The greatest slaughter of wild ducks by disease occurred on Great Salt Lake, Utah. Until the "duck disease" (intestinal coccidiosis) broke out there, in the summer of 1910, the annual market slaughter of ducks at the mouth of Bear River had been enormous. When at Salt Lake City in 1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to the necessity of a reform, but my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Naturally, the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest a heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything worse than the first.
On Oct. 17, 1911, the annual report of the chief of the Biological Survey contained the following information on this subject:
Epidemic Among Wild Ducks on Great Salt Lake.—Following a long dry season, which favored the rearing of a large number of wild ducks, but materially reduced the area of the feeding ponds, resulting in great overcrowding, a severe epidemic broke out about August 1, 1910, among the wild ducks about Great Salt Lake, Utah. Dead ducks could be counted by thousands along the shores and the disease raged unabated until late fall. Shooting clubs found it necessary to declare a closed season. Some of the dead ducks were forwarded to the Biological Survey and were turned over for examination to the Bureau of Animal Industry, by the experts of which the disease was diagnosed as intestinal coccidiosis.
Various plans of relieving the situation were tried. The irrigation ditches were closed, thus providing the sloughs and ponds with fresh water, and lime was sprinkled on the mud flats and duck trails. Great improvement followed this treatment, and experiments proved that ducks provided with abundant fresh water and clean food began to recover immediately. These methods promised success, but later it was proposed that the marshes be drained and exposed to the sun's rays—a course which cannot be recommended. That coccidia are not always killed by exposure to the sun is shown by their survival on the sites of old chicken yards. An added disadvantage of the plan is that draining and drying the marshes would have a bad effect on the natural duck food, and upon the birds themselves.
CHAPTER X
DESTRUCTION OF WILD LIFE BY THE ELEMENTS
It is a fixed condition of Nature that whenever and wherever a wild species exists in a state of nature, free from the trammels and limitations that contact with man always imposes, the species is fitted to survive all ordinary climatic influences. Freedom of action, and the exercise of several options in the line of individual maintenance under stress, is essential to the welfare of every wild species.
A prong-horned antelope herd that is free can drift before a blizzard, can keep from freezing by the exercise, and eventually come to shelter. Let that same herd drift against a barbed-wire fence five miles long, and its whole scheme of self-preservation is upset. The herd perishes then and there.
Cut out the undergrowth of a given section, drain the swamps and mow down all the weeds and tall grass, and the next particularly hard winter starves and freezes the quail.