Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador: Supplement to an Address Presented by Lt.-Colonel William Wood, F.R.S.C. Before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation in January, 1911 — John Shaqi
Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador: Supplement to an Address Presented by Lt.-Colonel William Wood, F.R.S.C. Before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation in January, 1911Wood, William
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Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador: Supplement to an Address Presented by Lt.-Colonel William Wood, F.R.S.C. Before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation in January, 1911
The matters of animal preservation which interest me most
are: The rapid decline in numbers of harp seals which we
Northern people can get for our boots and clothing. This
food and clothing supply, formerly readily obtainable all
along the Labrador, helped greatly to maintain in comfort
our scattered population. It is scarcely now worth while
putting out seal nets. We attribute this to the destruction
of seals at the time of their whelping, by steamers which
are ever growing larger and more numerous. No mammal,
producing but one offspring can long survive this.
Along the Labrador coast east of the Canadian border, birds
are destroyed on sight and nests robbed wherever found. The
laws are a dead letter because there is no one to enforce
them.
There is great need also for scientific inquiry with regard
to the fisheries--the herring and mackerel are apparently
gone, the salmon are getting scarcer, and the cod fisheries
have been failing perceptibly these past years. Yet there is
no practical effort made to discover the reason and obviate
it.
On the 9th of September, 1911, Earl Grey made the following entry in
the visitors' book at La Roche:
I desire to thank the provincial government of Quebec for
having given me the opportunity of visiting, as their guest,
the Laurentides National Park, and to acknowledge the great
pleasure which I have derived from all I have seen and
done.... I would also like to congratulate them on the
wisdom of their policy in establishing so large a reserve,
as a protection for various breeds of wild animals which
would otherwise be in danger of extinction, and as a place
of rest, refreshment, and recreation for those who love the
quiet of the wilds.
Mr. George Bird Grinnell, one of the greatest authorities in the world
on the Indian and wild life of North America, writes:
I have recently read with extraordinary interest your
address, presented last January to the Commission of
Conservation....
I wish to offer you my personal thanks for the effective way
in which you have set forth the desirability of establishing
wild-life refuges in Labrador, and I trust that what you
have said will start a movement in Canada to carry out this
good project. It has long interested me to know that your
people and their officials seem much more farseeing than
those on this side of the line, and Canada's show of
national parks and reservations is far more creditable than
that of her neighbour to the south.
Dr. H. Mather Hare, who does on the Canadian Labrador what Dr.
Grenfell does on the Newfoundland or Atlantic Labrador, and whose
headquarters are at Harrington, where the first coast sanctuary ought
to be established at the earliest possible moment, says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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