A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open

by Theodore Roosevelt

On the morning of the 12th we returned to Pass Christian. I was very glad to have seen this bird refuge. With care and protection the birds will increase and grow tamer and tamer, until it will be possible for any one to make trips among these reserves and refuges, and to see as much as we saw, at even closer quarters. No sight more beautiful and more interesting could be imagined.

I am far from disparaging the work of the collector who is also a field naturalist. On the contrary, I fully agree with Mr. Joseph Grinnell's recent plea for him. His work is indispensable. It is far more important to protect his rights than to protect those of the sportsman; for the serious work of the collector is necessary in order to prevent the scientific study of ornithology from lapsing into mere dilettanteism indulged in as a hobby by men and women with opera-glasses. Moreover, sportsmen also have their rights, and it is folly to sacrifice these rights to mere sentimentality—for, of course, sentimentality is as much the antithesis and bane of healthy sentiment as bathos is of pathos. If thoroughly protected, any bird or mammal would speedily increase in numbers to such a degree as to drive man from the planet; and of recent years this has been signally proved by actual experience as regards certain creatures, notably as regards the wapiti in the Yellowstone (where the prime need now is to provide for the annual killing of at least five thousand), and to a less extent as regards deer in Vermont.

But as yet these cases are rare exceptions. As yet with the great majority of our most interesting and important wild birds and beasts the prime need is to protect them, not only by laws limiting the open season and the size of the individual bag, but especially by the creation of sanctuaries and refuges. And, while the work of the collector is still necessary, the work of the trained faunal naturalist, who is primarily an observer of the life histories of the wild things, is even more necessary. The progress made in the United States, of recent years, in creating and policing bird refuges,[3] has been of capital importance.

At nightfall of the third day of our trip, when we were within sight of Fort Jackson and of the brush and low trees which here grow alongside the Mississippi, we were joined by Mr. M. L. Alexander, the president of the Conservation Commission, on the commission's boat Louisiana. He was more than kind and courteous, as were all my Louisiana friends. He and Mr. Miller told me much of the work of the commission; work not only of the utmost use to Louisiana, but of almost equal consequence to the rest of the country, if only for the example set.

The commission was not founded until 1912, yet it has already accomplished a remarkable amount along many different lines. The work of reforestation of great stretches of denuded, and at present worthless, pine land has begun; work which will turn lumbering into a permanent Louisiana industry by making lumber a permanent crop asset, like corn or wheat, only taking longer to mature—an asset which it is equally important not to destroy. In taking care of the mineral resources a stop has been put to waste as foolish as it was criminal; for example, a gas-well which had flowed to waste until six million dollars' worth of gas had been lost was stopped and stored at the cost of five thousand one hundred dollars. The oysters are now farmed and husbanded, the beds being leased in such fashion that there is a steady improvement of the product. Louisiana is peculiarly rich in fish, and a policy has been inaugurated which, if persevered in, will make the paddle-fish industry as important as the sturgeon fishery is in Russia. Not only do the waters of Louisiana now belong to the State, but also the land under the water, this last proving in practise an admirable provision. Some three hundred thousand acres of game reserves and wild-life refuges (mostly uninhabitable by man) have now been established. These have largely been gifts to the State by wise and generous private individuals and corporations, the chief donors being Messrs. Edward A. McIlhenny and Charles Willis Ward, Mrs. Russell Sage, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Conservation Commission has accepted the gifts, and is taking care of the reserves and refuges through its State wardens, with the result that wild birds of many kinds, including even the wary geese, which come down as winter visitants by the hundred thousand, have become very tame, and many beautiful birds which were on the verge of extinction are now re-established and increasing in numbers. These reserves, which lie for the most part in the low country along the coast, are west of the Mississippi.

Job had just come from a visit to the private reserve of Edward A. McIlhenny on Avery Island. It is the most noteworthy reserve in the country. It includes four thousand acres, and is near the Ward-McIlhenny reserve, which they have given to the State—a king's gift! Avery's Island is very beautiful. A great, shallow, artificial lake, surrounded by dwellings, fields, lawns, a railroad, and ox-wagon road, does not seem an ideal home for herons; but it has proved such under the care of Mr. McIlhenny. He started the reserve twenty years ago with eight snowy herons. Now it contains about forty thousand herons of several species. Complete freedom from molestation has rendered the birds extraordinarily tame. The beautiful snow-white lesser egret, which had been almost exterminated by the plume-hunters, flourishes by the thousand; the greater egret has been bothered so by the smaller one that it has retired before it; its heronries are now to be found mainly in other parts of the protected region. Many other kinds of heron, and many waterfowl, literally throng the place. Ducks winter by the thousand, and, most unexpectedly, some even of the northern kinds, like the gadwall, now stay to breed. Most of these birds are so tame that there is little difficulty in taking photographs of them.

The Audubon societies, and all similar organizations, are doing a great work for the future of our country. Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach—why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] An expression borrowed from Stewart Edward White's capital "Rediscovered Country."

[3] See [Appendix B].