Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 65

Of the game preserves in the South, I know one that is quite ideal. It is St. Vincent Island, near Apalachicola, Florida, in the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico. It was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Ray V. Pierce, and his guests kill perhaps one hundred ducks each year out of the thousands that flock to the ten big ponds that occupy the eastern third of the island. Into those ponds much good duck food has been introduced,--_Potamogeton pectinatus_ and _perfoliatus_. The area of the island is twenty square miles. Besides being a great winter resort for ducks, its sandy, pine-covered ridges and jungles of palms to and live oak afford fine haunts and feeding grounds for deer. Those jungles contain two species of white-tailed deer (_Odocoileus louisiana_ and _osceola_), and Dr. Pierce has introduced the Indian sambar deer and j.a.panese sika deer _(Cervus sika_), both of which are doing well. We are watching the progress of those big sambar deer with very keen interest, and it is to be recorded that already that species has crossed with the Louisiana white-tailed deer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF MARSH ISLAND AND ADJACENT WILD-FOWL PRESERVES]

During the autumn of 1912, public attention in the United States was for a time focused on the purchase of Marsh Island, Louisiana, by Mrs.

Russell Sage, and its permanent dedication to the cause of wild-life protection. This delightful event has brought into notice the Louisiana State Game Preserve of 13,000 acres near Marsh Island, and its hinterland (and water) of 11,000 acres adjoining, which const.i.tutes the Ward-McIlhenny Wild Fowl Preserve. These three great preserves taken together as they lie form a wild-fowl sanctuary of great size, and of great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all duck-shooting therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they shortly will be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger the imagination.

DUCK-SHOOTING "PRESERVES."--A ducking "preserve" is a large tract of land and water owned by a few individuals, or a club, for the purpose of preserving exclusively for themselves and their friends the best possible opportunities for killing large numbers of ducks and geese without interference. In no sense whatever are they intended to preserve or increase the supply of wild fowl. The real object of their existence is duck and goose slaughter. For example, the worst goose-slaughter story on record comes to us from the grounds of the Glenn County Club in California, whereon, as stated elsewhere, two men armed with automatic shotguns killed 218 geese in one hour, and bagged a total of 452 in one day.

I shall not attempt to give any list of the so-called ducking "preserves." The word "preserve," when applied to them, is a misnomer.

Thirteen states have these incorporated slaughtering-grounds for ducks and geese, the greatest number being in California, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia. California has carried the ducking-club idea to the limit where it is claimed that it const.i.tutes an abuse. Dr. Palmer says that one or two of the club preserves on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley contain upward of _40 square miles, or 25,000 acres each_! With considerable asperity it is now publicly charged (in the columns of _The Examiner_ of San Francisco) that for the unattached sportsmen there is no longer any duck-shooting to be had in California, because all the good ducking-grounds are owned and exclusively controlled by clubs. In many states the private game preserves are a source of great irritation, and many have been attacked in courts of law.[N]

[Footnote N: "Private Game Preserves and their Future in the United States," by T.S. Palmer, United States Department of Agriculture, 1910.]

But I am not sorrowing over the woes of the unattached duck-hunter, or in the least inclined to champion his cause against the ducking-club member. As slaughterers and exterminators of wild-fowl, rarely exercising mercy under ridiculous bag-limits, they have both been too heedless of the future, and one is just as bad for the game as the other. If either of them favored the game, I would be on his side; but I see no difference between them. They both kill right up to the bag-limit, as often as they can; and that is what is sweeping away all our feathered game.

Curiously enough, the angry unattached duck-hunters of California are to-day proposing to have revenge on the duck-clubbers by _removing all restrictions on the sale of game_! This is on the theory that the duckless sportsmen of the State of California would like to _buy_ dead ducks and geese for their tables! It is a novel and original theory, but the sane people of California never will enact it into law. It would be a step just _twenty years backward_!

THE PUBLIC vs. THE PRIVATE GAME PRESERVE.--Both the executive and the judiciary branches of our state governments will in the future be called upon with increasing frequency to sit in judgment on this case.

