Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 59

Then,--as always in such cases,--there arose a strong demand for an open season; and eventually the government yielded to the pressure of the hunters, and fixed a date whereon an open season should begin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GULLS AND TERNS OF OUR COASTS, SAVED FROM DESTRUCTION These Birds have been Saved and Brought back to us by the Splendid Efforts of the Audubon Societies, and other Bird-Lovers. But for the Anti-Plumage Laws, not one Gull or Tern would now Remain on our Atlantic Coast From the "American Natural History"]

During the period preceding that fatal date, the living chamois, grown half tame by years of immunity from the guns, were all carefully located and marked down by those who intended to hunt them. At daybreak on the fatal day, the onset began. Guns and hunters were everywhere, and the mountains resounded with the fusillade. Hundreds of chamois were slain, by hundreds of hunters; and by the close of that fatal "open season" the species was more nearly exterminated throughout that region than ever before. Once more those mountains were nice and barren of game.

Let that b.l.o.o.d.y and disgraceful episode serve as a warning to Americans who are tempted to demand an open season on game that has bred back from the verge of extinction. Particularly do we commend it to the notice of the people of Colorado who _even now_ are demanding an open season on the preserved mountain sheep of that state. The granting of such an open season would be a brutal outrage. Those sheep are now so tame and unsuspicious that the killing of them would be _cold-blooded murder!_

THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION.--Within reasonable limits, any partly-destroyed wild species can be increased and brought back by giving absolute protection from hara.s.sment and slaughter. When a species is struggling to recuperate, it deserves to be left _entirely unmolested_ until it is once more on safe ground.

Every breeding wild animal craves seclusion and entire immunity from excitement and all forms of molestation. Nature simply demands this as her una.s.sailable right. It is my firm belief that any wild species will breed in captivity whenever its members are given a degree of seclusion that they deem satisfactory.

With species that have not been shot down to a point entirely too low, adequate protection generously long in duration will bring back their numbers. If the people of the United States so willed it, we could have wild white-tailed deer in every state and in every county (save city counties) between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains. We could easily have one thousand bob white quail for every one now living. We could have squirrels in every grove, and songbirds by the million,--merely by protecting them from slaughter and molestation. From Ohio to the great plains, the pinnated grouse could be made far more common than crows and blackbirds.

Inasmuch as all this is true,--and no one with information will dispute it for a moment,--is it not folly to seek to supplant our own splendid native species of game birds (_that we never yet have decently protected!_) with foreign species? Let the American people answer this question with "Yes" or "No."

The methods by which our non-game birds can be encouraged and brought back are very simple: Protect them, put up shelters for them, give them nest-boxes in abundance, protect them from cats, dogs, and all other forms of destruction, and feed those that need to be fed. I should think that every boy living in the country would find keen pleasure in making and erecting nest-boxes for martins, wrens, and squirrels; in putting up straw teepees in winter for the quail, in feeding the quail, and in nailing to the trees chunks of suet and fat pork every winter for the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, nuthatches, and other winter residents.

Will any person now on this earth live long enough to see the present all-pervading and devilish spirit of slaughter so replaced by the love of wild creatures and the true spirit of conservation that it will be as rare as it now is common?

But let no one think for a moment that any vanis.h.i.+ng species can at any time be brought back; for that would be a grave error. The point is always reached, by every such species, that the survivors are too few to cope with circ.u.mstances, and recovery is impossible. The heath hen could not be brought back, neither could the pa.s.senger pigeon. The whooping crane, the sage grouse, the trumpeter swan, the wild turkey, and the upland plover never will come back to us, and nothing that we can do ever will bring them back. Circ.u.mstances are against those species,--and I fear against many others also. Thanks to the fact that the American bison breeds well in captivity, we have saved that species from complete extinction, but our antelope seems to be doomed.

It is because of the alarming condition of our best wild life that quick action and strong action is vitally necessary. We are sleeping on our possibilities.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT HAVE BEEN BENEFICIAL

Man has made numerous experiments in the transplantation of wild species of mammals and birds from one country, or continent, to another. About one-half these efforts have been beneficial, and the other half have resulted disastrously.

The transplantation of any wild-animal species is a leap in the dark. On general principles it is dangerous to meddle with the laws of Nature, and attempt to improve upon the code of the wilderness. Our best wisdom in such matters may easily prove to be short-sighted folly. The trouble lies in the fact that concerning transplantation it is _impossible for us to know beforehand all the conditions that will affect it, or that it will effect, and how it will work out_. In its own home a species may _seem_ not only harmless, but actually beneficial to man. We do not know, and _we can not know_, all the influences that keep it in check, and that mould its character. We do not know, and we can not know without a trial, how new environment will affect it, and what new traits of character it will develop under radically different conditions. The gentle dove of Europe may become the tyrant dove of Cathay. The Repressed Rabbit of the Old World becomes in Australia the Uncontrollable Rabbit, a devastator and a pest of pests.

