Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 41

White-rumped sandpiper _(Pisobia fuscicollis)_.

Dowitcher _(Macrorhamphus griseus_).

Stilt sandpiper _(Micropalama himantopus)_.

Red-backed sandpiper _(Pelidna alpina sakhalina)_.

Robin snipe _(Tringa canutus)_.

Purple sandpiper _(Arquatella maritima_).

Killdeer _(Oxyechus vociferus)_.

The economic record of the sh.o.r.ebirds deserves nothing but praise. These birds injure no crop, but on the contrary feed upon many of the worst enemies of agriculture. It is worth recalling that their diet includes such pests as the Rocky Mountain locust and other injurious gra.s.shoppers, the army worm, cutworms, cabbage worms, cotton worm, cotton cutworm, boll weevil, clover leaf weevil, clover root curculio, rice weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn leaf-beetles, cuc.u.mber beetles, white grubs, and such foes of stock as the Texas fever tick, horseflies, and mosquitoes. Their warfare on crayfishes must not be overlooked, nor must we forget the more personal debt of grat.i.tude we owe them for preying upon mosquitoes. They are the most important bird enemies of these pests known to us.

Sh.o.r.ebirds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers is left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination.

In the way of protection a beginning has been made, and a continuous close season until 1915 has been established for the following birds: The killdeer, in Ma.s.sachusetts and Louisiana; the upland plover, in Ma.s.sachusetts, and Vermont; and the piping plover in Ma.s.sachusetts. But, considering the needs and value of these birds, this modic.u.m of protection is small indeed.

The above-named species are not the only ones that should be exempt from persecution, for all the sh.o.r.ebirds of the United States are in great need of better protection. They should be protected, first, to save them from the danger of extermination, and, second, because of their economic importance. So great, indeed, is their economic value, that their retention on the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture.--(End of the circular.)

The following appeared in the _Zoological Society Bulletin_, for January, 1909, from Richard Walter Tomalin, of Sydney, N.S.W.:

"In the subdistricts of Robertson and Kangaloon in the Illawarra district of New South Wales, what ten years ago was a waving ma.s.s of English c.o.c.ksfoot and rye gra.s.s, which had been put in gradually as the dense vine scrub was felled and burnt off, is now a barren desert, and nine families out of every ten which were renting properties have been compelled to leave the district and take up other lands. This is through the grubs having eaten out the gra.s.s by the roots. Ploughing proved to be useless, as the grubs ate out the gra.s.s just the same. Whilst there recently I was informed that it took three years from the time the grubs were first seen until to-day, to accomplish this complete devastation;.

in other words, three years ago the grubs began work in the beautiful country of green mountains and running streams.

"The birds had all been ruthlessly shot and destroyed in that district, and I was amazed at the absence of bird life. The two sub-districts I have mentioned have an area of about thirty square miles, and form a table-land about 1200 feet above sea level."

The same kind of common sense that teaches men to go in when it rains, and keep out of fiery furnaces, teaches us that as a business proposition it is to man's interest to protect the birds. Make them plentiful and keep them so. When we strike the birds, we hurt ourselves.

The protection of our insect-eating and seed-eating birds is a cash proposition,--protect or pay.

Were I a farmer, no gun ever should be fired on my premises at any bird save the English sparrow and the three bad hawks. Any man who would kill my friend Bob White I would treat as an enemy. The man who would shoot and eat any of the song-birds, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, or sh.o.r.ebirds that worked for me, I would surely molest.

_Every farmer should post every foot of his lands, cultivated and not cultivated_. The farmer who does not do so is his own enemy; and he needs a guardian.

At this stage of wild life extermination, it is impossible to make our bird-protection laws too strict, or too far-reaching. The remnant of our birds should be protected, with clubs and guns if necessary. All our sh.o.r.e birds should be accorded a ten-year close season. Don't ask the gunners whether they will _agree_ to it or not. _Of course they will not agree to it,--never_! But our duty is clear,--to go ahead and _do it_!

CHAPTER XXIV

GAME AND AGRICULTURE; AND DEER AS A FOOD SUPPLY

As a state and county a.s.set, the white-tailed deer contains possibilities that as yet seem to be ignored by the American people as a whole. It is quite time to consider that persistent, prolific and toothsome animal.

