hunted intensively and exterminated progressively over much of its range in eastern Canada. The elimination of beaver had a consequential impact on other forms of wildlife which flourished in the environment created by beaver ponds and clearings in the forest. The illustration shows a fanciful eighteenth-century beaver hunt. An overpopulated beaver lodge is destroyed by native hunters using bows and arrows and guns against animals left defenseless by the destruction of their dam.
Courtesy: Picture Division, Public Archives of Canada (C-41881)
