It takes a functioning ecosystem for the beavers to do their thing.


Here in western Washington man has altered the landscape so that in many areas the beaver can not find adequate food supply. They feed on the bark and inner bark of trees such as aspen, cottonwood, alder, willow, etc. and not on the conifers that are the base of the monoculture that is typical of industrial timber lands.

Historically the bulk largest coastal cutthroat were non-anadromous fish. Lowland lakes with spawning tributaries, oxbow sloughs and side channels and beaver ponds where the core of coastal cutthroat habitats. Prior to the introduction of exotic species in those habitats and land use changes many of those types of habitats would produce coastal cutthroat in excess of 24 inches (largest I ever saw was a 30 inch fish) with a few giants in excess of 10#s. The number of waters today that are capable of consistently producing such fish has been greatly reduced over the last 50 years.

Curt