Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 5

"Last fall [1911, at Norwalk, Conn.] we had a good flight of woodc.o.c.k, and it is a shame the way they were slaughtered. I know of a number of cases where twenty were killed by one gun in the day, and heard of one case of fifty. This is all wrong, and means the end of the woodc.o.c.k, if continued. There is no doubt we need a bag limit on woodc.o.c.k, as much as on quail or partridge." ("Woodc.o.c.k" in _Forest and Stream_, Mar. 2, 1912.)

As far back as 1901, Dr. A.K. Fisher of the Biological Survey predicted that the woodc.o.c.k and wood-duck would both become extinct unless better protected. As yet, the better protection demanded has not materialized to any great extent.

Says Mr. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Ma.s.sachusetts, in his admirable "Special Report," p. 45:

"The woodc.o.c.k is decreasing all over its range in the East, and needs the strongest protection. Of thirty-eight Ma.s.sachusetts reports, thirty-six state that "woodc.o.c.k are decreasing," "rare" or "extinct,"

while one states that they are holding their own, and one that they are increasing slightly since the law was pa.s.sed prohibiting their sale."

Let not any honest American or Canadian sportsman lullaby himself into the belief that the woodc.o.c.k is safe from extermination. As sure as the world, it is _going_! The fact that a little pocket here or there contains a few birds does not in the slightest degree disprove the main fact. If the sportsmen of this country desire to save the seed stock of woodc.o.c.k, they must give it _everywhere_ five or ten-year close seasons, and _do it immediately_!

OUR Sh.o.r.e BIRDS IN GENERAL.--This group of game birds will be the first to be exterminated in North America as a _group_. Of all our birds, these are the most illy fitted to survive. They are very conspicuous, very unwary, easy to find if alive, and easy to shoot. Never in my life have any sh.o.r.e birds except woodc.o.c.k and snipe appealed to me as real game. They are too easy to kill, too trivial when killed, and some of them are too rank and fishy on the plate. As game for men I place them on a level with barnyard ducks or orchard turkeys. I would as soon be caught stealing a sheep as to be seen trying to shoot fishy yellow legs or little joke sandpipers for the purpose of feeding upon them. And yet, thousands of full-grown men, some of them six feet high, grow indignant and turn red in the face at the mention of a law to give all the sh.o.r.e-birds of New York a five-year close season.

But for all that, gentlemen of the gun, there are exactly two alternatives between which you shall choose:

(1) Either give the woodc.o.c.k of the eastern United States just _ten times_ the protection that it now has, or (2) bid the species a long farewell. If you elect to slaughter old _Philohela minor_ on the altar of Selfishness, then it will be in order for the millions of people who do not kill birds to say whether that proposal shall be consummated or not.

Read if you please Mr. W.A. McAtee's convincing pamphlet (Biological Survey, No. 79), on "Our Vanis.h.i.+ng Sh.o.r.e Birds," reproduced in full in Chapter XXIII. He says: "Throughout the eastern United States, sh.o.r.e birds are fast vanis.h.i.+ng. Many of them have been so reduced that _extermination seems imminent_. So averse to sh.o.r.e birds are present conditions [of slaughter] that the wonder is that any escape. All the sh.o.r.e birds of the United States are in great need of better protection.... Sh.o.r.e birds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers are 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. So great is their economic value that their retention in the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture."

And yet, here in New York state there are many men who think they "know," who indignantly scoff at the idea that our sh.o.r.e birds need a five-year close season to help save them from annihilation. The writer's appeal for this at a recent convention of the New York State Fish, Game and Forest League fell upon deaf ears, and was not even seriously discussed.

The sh.o.r.e-birds must be saved; and just at present it seems that the only persons who will do it are those who are _not_ sportsmen, and who never kill game! If the sportsmen persist in refusing to act, to them we must appeal.

Besides the woodc.o.c.k and snipe, the species that are most seriously threatened with extinction at an early date are the following:

SPECIES IN GREAT DANGER

Willet _Catoptrophorus semipalmatus_ Dowitcher _Macrorhamphus griseus_ Knot: Red-Breasted Sandpiper _Tryngites subruficollis_ Upland Plover _Bartramia longicauda_ Golden Plover _Charadrius dominicus_ Pectoral Sandpiper _Pisobia maculata_

