Taken as a whole, the people named above constitute a grand army of at least five thousand trained, educated, resourceful and influential persons. They all depend upon wild life for their livelihood. When they talk about living things, the public listens with respectful attention. Their knowledge of the value of wild life would be worth something to our cause; but thus far it never has been capitalized!
These people are hard workers; and when they mark out definite courses and attainable goals, they know how to get results. Yet what do we see?
For sixty long years, with the exception of the work of a corporal's guard of their number, this grand army has remained in camp, partly neglecting and partly refusing to move upon the works of the enemy. For sixty years, with the exception of the non-game-bird law, as a class and a mass they have left to the sportsmen of the country the dictating of laws for the protection of all the game birds, the mammals and the game fishes. When we stop to consider that the game birds alone embrace 154 very important species, the appalling extent to which the zoologist has abdicated in favor of the sportsman becomes apparent.
It is a very great mistake, and a wrong besides, for the zoologists of the country to abandon the game birds, mammals and fishes of North America to the sportsmen, to do with as they please! Yet that is practically what has been done.
The time was, thirty or forty years ago, when wild life was so abundant that we did not need to worry about its preservation. That was the golden era of study and investigation. That era ended definitely in 1884, with the practical extermination of the wild American bison, partly through the shameful greed and partly through the neglect of the American people. We are now living in the middle of the period of Extermination! The questions for every American zoologist and every sportsman to answer now are: Shall the slaughter of species go on to a quick end of the period? Shall we give posterity a birdless, gameless, fishless continent, or not? Shall we have close seasons, all over the country, for five or ten years, or for five hundred years?
If we are courageous, we will brace up and answer these questions now, like men. If we are faint-hearted, and eager for peace at any price, then we will sidestep the ugly situation until the destroyers have settled it for us by the wholesale extermination of species.
If the zoologist cares to know, then I will tell him that to-day the wild life of the world can be saved by law, but not by sentiment alone! You cannot "educate" a poacher, a game-hog, a market-gunner, a milliner or a vain and foolish woman of fashion. All these must be curbed and controlled by law. Game refuges alone will not save the wild life! All species of birds, mammals and game fishes of North America must have more thorough and far-reaching protection than they now have.
Do not always take your cue from the sportsmen, especially regarding the enactment of long close seasons! If you need good advice, or help about drafting a bill, write to Dr. T.S. Palmer, Department of Agriculture, Washington, and you will receive prompt and valuable assistance. The Doctor is a wise man, and there is nothing about protective laws that is unknown to him. Go to your state senator and your assemblyman with the bills that you know should be enacted into law, and assure them that those measures are necessary for the wild life, and beneficial to 98 per cent of the people who own the wild life. You will be heard with respectful attention, in any law-making body that you choose to enter.
People who cannot give time and labor must supply you with money for your campaigns. Ask, and you will receive! I have proven this many times. With care and exactness account to your subscribers for the expenditure of all money placed in your hands, and you will receive continuous support.
In times of great stress, print circulars and leaflets by the ten-thousand, and get them into the hands of the People, calling for their help. Our 42,000 copies of the "Wild Life Call" (sixteen pages) were distributed by organizations all over the state of New York, and along with Mr. Andrew D. Meloy's letters to the members of the New York State League, aroused such a tidal wave of public sentiment against the sale of game that the Bayne bill was finally swept through the Legislature with only one dissenting vote! And yet, in the beginning not one man dared to hope that that very revolutionary measure could by any possibility be passed in its first year in New York State, even if it ever could be!