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Show James O. Pattie caught 250 beaver in 2 weeks on the San Francisco River of Arizona and New Mexico. 29 The San Francisco is a tributary of the Gila River, which has but a meager stream flow today. Other trappers, including the famous Bill Williams, also found beaver abundant along the Gila and Salt Rivers. Although beaver trappers had little success in the desolate gorges of the Colorado River in southern Utah, they found thousands of the animals in the more hospitable headwaters of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Individual trappers in the Rocky Mountains sometimes took as many as 500 beaver per year. However, the beaver's fate was like that of the buffalo, antelope, elk, bighorn, sage hen, turkey, grouse, and waterfowl. Though their original numbers had been immense, and though for untold thousands of years they had flourished in the presence of their natural enemies, the so- called predators, yet against the attacks of civilized man they held out less than 25 years before being brought to virtual or complete extinction. By 1840, the beaver market went into a decline from which it never recovered. Recent conservation measures have brought about good recovery in some areas, but the profound changes in the land brought about by human settlement and development make it impossible for the animals ever to regain their primitive numbers. Almost as much a symbol of the wilderness of long ago as the buffalo is the wild turkey. In 1824, there were thousands of them in practically all the forested mountains and foothills of Arizona, New Mexico, 30 and southern Colorado ( as well as in similar areas adjacent to the Colorado River Basin). In Arizona, they even came down from the mountains to the banks of the San Pedro River, which was thickly overgrowTn with giant mesquites at that time, and ventured into the desert far enough to feed on the fruits of the saguaro. 31 Wild turkeys now seldom wander from the ponderosa pine forests of the Transition Zone, and even in that zone they have been reduced to a fraction of their original numbers. In Texas, it has been shown that overgrazing eliminates many food plants required by wild turkeys. 32 29 Seton, 1929, IV, p. 448. 30 Bailey, 1928, p. 231; Bendire, 1892, p. 116. 31Bendire, 1892, p. 119. 32 Taylor, 1944, p. 234. The chronicle of disappearance and deterioration throughout the Colorado River Basin since 1825 would be long if given in full, although the region has lost less of its primitive resources than have many other parts of the United States. To gloss over these great losses of the past would be futile, for the forces that brought about many of them continue almost unchecked even today. The only hope lies in recognizing them, in learning their causes, and in actively working to stop them n ow. An account of some of these causes follows, with an indication of remedial measures. Changes caused by man.- 1. Farming. A fertile environment produces large numbers of plants and animals, but an infertile one can support few or none. This fundamental biological rule governs practically all living creatures, including man. It goes far toward explaining the widespread disappearance of wildlife following human occupation of the country. The plains, foothills, and lower valleys- not the cold mountains or the rainless deserts- have a virtual monopoly on the moisture, warmth, and deep, fertile soils that are necessary to produce abundant vegetation and other raw materials required by the higher forms of life. An abundant vegetation is required to feed the billions of insects, worms, and other invertebrate creatures that support the hordes of small birds and rodents. These, in turn, make possible the existence of such valuable fur bearers as the raccoon, marten, and the rare fisher, and the picturesque hawks and eagles which act as a " gov- lilplw IMIilllillw lipllillllllllll^ Figure 32.- Mule deer. 61 |