Of these fine species, Mr. Forbush, whose excellent knowledge of the sh.o.r.e birds of the Atlantic coast is well worth the most serious consideration, says that the upland plover, or Bartramian sandpiper, "is in imminent danger of extinction. Five reports from localities where this bird formerly bred give it as nearing extinction, and four as extinct. This is one of the most useful of all birds in gra.s.s land, feeding largely on gra.s.shoppers and cutworms.... There is no difference of opinion in regard to the diminution of the sh.o.r.e birds; the reports from all quarters are the same. It is noteworthy that practically all observers agree that, considering all species, these birds have fallen off about 75 per cent within twenty-five to forty years, and that several species are nearly extirpated."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GRAY SQUIRREL, A FAMILIAR FRIEND WHEN PROTECTED]

In 1897 when the Zoological Society published my report on the "Extermination of Our Birds and Mammals," we put down the decrease in the volume of bird life in Ma.s.sachusetts during the previous fifteen years at twenty-seven per cent. The later and more elaborate investigations of Mr. Forbush have satisfactorily vindicated the accuracy of that estimate.

There are other North American birds that easily might be added to the list of those now on the road to oblivion; but surely the foregoing citations are sufficient to reveal the present desperate conditions of our bird life in general. Now the question is: What are the great American people going to do about it?

THE GRAY SQUIRREL.--The gray squirrel is in danger of extermination.

Although it is our most beautiful and companionable small wild animal, and really unfit for food, Americans have strangely elected to cla.s.s it as "game," and shoot it to death, _to eat_! And this in stall-fed America, in the twentieth century! Americans are the only white people in the world who eat squirrels. It would be just as reasonable, and no more barbarous, to kill domestic cats and eat them. Their flesh would taste quite as good as squirrel flesh and some of them would afford quite as good "sport."

Every intelligent person knows that in the United States the deadly shot-gun is rapidly exterminating every bird and every small mammal that is cla.s.sed as "game," and which legally may be killed, even during two months of the twelve. The market gunners slaughter ducks, grouse, sh.o.r.e birds and rabbits as if we were all starving.

The beautiful gray squirrel has clung to life in a few of our forests and wood-lots, long after most other wild mammals have disappeared; but throughout at least ninety-five per cent, of its original area, it is now extinct. During the past thirty years I have roamed the woods of my state in several widely separated localities,--the Adirondacks, Catskills, Berks.h.i.+res, western New York and elsewhere, and in all that time I have seen only _three_ wild gray squirrels outside of city parks.

Except over a very small total area, the gray squirrel is already gone from the wild fauna of New York State!

Do the well-fed people of America wish to have this beautiful animal entirely exterminated? Do they wish the woods to become wholly lifeless?

Or, do they desire to bring back some of the wild creatures, and keep them for their children to enjoy?

There is no wild mammal that responds to protection more quickly than the gray squirrel. In two years' time, wild specimens that are set free in city parks learn that they are safe from harm and become almost fearless. They take food from the hands of visitors, and climb into their arms. One of the most pleasing sights of the Zoological Park is the enjoyment of visitors, young and old, in "petting" our wild gray squirrels.

We ask the Boy Scouts of America to bring back this animal to each state where it belongs, by securing for it from legislatures and governors the perpetual closed seasons that it imperatively needs. It is not much to ask. This can be done by writing to members of the legislatures and requesting a suitable law. Such a request will be both right and reasonable; and three states have already granted it.

The gray squirrel is naturally the children's closest wild-animal friend. Surely every farmer boy would like to have colonies of gray squirrels around him, to keep him company, and furnish him with entertainment. A wood-lot without squirrels and chipmunks is indeed a lifeless place. For $20 anyone can restock any bit of woods with the most companionable and most beautiful tree-dweller that nature has given us.

The question now is, which will you choose--a gray squirrel colony to every farm, or lifeless desolation?

We ask every American to lend a hand to save Silver-Tail.

CHAPTER IV

EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMALS

When we pause and consider the years, the generations and the ages that Nature spends in the production of a high vertebrate species, the preservation of such species from extermination should seriously concern us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held fast and coerced to listen.

We are not discussing the animals of the Pleistocene, or the Eocene, or any period of the far-distant Past. We are dealing with species that have been ruthlessly, needlessly and wickedly destroyed by man during our own times; species that, had they been given a fair chance, would be alive and well to-day.

In reckless waste of blood and treasure, the nineteenth century has much for which to answer. Wars and pillage, fires, earthquakes and volcanoes are unhappily unavoidable. Like the poor of holy writ, we have them with us always. But the destruction of animal life is in a totally different category from the accidental calamities of life. It is deliberate, cold-blooded, persistent, and in its final stage, _criminal_! Worst of all, there is no limit to the devilish persistence of the confirmed destroyer, this side of the total extinction of species. No polar night is too cold, no desert inferno is too hot for the man who pursues wild life for commercial purposes. The rhytina has been exterminated in the far north, the elephant seals on Kerguelen are being exterminated in the far south, and midway, in the desert mountains of Lower California a fine species of mountain sheep is rapidly being shot into oblivion.