The proposition that large herds of horned game can not becomingly roam at will over farms and vineyards worth one hundred dollars per acre, affords little room for argument. Generally speaking, there is but one country in the world that breaks this well-nigh universal rule; and that country is India. On the plains between and adjacent to the Ganges and the Jumna, for two thousand years herds of black-buck, or sasin antelope, have roamed over cultivated fields so thickly garnished with human beings that to-day the rifle-shooting sportsman stands in hourly peril of bagging a five-hundred-rupee native every time he fires at an antelope.

Wherever rich agricultural lands exist, the big game must give way,--_from those lands_. To-day the bison could not survive in Iowa, eastern Nebraska or eastern Kansas, any longer than a Shawnee Indian would last on the Bowery. It was foredoomed that the elk, deer, bear and wild turkey should vanish from the rich farming regions of the East and the middle West.

To-day in British East Africa lions are being hunted with dogs and shot wholesale, because they are a pest to the settlers and to the surviving herds of big game. At the same time, the settlers who are striving to wrest the fertile plains of B.E.A, from the domain of savagery declare that the African buffalo, the zebra, the kongoni and the elephant are public nuisances that must be suppressed by the rifle.

Even the most ardent friend of wild life must admit that when a settler has laboriously fenced his fields, and plowed and sowed, only to have his whole crop ruined in one night by a herd of fence-breaking zebras, the event is sufficient to abrade the nerves of the party most in interest. While I take no stock in stories of dozens of "rogue"

elephants that require treatment with the rifle, and of grown men being imperiled by savage gazelles, we admit that there are times when wild animals can make nuisances of themselves. Let us consider that subject now.

WILD ANIMAL NUISANCES.--Complaints have come to me, at various times, of great destruction of lambs by eagles; of trout by blue herons; of crops (on Long Island) by deer; of pears destroyed by birds, and of valuable park trees by beavers that chop down trees not wisely but too well. I do not, however, include in this category any cherries eaten by robins, or orioles, or jays; for they are of too small importance to consider in this court.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FOOD SUPPLY OF WHITE-TAILED DEER The Killing of the Does was Wrong]

To meet the legitimate demands for the abatement of unbearable wild-animal nuisances, I recommend the enactment of a law similar to Section 158 of the Game laws of New York, which provides for the safe and legitimate abatement of unbearable wild creatures as follows:

Section 158. _Power to Take Birds and Quadrupeds_. In the event that any species of birds protected by the provisions of section two hundred and nineteen of this article, or quadrupeds protected by law, shall at any time, in any locality, become destructive of private or public property, the commission shall have power in its discretion to direct any game protector, or issue a permit to any citizen of the state, to take such species of birds or quadrupeds and dispose of the same in such manner as the commission may provide. Such permit shall expire within four months after the date of issuance.

This measure should be adopted by every state that is troubled by too many, or too aggressive, wild mammals or birds.

But to return to the subject of big game and farming. We do not complain of the disappearance of the bison, elk, deer and bear from the farms of the United States and Canada. The pa.s.sing of the big game from all such regions follows the advance of real civilization, just so surely and certainly as night follows day.

But this vast land of ours is not wholly composed of rich agricultural lands; not by any means. There are millions of acres of forest lands, good, bad and indifferent, worth from nothing per acre up to one hundred dollars or more. There are millions of acres of rocky, brush-covered mountains and hills, wholly unsuited to agriculture, or even horticulture. There are other millions of acres of arid plains and arboreal deserts, on which nothing but thirst-proof animals can live and thrive. The South contains vast pine forests and cypress swamps, millions of acres of them, of which the average northerner knows less than nothing.

We can not stop long enough to look it up, but from the green color on our national map that betokens the forest reserves, and from our own personal knowledge of the deserts, swamps, barrens and rocks that we have seen, we make the estimate that _fully one-third_ of the total area of the United States is incapable of supporting the husbandman who depends for his existence upon tillage of the soil. People may talk and write about "dry farming" all they please, but I wish to observe that from Dry-Farming to Success is a long shot, with many limbs in the way.

When it rains sufficiently, dry farming is a success; but otherwise it is not; and we heartily wish it were otherwise.

