American Big Game in Its Haunts - Various
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RECENT DISAPPEARANCE.
I need not dwell on the astonishingly rapid diminution of our larger
animals in the last few years; it would be like "carrying coals to
Newcastle" to detail personal observations before this Club, which is
full of men of far greater experience and knowledge than myself. On the
White River Plateau Forest Reserve, which is destined to be the
Adirondacks of Colorado, with which many of you are familiar, the deer
disappeared in a period of four years. Comparatively few are left.
The most thoroughly devastated country I know of is the Uintah Mountain
Forest Reserve, which borders between southwestern Wyoming and northern
Utah. I first went through this country in 1877. It was then a wild
natural region; even a comparatively few years ago it was bright with
game, and a perfect flower garden. It has felt the full force of the
sheep curse. I think any one of you who may visit this country now will
agree that this is not too strong a term, and I want to speak of the
sheep question from three standpoints: First, as of a great and
legitimate industry in itself; second, from the economic standpoint;
third, from the standpoint of wild animals.
GENERAL RESULTS OF GRAZING.
The formerly beautiful Uintah Mountain range presents a terrible example
of the effects of prolonged sheep herding. The under foliage is entirely
gone. The sheep annually eat off the grass tops and prevent seeding
down; they trample out of life what they do not eat; along the principal
valley routes even the sage brush is destroyed. Reforesting by the
upgrowth of young trees is still going on to a limited extent, but is in
danger. The water supply of the entire Bridger farming country, which is
dependent upon the Uintah Mountains as a natural reservoir, is rapidly
diminishing; the water comes in tremendous floods in the spring, and
begins to run short in the summer, when it is most needed. The
consequent effects upon both fish and wild animals are well known to
you. No other animal will feed after the sheep. It is no exaggeration to
say, therefore, that the sheep in this region are the enemies of every
living thing.
BALANCE OF NATURE.
Even the owner cannot much longer enjoy his range, because he is
operating against _the balance of nature_. The last stage of
destruction which these innocent animals bring about has not yet been
reached, but it is approaching; it is the stage in which there is _no
food left for the sheep themselves_. I do not know how many pounds
of food a sheep consumes in course of a year--it cannot be much less
than a ton--but say it is only half a ton, how many acres of dry western
mountain land are capable of producing half a ton a year when not
seeding down? As long as the consumption exceeds the production of the
soil, it is only a question of time when even the sheep will no longer
find subsistence.
THE LAST STAGE TO BE SEEN IN THE ORIENT.
While going through these mountains last summer and reflecting upon the
prodigious changes which the sheep have brought about in a few years, it
occurred to me that we must look to Oriental countries in order to see
the final results of sheep and goat grazing in semi-arid climates. I
have proposed as an historical thesis a subject which at first appears
somewhat humorous, namely, "The Influence of Sheep and Goats in
History." I am convinced that the country lying between Arabia and
Mesopotamia, which was formerly densely populated, full of beautiful
cities, and heavily wooded, has been transformed less by the action of
political causes than by the unrestricted browsing of sheep and
goats. This browsing destroyed first the undergrowth, then the forests,
the natural reservoirs of the country, then the grasses which held
together the soil, and finally resulted in the removal of the soil
itself. The country is now denuded of soil, the rocks are practically
bare; it supports only a few lions, hyaes, gazelles, and Bedouins. Even
if the trade routes and mines, on which Brooks Adams in his "New Empire"
dwells so strongly as factors of all civilization, were completely
restored, the population could not be restored nor the civilization,
because there is nothing in this country for people to live upon. The
same is true of North Africa, which, according to Gibbon, was once the
granary of the Roman Empire. In Greece to-day the goats are now
destroying the last vestiges of the forests.
I venture the prediction that the sheep industry on naturally semi-arid
lands is doomed; that the future feeding of both sheep and cattle will
be on irrigated lands, and that the forests will be carefully guarded by
State and Nature as natural reservoirs.
COMMERCIALISM AND IDEALISM.
By contrast to the sheep question, which is a purely economic or
utilitarian one, and will settle itself, if we do not settle it by
legislation based on scientific observation, the preservation of the
Sequoia and of our large wild animals is one of pure sentiment, of
appreciation of the ideal side of life; we can live and make money
without either. We cannot even use the argument which has been so
forcibly used in the case of the birds, that the cutting down of these
trees or killing of these animals will upset the balance of nature.