LARGE MAMMALS COMPLETELY EXTERMINATED

THE ARIZONA ELK, (_Cervus merriami_).--Right at our very door, under our very noses and as it were only yesterday, a well-defined species of American elk has been totally exterminated. Until recently the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico were inhabited by a light-colored elk of smaller size than the Wyoming species, whose antlers possessed on each side only one brow tine instead of two. The exact history of the blotting out of that species has not yet been written, but it seems that its final extinction occurred about 1901. Its extermination was only a routine incident of the devilish general slaughter of American big game that by 1900 had wiped out nearly everything killable over a large portion of the Rocky Mountain region and the Great Plains.

The Arizona elk was exterminated before the separate standing of the species had been discovered by naturalists, and before even _one_ skin had been preserved in a museum! In 1902 Mr. E.W. Nelson described the species from two male skulls, all the material of which he knew. Since that time, a third male skull, bearing an excellent pair of antlers, has been discovered by Mr. Ferdinand Kaegebehn, a member of the New York Zoological Society, and presented to our National Collection of Heads and Horns. It came from the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona, in 1884.

The species was first exterminated in the central and northern mountains of Arizona, probably twenty years ago, and made its last stand in northwestern New Mexico. Precisely when it became extinct there, its last abiding place, we do not know, but in time the facts may appear.

THE QUAGGA, (_Equus quagga_).--Before the days of Livingstone, Gordon-c.u.mming and Anderson, the gra.s.sy plains and half-forested hills of South Africa were inhabited by great herds of a wild equine species that in its markings was a sort of connecting link between the striped zebras and the stripeless wild a.s.ses. The quagga resembled a wild a.s.s with a few zebra stripes around its neck, and no stripes elsewhere.

There is no good reason why a mammal that is not in any one of the families regularly eaten by man should be cla.s.sed as a game animal.

White men, outside of the western border of the continent of Europe, do not eat horses; and by this token there is no reason why a zebra should be shot as a "game" animal, any more than a baboon. A big male baboon is dangerous; a male zebra is not.

Nevertheless, white men have elected to shoot zebras as game; and under this curse the unfortunate quagga fell to rise no more. The species was shot to a speedy death by sportsmen, and by the British and Dutch farmers of South Africa. It became extinct about 1875, and to-day there are only 18 specimens in all the museums of the world.

THE BLAUBOK, (_Hippotragus leucophaeus_).--The first of the African antelopes to become extinct in modern times was a species of large size, closely related to the roan antelope of to-day, and named by the early Dutch settlers of Cape Colony the blaubok, which means "blue-buck." It was snuffed out of existence in the year 1800, so quickly and so thoroughly that, like the Arizona elk, it very nearly escaped the annals of natural history. According to the careful investigations of Mr.

Graham Renshaw, there are only eight specimens in existence in all the museums of Europe. In general terms it may be stated that this species has been extinct for about a century.

DAVID'S DEER, (_Elaphurus davidia.n.u.s_).--We enter this species with those that are totally extinct, because this is true of it so far as its wild state is concerned. It is a deer nearly as large as the red deer of Europe, with 3-tined antlers about equal in total length to those of the red deer. Its most striking differential character is its _long tail_, a feature that among the deer of the world is quite unique.

Originally this species inhabited "northern Mongolia" (China), but in a wild state it became extinct before its zoological standing became known to the scientific world. The species was called to the attention of zoologists by a Roman Catholic missionary, called Father David, and when finally described it was named in his honor.

At the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900, there were about 200 specimens living in the imperial park of China, a short distance south of Pekin; but during the rebellion, all of them were killed and eaten, thus totally exterminating the species from Asia.

Fortunately, previous to that calamity (in 1894), the Duke of Bedford had by considerable effort and expenditure procured and established in his matchless park surrounding Woburn Abbey, England, a herd of eighteen specimens of this rarest of all deer. That nucleus has thriven and increased, until in 1910 it contained thirty-four head. Owing to the fact that all the living female specimens of this remarkable species are concentrated in one spot, and perfectly liable to be wiped out in one year by riot, war or disease, there is some cause for anxiety. The writer has gone so far as to suggest the desirability of starting a new herd of David's deer, at some point far distant from England, as an insurance measure against the possibility of calamity at Woburn.

Excepting two or three specimens in European zoological gardens that have been favored by the Duke of Bedford, there are no living specimens outside of Woburn Park.