The logical conclusion of our land that is utterly unfit for agriculture is a great area of land available for occupancy by valuable wild animals. Every year the people of the United States are wasting uncountable millions of pounds of venison, because we are neglecting our opportunities for producing it practically without cost. Imagine for a moment bestowing upon land owners the ability to stock with white-tailed and Indian sambar deer all the wild lands of the United States that are suitable for those species, and permitting only bucks over one year of age to be shot. With the does even reasonably protected, the numerical results in annual pounds of good edible flesh fairly challenges the imagination.

About six years ago, Mr. C.C. Worthington's deer, in his fenced park, at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, became so numerous and so burdensome that he opened his fences and permitted about one thousand head to go free.

We are losing each year a very large and valuable a.s.set in the intangible form of a million hardy deer that we might have raised but did not! Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all the grown men now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and law-breakers, or else they are liable to become so to-morrow. If you doubt it, try risking your new umbrella unprotected in the next mixed company of one hundred men that you encounter, in such a situation that it will be easy to "get away" with it.

We could raise two million deer each year on our empty wild lands; but without fences it would take half a million real game-wardens, on duty from dawn until dark, to protect them from destructive slaughter. At present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens.[J] The states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put into the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect her game from surrept.i.tious slaughter. The surplus of "personal liberty"

in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does ardently believe in the divine right of settlers,--to reach out and take any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy.

[Footnote J: Of this force, there are only 1,200 salaried wardens. The most of those who serve without salaries naturally render but little continuous or regular service.]

WILD MEAT AS A FOOD SUPPLY.--We hear much these days about the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. With coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going-up--heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not rich to arouse and take thought for the morrow. _What are we going to do about it_? The tariff on the coa.r.s.er necessities of life is now booked to come down; but what about the fresh meat supply?

I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from Key West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild, practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and mountains that could produce two million deer each year, without deducting $50,000 a year from the wealth of the country. I grant that in the total number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million deer per annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually within the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those deer. As I will presently show by doc.u.mentary records, every one of those individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be compensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer account an enormous annual balance.

Stop for a moment, you enterprising and restless men and women who travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles of unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman windows in the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White Mountain region, the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf States, the forests of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of northern Minnesota, and every state of the Rocky Mountain region. Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those forests would make any visible impression upon them. That would be only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over populated; and they would produce _two million killable deer each year_!

Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places in the Rocky Mountains, and were killed in Montana. Even the natives had not dreamed there were so many available; and they were slaughtered not wisely but too ill. It is not right that six members of one family should "hog" twelve deer in one season. At present no deer supply can stand such slaughter.

a.s.suming that the people of the United States _could_ be educated into the idea of so conserving deer that they could draw two million head per year from the general stock, what would it be worth?

It is not very difficult to estimate the value of a deer, when the whole animal can be utilized. In various portions of the United States, deer vary in size, but I shall take all this into account, and try to strike a fair average. In some sections, where deer are large and heavy, a full-grown buck is easily worth twenty-five dollars. Let him who doubts it, try to replace those generous pounds of flesh with purchased beef and mutton and veal, and see how far twenty-five dollars will go toward it. Every man who is a householder knows full well how little meat one dollar will buy at this time.

I think that throughout the United States as a whole every full-grown deer, male or female contains on an average ten dollars worth of good meat. I know of one large preserve which annually sells its surplus of deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City (doubtless in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the market at one dollar per pound!

Two million deer at $10 each mean $20,000,000. The licenses for the killing of two million deer should cost one million men one dollar each; and that would pay 1,666 new game wardens each fifty dollars per month, all the year round. The damages that would need to be paid to farmers, on account of crops injured by deer, would be so small that each county could take care of its own cases, from its own treasury, as is done in the State of Vermont.

There are certain essentials to the realization of a dream of two million deer per year that are absolutely required. They are neither obscure nor impossible.

Each state and each county proposing to stock its vacant woods with deer must resolutely educate its own people in the necessity of playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving every man and every deer a square deal. This is _not_ impossible! Not as a general thing, even though it may be so in some specially lawless communities. If the _leading men_ of the state and the county will take this matter seriously in hand, it can be done in two years' time. The American people are not insensible to appeals to reason, when those appeals are made by their own "home folks." The governors, senators, a.s.semblymen, judges, mayors and justices of the peace could, _if they would_, make a campaign of education and appeal that would result in the creation of an immense volume of free wild food in every state that possesses wild lands.