Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation

by William T. Hornaday

A state or a nation can be ungentlemanly, unfair or mean, just the same as an individual. No state has a right to maintain shambles for the slaughter of migratory game or song birds that belong in part to sister states. Every state holds its migratory bird life in trust, for the benefit of the people of the nation at large. A state is just as responsible for its treatment of wild life as any individual; and it is time to open books of account.

It is robbery, as well as murder, for any southern state to slaughter the robins of the northern states, where no robins may be killed. No southern gentleman can permit such doings, after the crime has been pointed out to him! In the North, the men who are caught shooting robins are instantly haled to court, and fined or imprisoned. If we of the North should kill for food the mockingbirds that visit us, the people of the South instantly would brand us as monsters of greed and meanness; and they would be perfectly justified in so doing.

Let us at least be honest in "agreeing upon a state of fact," as the lawyers say, whether we act sensibly and mercifully or not. Just so long as there remains in this land of ours a fauna of game birds, and the gunners of one-half the states are allowed to dictate the laws for the slaughter of it, just so long will our present protection remain utterly absurd and criminally inadequate. Look at these absurdities:

New York, New Jersey and many other northern states rigidly prohibit the late winter and spring shooting of waterfowl and shore birds, and limit the bag; North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and other southern states not only slaughter wild fowl and shore birds all winter and spring, without limit, but several of them kill certain non-game birds besides!

All the northern states protect the robin, for the good that it does; but in North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and some other southern states, thousands of robins are shot for food. Minnesota has stopped spring shooting; but her sister state on the south, Iowa, obstinately refuses to do so.

The United States At Large. —There are two great measures that should be carried into effect by the governing body of the United States. One is the enactment of a law providing federal protection for all migratory birds; and Canada and Mexico should be induced to join with the United States in an international treaty to that effect.

The other necessary measure is the passage of a joint resolution of Congress declaring every national forest and forest reserve also a game preserve and general sanctuary for wild life, in which there shall be no hunting or killing of wild creatures of any kind save predatory animals.

The tendency of the times,—and the universal slaughter of wild life on this continent,—point straight as an arrow flies in that direction. Soon or late, we have GOT to come to it! If Congress does not take the initiatory steps, the People will! Such a consummation is necessary; it is justified by common sense and the inexorable logic of the situation, and when done it will be right.

The time was when the friends of wild life did not dare speak of this subject in Washington save in whispers. That was in the days when the Appalachian Park bill could not be passed, and when there were angry mutterings and even curses leveled against Gifford Pinchot and the Forestry Bureau because so many national forests were being set aside. That was in the days when a few western sheep-men thought that they owned the whole Rocky Mountains without having bought them. To-day, the American people have grown accustomed to the idea of having the resources of the public domain saved and conserved for the benefit of the millions rather than lavished upon a favored few. To-day it is perfectly safe to talk about making every national forest a first class wild-life sanctuary, and it is up to the People to request Congress to take that action, at once.

The Weeks bill, the Anthony bill, and the McLean bill now before Congress to provide federal protection for migratory birds are practically identical. All three are good bills; and it matters not which one finally becomes a law. Whichever is put forward finally for passage should provide federal protection for all migratory birds that ever enter the United States, Alaska, or Porto Rico. Why favor the duck and leave the robin to its fate, or vice versa? It will be just as easy to do this task by wholes as by halves. The time to hesitate, to feel timid, or to be afraid of the other fellow has gone by. To-day the millions of honest and serious-minded Americans are ready to back the most thorough and most drastic policy, because that has become the most necessary and the best policy. Furthermore, it is the only policy worthy of serious consideration.