Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and PreservationHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
History
Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Game-laws -- United States; Wildlife conservation -- United States
OTHER MOUNTAIN SHEEP.--In northern British Columbia, north of Iskoot
Lake, there lies a tremendous region, extending to the Arctic Ocean, and
comprehending the whole area between the Rocky Mountain continental
divide and the waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end of this
great wilderness ranges the black mountain sheep, and throughout the
remainder, with many sheepless intervals, is scattered the white
mountain sheep.
Owing to the immensity of this wilderness, the well-nigh total lack of
railroads and also of navigable waters, excepting the Yukon, it will not
be thoroughly "opened up" for a quarter of a century. The few resolute
and pneumonia-proof sportsmen who can wade into the country, pulling
boats through icy-cold mountain streams, are not going to devastate
those millions of mountains of their big game. The few head of game
which sportsmen can and will take out of the great northwestern
wilderness during the next twenty-five years will hardly be missed from
the grand total, even though a few easily-accessible localities are shot
out. It is the deadly resident trappers, hunters and prospectors who
must be feared! And again,--_who_ can control them? Can any wilderness
government on earth make it possible? Therefore, _in time, even the
great wilderness will be denuded of big game_. This is absolutely fixed
and certain; for within much less than another century, every square rod
of it will have been gone over by prospectors, lumbermen, trappers and
skin-hunters, and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs. A
railway line to Dawson, the Copper River and Cook Inlet is to-day merely
the next thing to expect, after Canada's present railway program has
been wrought out.
Yes, indeed! In time the wilderness will be opened up, and the big game
will _all_ be shot out, save from the protected areas.
THE MOUNTAIN GOAT.--Even yet, this species is not wholly extinct in the
United States. It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the number
estimated in that region by three guide friends is too astoundingly
large to mention.
This animal is much more easily killed than the big-horn. Its white coat
renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting
season; it is almost devoid of fear, and it takes altogether too many
chances on man. Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average
sportsman's view-point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six
contours below "old ram" heads, in desirability. Furthermore, most
guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food, and
far inferior to that of the big-horn. These reasons, taken together,
render the goats much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and
prospectors who enter the home of the two species. It was because of
this indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his
party saw 243 goats in thirty days in Goat Mountain Park, and only
fourteen sheep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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