Conditions about us are rapidly changing. The precepts of yesterday may be out of date and worthless tomorrow. By way of introspection, let us see what principles of equity toward Man and Nature we would lay down as the basis of our action if we were called to the bench. Named in logical sequence they would be about as follows:

1. Any private game "preserve" that is maintained chiefly as a slaughter-ground for wild game, either birds or mammals, may become detrimental to the interests of the people at large.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EGRETS AND HERONS IN SANCTUARY ON MARSH ISLAND]

2. It is not necessarily the duty of any state to provide for the maintenance of private death-traps for the wholesale slaughter of _migratory_ game.

3. An oppressive monopoly in the slaughter of migratory game is detrimental to the interests of the public at large, the same as any other monopoly.

4. Every de facto game preserve, maintained for the preservation of wild life rather than for its slaughter, is an inst.i.tution beneficial to the public at large, and therefore ent.i.tled to legal rights and privileges above and beyond all which may rightly be accorded to the so-called "preserves" that are maintained as killing-grounds.

5. The law may justly discriminate between the actual game preserve and the mere killing-ground.

6. Whenever a killing-ground becomes a public burden, it may be abated, the same as any other public infliction.

In private game preserves the time has arrived when lawmakers and judges must begin to apply the blood-test, and separate the true from the false. And at every step, _the welfare of the wild life involved_ must be given full consideration. No men, nor body of men, should be permitted to practice methods that spell extermination.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

BRITISH GAME PRESERVES IN AFRICA AND AUSTRALIA

This brief chapter is offered as an object-lesson to the world at large.

In the early days of America, the founders of our states and territories gave little heed, or none at all, to the preservation of wild life. Even if they thought of that duty, undoubtedly they felt that the game would always last, and that they had no time for such sentimental side issues as the making of game preserves. They were coping with troubles and perplexities of many kinds, and it is not to be wondered at that up to forty years ago, real game protection in America went chiefly by default.

In South Africa, precisely the same conditions have prevailed until recent times. The early colonists were kept so busy shooting lions and making farms that not one game preserve was made. If any men can be excused from the work and worry of preserving game, and making preserves, it is those who spend their lives pioneering and state-building in countries like Africa. Men who continually have to contend with disease, bad food, rains, insect pests, dangerous wild beasts and native cussedness may well claim that they have troubles enough, without going far into campaigns to preserve wild animals in countries where animals are plentiful and cheap. It is for this reason that the people of Alaska can not be relied upon to preserve the Alaskan game. They are busy with other things that are of more importance to them.

In May, 1900, representatives of the great powers owning territory in Africa held a conference in the interests of the wild-animal life of that continent. As a result a Convention was signed by which those powers bound themselves "to make provision for the prevention of further undue destruction of wild game." The principles laid down for universal observance were as follows:

1. Sparing of females and immature animals.

2. The establishment of close seasons and game sanctuaries.

3. Absolute protection of rare species.

4. Restrictions on export for trading purposes of skins, horns, tusks, etc.

5. Prohibition of the use of pits, snares and game traps.

The brave and hardy men who are making for the British people a grand empire in Africa probably are greater men than far-distant people realize. To them, the white man's burden of game preservation is accepted as all in the day's work. A mere handful of British civil officers, strongly aided by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the British Empire, have carved out and set aside a great chain of game preserves reaching all the way from Swaziland and the Transvaal to Khartoum. Taken either collectively or separately, it represents grand work, characteristic of the greatest colonizers on earth. Those preserves are worthy stones in the foundation of what one day will be a great British empire in Africa. The names of the men who proposed them and wrought them out should, in some way, be imperishably connected with them as their founders, as the least reward that Posterity can bestow.

In Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton's fine work, "Animal Life in Africa,"[O]

the author has been at much pains to publish an excellent series of maps showing the locations of the various British game preserves in Africa, and the map published herewith has been based chiefly on that work. It is indeed fortunate for the wild life of Africa that it has today so powerful a champion and exponent as this author, the warden of the Transvaal Game Preserves.

[Footnote O: Published by Heinemann, London, 1912.]

