Conservation measures were few and far between during that period, and the number of officers available to enforce any laws was correspondingly low. These factors combined to put the wood duck's survival as a species in grave peril, and as a result, the wood duck had virtually disappeared by the turn of the 20th century.

THE BEAVER TALE
Oddly enough, another aspect of the humans' invasion that greatly affected the wood duck population was the fur trade. One of the most heavily desired pelts was that of the beaver. The rise and fall of the wood duck population in a given area can be directly connected to the presence of beavers, and the degree of trapping pressure put upon them.

Before the European entry into North America, beavers were hunted and trapped by Native Americans, providing a staple source of meat and fur. However, from the 1600s through the 1800s, European settlers heavily exploited the beaver population. Beaver furs were valuable commodities, and the pelts were even used as currency in those days. In fact, the first westward expansion of settlers into frontier regions resulted primarily from growing demand for beaver pelts.

Large trading companies shipped the pelts throughout the world for use in making coats and felted beaver pelt hats. The oldest and largest of the North American trading companies was Hudson's Bay Company. In fact, Hudson's Bay Company was the first commercial corporation established in North America and was at one time the largest landowner in the world; it continues in business today.

Hudson's Bay was established in the late 1660s after two French-born fur-traders convinced some Boston businessmen and their British backers that profit was to be made in the fur-trading business. Beaver pelts were soon being traded for axe heads, knives, fishhooks, muskets, ammunition, gunpowder, cloth, linens, jewelry, brandy and rum.

As important as were the economic benefits of the fur trade, the political benefits were also substantial. Fur trading became an avenue for creating alliances and maintaining good relations with indigenous peoples. Those supplying better pelts and doing business in a reliable manner became allies in times of upheaval and war.

All of which is to point out that beavers became the prime target of virtually every trapper in North America, including those in the Southeast. With all the economic and political benefits to be gained from the trade in beaver pelts, the species became quite scarce across its entire natural range by the late 1800s, especially so east of the Mississippi River. The expansion of agriculture and the clearing of land also contributed to the depletion of the beavers' natural habitat.

BEAVER RECOVERY
Beaver restocking programs were introduced in the 1930s and '40s. Animals were purchased from states that still had native populations and released into areas whose populations had diminished but whose habitat was intact. The beavers have since made a healthy comeback, and with its recovery and the revival of its crafty engineering, wood ducks also began to show up where beavers were actively maintaining dams.

A study performed on beavers compared two sites in which beaver colonies existed. At one site, beavers were trapped, while at the other, trapping was prohibited. At the former, beaver density remained constant and the number of new dam sites increased very little, while at the latter, the density of the beaver colonies doubled in a four-year period, and the number of dams increased dramatically.

Of the numerous species of waterfowl that prospered with the increase of beaver dams, wood ducks were foremost. Observers found that woodies followed the beavers' advance, much preferring new, active ponds to abandoned ones. Another study showed that wood ducks were found at 52 percent of active beaver ponds, and that only 21 percent of abandoned ponds were occupied by wood ducks.