No wild species should be transplanted and set free in a wild state to stock new regions without consulting men of wisdom, and following their advice. It is now against the laws of the United States to introduce and acclimatize in a wild state, anywhere in the United States, any wild-bird species without the approval of the Department of Agriculture.

The law is a wise one. Furthermore, the same principle should apply to birds that it is proposed to transplant from one portion of the United States into another, especially when the two are widely separated.

On this point, I once learned a valuable lesson, which may well point my present moral. Incidentally, also, it was a narrow escape for me!

A gentlemen of my acquaintance, who admires the European magpie, and is well aware of its acceptable residence in various countries in Europe, once requested my cooperation in securing and acclimatizing at his country estate a number of birds of that species. As in duty bound, I laid the matter before our Department of Agriculture, and asked for an opinion. The Department replied, in effect, "Why import a foreign magpie when we have in the West a species of our own quite as handsome, and which could more easily be transplanted?"

The point seemed well taken. Now, I had seen much of the American magpie in its wild home,--the Rocky Mountains, and the western border of the Great Plains,--and I _thought_ I was acquainted with it. I knew that a few complaints against it had been made, but they had seemed to me very trivial. To me our magpie seemed to have a generally un.o.bjectionable record.

Fortunately for me, I wrote to Mr. Hershey, a.s.sistant Curator of Ornithology in the Colorado State Museum, for a.s.sistance in procuring fifty birds, for transplantation to the State of New York. Mr. Hershey replied that if I really wished the birds for acclimatization, he would gladly procure them for me; but he said that in the _thickly-settled farming communities_ of Colorado, the magpie is now regarded as a pest.

It devours the eggs and nestlings of other wild birds, and not only that, it destroys so many eggs of domestic poultry that many farmers are compelled to keep their egg-laying hens shut up in wire enclosures!

Now, this condition happened to be entirely unknown to me, because I never had seen the American magpie in action _in a farming community_!

Of course the proposed experiment was promptly abandoned, but it is embarra.s.sing to think how near I came to making a mistake. Even if the magpies had been transplanted and had become a nuisance in this state, they could easily have been exterminated by shooting; but the memory of the error would have been humiliating to the party of the first part.

THE OLD WORLD PHEASANTS IN AMERICA.--In 1881 the first Chinese ring-necked pheasants were introduced into the United States, twelve miles below Portland, Oregon; twelve males and three females. The next year, Oregon gave pheasants a five-year close season. A little later, the golden and silver pheasants of China were introduced, and all three species throve mightily, on the Pacific Coast, in Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton and western British Columbia. In 1900, the sportsmen of Portland and Vancouver were shooting c.o.c.k golden pheasants according to law.

The success of Chinese and j.a.panese pheasants on the Pacific Coast soon led to experiments in the more progressive states, at state expense.

State pheasant hatcheries have been established in Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and California.

In many localities, the old-world pheasants have come to stay. The rise and progress of the ring-neck in western New York has already been noted. It came about merely through protection. That protection was protection in fact, not the false "protection" that shoots on the sly.

It is the irony of fate that full protection should be accorded a foreign bird, in order that it may multiply and possess the land, while the same kind of protection is refused the native bob white, and it is now almost a dead species, so far as this state is concerned.

In looking about for grievances against the ring-necked and English pheasant, some persons have claimed that in winter these birds are "budders," which means that they harmfully strip trees and bushes of the buds that those bushes will surely need in their spring opening. On that point Dr. Joseph Kalbfus, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, sent out a circular letter of inquiry, in response to which he received many statements. With but one exception, all the testimony received was to the effect that pheasants are _not_ bud-eaters, and that generally the charge is unfounded.

The introduction of old-world pheasants, and the attempted introduction of the Hungarian partridge, are efforts designed first of all to furnish sportsmen something to shoot, and incidentally to provide a new food supply for the table. The people of this country are not starving, nor are they even very hungry for the meat of strange birds; but as a food-producer, the pheasant is all right.

It disgusts me to the core, however, to see states that wantonly and wickedly, through sheer apathy and lack of business enterprise, have allowed the quail, the heath hen, the pinnated grouse and the ruffed grouse to become almost exterminated by extravagant and foolish shooters, now putting forth wonderfully diligent efforts and spending money without end, in introducing _foreign_ species! Many men actually take the ground that our game "can't live" in its own country any longer; but only the ignorant and the unthinking will say so! Give our game birds decent, sensible, _actual_ protection, stop their being slaughtered far faster than they breed, and _they will live anywhere in their own native haunts_! But where is there _one species_ of upland game bird in America that has been sensibly and adequately protected?

From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon there is _not one,--not a single locality in which protection from shooting has been sensible, or just, or adequate_.

