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
"In this inventory (of game destroyers in India), the Gurkha soldier
does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by
himself with his small but very important personality. He deserves
separate notice. From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal,
to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men
are scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan
range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of
these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for
spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for
slaughtering wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting
grounds of Upper India."
Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in
themselves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government? Why
should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive
order to the C.O. of each post would effectually stop it?
In the making of game preserves, or "sanctuaries" as they are called out
there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence.
The total number is too great for enumeration here. The native state of
Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating
about 100,000 acres in area. In the Wynaad Forest, my old
hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting,
because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and
disease. The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game
preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so
widely ajar.
In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been created.
On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries,
as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India,
it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have
become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game, and the
danger of the extermination of species. In the past India has been the
finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, quite beyond
compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna of big game
would be a zoological calamity.
_Tibet_.--As yet, Tibet offers free hunting, without legal let or
hindrance, to every sportsman who can climb up to her lofty, wind-swept
and whizzing-cold plateau. The man who hunts the _Ovis poli_, superb
creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the
south help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of
species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitchell
takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard
journey, over Consul Mason Mitchell's trail; but the takin is about the
only large hoofed game available.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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