Events move so rapidly that up to this date no one, so far as I am aware, has paused long enough to make and publish an annotated list of the African game preserves. Herein I have attempted to _begin_ that task myself, and I regret that at this distance it is impossible for me to set down under the several t.i.tles the names of the men who made these preserves possible, and actually founded them.

To thoughtful Americans I particularly commend this list as a showing of the work of men who have not waited until the game had been _practically exterminated_ before creating sanctuaries in which to preserve it. In view of these results, how trivial and small of soul seems the mercenary efforts of the organized wool-growers of Montana to thwart our plan to secure a paltry fifteen square miles of gra.s.s lands for the rugged and arid Snow Creek Antelope Preserve that is intended to help save a valuable species from quick extermination.

At this point I must quote the views of a high authority on the status of wild life and game preserves in Africa. The following is from Major Stevenson-Hamilton's book.

"It is a remarkable phenomenon in human affairs how seldom the experience of others seems to turn the scale of action. There are, I take it, very few farmers, in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, or the Transvaal, who would not be glad to see an adequate supply of game upon their land. Indeed, the writer is constantly dealing with applications as to the possibility of reintroducing various species from the game reserves to private farms, and only the question of expense and the difficulty of transport have, up to the present, prevented this being done on a considerable scale. When, therefore, the relatively small populations of such protectorates as are still well stocked with game are heard airily discussing the advisability of getting rid of it as quickly as possible, one realizes how often vain are the teachings of history, and how well-nigh hopeless it is to quote the result of similar action elsewhere. It remains only to trust that things may be seen in truer perspective ere it is too late, and that those in whose temporary charge it is may not cast recklessly away one of nature's most splendid a.s.sets, one, moreover, which once lightly discarded, can never by any possibility, be regained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME PRESERVES OF AFRICA The Numbers Refer to Corresponding Numbers in the Text]

"It is idle to say that the advance of civilization must necessarily mean the total disappearance of all wild animals. This is one of those glib fallacies which flows only too readily from unthinking lips.

Civilization in its full sense--not the advent of a few scattered pioneers--of course, implies their restriction, especially as regards purely gra.s.s-feeding species, within certain definite bounds, both as regards numbers and sanctuaries. But this is a very different thing from wholesale destruction, that a few more or less deserving individuals may receive some small pecuniary benefit, or gratify their taste for slaughter to the detriment of everyone else who may come after. _The fauna of an empire is the property of that empire as a whole, and not of the small portion of it where the animals may happen to exist; and while full justice and encouragement must be given to the farmer and pioneer, neither should be permitted to entirely demolish for his own advantage resources which, strictly speaking, are not his own_."--("Animal Life in Africa." p. 24.)

AFRICAN GAME PRESERVES

BRITISH EAST AFRICA:

1.[P] _The Athi Plains Preserve_.--This is situated between the Uganda Railway and the boundary of German East Africa. Its northern boundary is one mile north of the railway track. It is about 215 miles long east and west by 105 miles from north to south, and its area is about 13,000 square miles. It is truly a great preserve, and worthy of the plains fauna that it is specially intended to perpetuate.

[Footnote P: These numbers refer to corresponding numbers on the map of Africa.]

2. _The Jubaland Preserve_.--This preserve lies northwest of Mount Kenia. Its southwestern corner is near Lake Baringo, the Laikipia Escarpment is its western boundary up to Mt. Nyiro, and from that point its northern boundary runs 225 miles to Marsabit Lake. From that point the boundary runs south-by-west to the Guaso Nyiro River, which forms the eastern half of the southern boundary. Its total area appears to be about 13,000 square miles.

In addition to the two great preserves described above the government of British East Africa has established on the Uasin Gishu Plateau a centrally located sanctuary for elands, roan antelopes and hippopotamii.

There is also a small special rhinoceros preserve about fifty miles southeastward of Nairobi, around Kiu station, on the railway.

EGYPTIAN SUDAN:

3. A great nameless sanctuary for wild life exists on the eastern bank of the Nile, comprising the whole territory between the main stream, the Blue Nile and Abyssinia. Its length (north and south) is 215 miles, and its width is about 125 miles; which means a total area of about 26,875 square miles. Natives and others living within this sanctuary may hunt therein--if they can procure licenses.