Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and PreservationHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
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Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Game-laws -- United States; Wildlife conservation -- United States
To accomplish these ends, Congress should annually appropriate
$50,000 for the protection of wild life in Alaska. The present
amount, $15,000, is very inadequate, and the great wild-life
interests at stake amply justify the larger amount.
It is now time for Alaska to make substantial advances in the protection
of her wild life. It is no longer right nor just for Indians, miners and
prospectors to be permitted by law to kill all the big game they please,
whenever they please. The indolent and often extortionate Indians of
Alaska,--who now demand "big money" for every service they perform,--are
not so valuable as citizens that they should be permitted to feed
riotously upon _moose, and cow moose at that_, until that species is
exterminated. Miners and prospectors are valuable citizens, but that is
no reason why they should forever be allowed to live upon wild game, any
more than that hungry prospectors in our Rocky Mountains should be
allowed to kill cattle.
Alaska and its resources do not belong to the very few people from "the
States" who have gone there to make their fortunes and get out again as
quickly as possible. The quicker the public mind north of Wrangel is
disabused of that idea, the better. Its game belongs to the people of
this nation of ninety-odd millions, and it is a safe prediction that the
ninety millions will not continue to be willing that the miners,
prospectors and Indians shall continue to live on moose meat and caribou
tongues in order to save bacon and beef.
Mr. Frank E. Kleinschmidt said to me that at Sand Point, Alaska, he saw
eighty-two caribou tongues brought in by an Indian, and sold at fifty
cents each, while (according to all accounts) most of the bodies of the
slaughtered animals became a loss.
Governor Clark has recommended in his annual report for 1911 that the
protection now enjoyed by the giant brown bear _(Ursus middendorffi_) on
Kadiak Island be removed, for the benefit of settlers _and their stock_!
It goes without saying that no one proposes that predatory wild animals
shall be permitted to retard the development of any wild country that is
required by civilized man. All we ask in this matter is that, as in the
case of the once-proposed slaughter of sea-lions on the Pacific Coast,
_the necessity of the proposed slaughter shall be fully and adequately
proven before the killing begins_! It is fair to insist that the
sea-lion episode shall not be repeated on Kadiak Island.
The big game of Alaska can not long endure against a "limit" of two
moose, three mountain sheep, three caribou and six deer per year, per
man. At that rate the moose and sheep soon will disappear. The limit
should be one moose, two sheep, two caribou and four deer,--unless we
are willing to dedicate the Alaskan big game to Commercialism. No
sportsman needs a larger bag than the revised schedule; and
commercialists should not be allowed to kill big game anywhere, at any
time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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