We have universally given our American upland game birds an unfair deal, and now we are adding insult to slaughter by bringing in foreign game birds to replace them--because our birds "can't live" before five million shot-guns!

Our American game birds CAN live, anywhere in the haunts where nature placed them that are not to-day actually occupied by cities and towns!

Give me the making of the laws, and I will make the prairie chicken and quail as numerous throughout the northern states east of the Great Plains as domestic chickens are outside the regular poultry farms. There is only one reason why there are not ten million quail in the state of New York to-day,--one for each human inhabitant,--and that reason is the infernal greed and selfishness of the men who have almost exterminated our quail by over-shooting. Don't talk to me about the "hard winters"

killing off our quail! It is the hard cheek of the men who shoot them when they ought to let them alone.

The State of Iowa could support 500,000 prairie chickens and never miss the waste grain that they would glean in the fields; but now the prairie chicken is practically extinct in Iowa, only a few scattered specimens remaining as "last survivors" in some of the northern counties. The migration of those birds that unexpectedly came down from the north last winter was like the fall of a meteor,--only the birds promptly faded away again. Why should New York, New Jersey and Ma.s.sachusetts exterminate the heath hen and coddle the ring-necked pheasant and the Hungarian partridge?

The introduction of the old-world pheasants interests me very little.

Every one that I see is a painful reminder of our slaughtered quail and grouse,--the birds that never have had a square deal from the American people! Thus far the introduction of the Hungarian partridge has not been successful, anywhere. Connecticut, Missouri, New Jersey and I think other states have tried this, and failed. The failure of that species brings no sorrow to me. I prefer our own game birds; and if the American people will not conserve those properly and decently they deserve to have no game birds.

THE EUROPEAN RED DEER IN NEW ZEALAND.--Occasionally a gameless land makes a ten-strike by introducing a foreign game animal that does no harm, and becomes of great value. The greatest success ever made in the transplantation of game animals has been in New Zealand.

Originally, New Zealand possessed no large animals, and no "big-game."

When Nature pa.s.sed around the deer, antelopes, sheep, goats, wild cattle and bears, New Zealand failed to receive her share. For centuries her splendid forests, her grand mountains and picturesque valleys remained untenanted by big game.

In 1864, the Prince Consort of England caused seven head of European red deer to be taken from the royal park at Windsor, and sent to Christchurch, New Zealand. Only three of the animals survived the long voyage; a buck and two does. For several weeks the two were kept in a barn in Christchurch, where they served no good purpose, and were not likely to live long or be happy. Finally some one said, "Let's set them free in the mountains!"

The idea was adopted. The three animals were hauled an uncertain number of miles into the interior mountains and set free.

They promptly settled down in their new home. They began to breed, and now on the North Island there are probably five thousand European red deer, every one of which has descended directly from the famous three!

And here is the strangest part of the story:

The red deer of the North Island represent the greatest case of in-and-in breeding of wild animals on record. According to the experience of the world in the breeding of domestic cattle (_not horses_), we should expect physical deterioration, the development of diseases, and disaster. On the contrary, the usual evil results of in-breeding in domestic cattle have been totally absent. _The red deer of New Zealand are to-day physically larger and more robust animals, with longer and heavier antlers, and longer hair, than any of the red deer of Europe west of Germany_!

Red deer have been introduced practically all over New Zealand, and the total number now in the Islands must be somewhere near forty thousand.

The sportsmen of that country have grand sport, and take many splendid trophies. That transplantation has been a very great success.

Incidentally, the case of the in-bred deer of the North Island, taken along with other cases of which we know, establishes a new and important principle in evolution. It is this:

_When healthy wild animals are established in a state of nature, either absolutely free, or confined in preserves so large that they roam at will, seek the food of nature and take care of themselves, in-and-in breeding produces no ill effects, and ceases to be a factor. The animals develop in physical perfection according to the climate and their food supply; and the introduction of new blood is not necessary_.

THE FALLOW DEER ON THE ISLAND OF LAMBAY.--In the Irish Sea, a few miles from the southeast coast of Ireland, is the Island of Lambay, owned by Cecil Baring, Esq. The island is precisely one square mile in area, and some of its sea frontage terminates in perpendicular cliffs. In many ways the island is of unusual interest to zoologists, and its fauna has been well set forth by Mr. Baring.

In the year 1892 three fallow deer (_Dama vulgaris_) a buck and two does, were transplanted from a park on the Irish mainland to Lambay, and there set free. From that slender stock has sprung a large herd, which, but for the many deer that have been purposely shot, and the really considerable number that have been killed by going over the cliffs in stormy weather, the progeny of the original three would to-day number several hundred head. No new blood has been introduced, and _no deer have died of disease_. Even counting out the losses by the rifle and by accidental death, the herd to-day numbers more than one hundred head.