I believe in every part of the country--East, West, North, and South--we
Americans have reached a stage of civilization where if the matter were
at issue the majority vote would unquestionably be, _let us preserve
our wild animals._
We are generally considered a commercial people, and so we are; but we
are more than this, we are a people of ideas, and we value them. As
stated in the preamble of the Sequoia bill introduced on Dec. 8, 1903,
we must legislate for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and I may
add for the greatest happiness of the largest number, not only of the
present but of future generations.
So far as my observation goes, preservation can only be absolutely
insured by national legislation.
GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION BY ENGLAND, BELGIUM, GERMANY.
The English, a naturally law-abiding people, seem to have a special
faculty for enforcing laws. By co-operation with the Belgian Government
they have taken effective and remarkably successful measures for the
protection of African game. As for Germany, in 1896 Mr. Gosselin, of
the British Embassy in Berlin, reported as follows for German East Africa:
That the question of preserving big game in German East Africa has been
under the consideration of the local authorities for some time past, and
a regulation has been notified at Dar-es-Salaam which it is hoped will
do something toward checking the wanton destruction of elephants and
other indigenous animals. Under this regulation every hunter must take
out an animal license, for which the fee varies from 5 to 500 rupees,
the former being the ordinary fee for natives, the latter for elephant
and rhinoceros hunting, and for the members of sporting expeditions into
the interior. Licenses are not needed for the purpose of obtaining food,
nor for shooting game damaging cultivated land, nor for shooting apes,
beasts of prey, wild boars, reptiles, and all birds except ostriches and
cranes. Whatever the circumstances, the shooting is prohibited of all
young game--calves, foals, young elephants, either tuskless or having
tusks under three kilos, all female game if recognizable--except, of
course, those in the above category of unprotected animals. Further, in
the Moschi district of Kilima-Njaro, no one, whether possessing a
license or not, is allowed without the special permission of the
Governor to shoot antelopes, giraffes, buffaloes, ostriches, and cranes.
Further, special permission must be obtained to hunt these with nets, by
kindling fires, or by big drives. Those who are not natives have also
to pay l00 rupees for the first elephant killed, and 250 for each
additional one, and 50 rupees for the first rhinoceros and 150 for each
succeeding one. Special game preserves are also to be established, and
Major von Wissmann, in a circular to the local officers, explains that
no shooting whatever will be allowed in these without special permission
from the Government. The reserves will be of interest to science as a
means of preserving from extirpation the rarer species, and the Governor
calls for suggestions as to the best places for them. They are to extend
in each direction at least ten hours' journey on foot. He further asks
for suggestions as to hippopotamus reserves, where injury would not be
done to plantations. Two districts are already notified as game
sanctuaries. Major von Wissmann further suggests that the station
authorities should endeavor to domesticate zebras (especially when
crossed with muscat and other asses and horses), ostriches, and hyaena
dogs crossed with European breeds. Mr. Gosselin remarks that the best
means of preventing the extermination of elephants would be to fix by
international agreement among all the Powers on the East African coast a
close time for elephants, and to render illegal the exportation or sale
of tusks under a certain age.
In December, 1900, Viscount Cranborne in the House of Commons reported
as follows:
* * * That regulations for the preservation of wild animals have been
in force for some time in the several African Protectorates administered
by the Foreign Office as well as in the Sudan. The obligations imposed
by the recent London Convention upon the signatory Powers will not
become operative until after the exchange of ratifications, which has
not yet taken place. In anticipation, however, steps have been taken to
revise the existing regulations in the British Protectorates so as to
bring them into strict harmony with the terms of the convention. The
game reserves now existing in the several Protectorates are: In (a)
British Central Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and the Shirwa
reserve; in (b) the East Africa Protectorate, the Kenia District; in (c)
Uganda, the Sugota game reserve in the northeast of the Protectorate; in
(d) Somaliland, a large district defined by an elaborate boundary line
described in the regulations. The regulations have the force of law in
the Protectorates, and offenders are dealt with in the Protectorate
Courts. It is in contemplation to charge special officers of the
Administrations with the duty of watching over the proper observance of
the regulations. Under the East African game regulations only the
officers permanently stationed at or near the Kenia reserve may be
specially authorized to kill game in the reserve.
Other effective measures have been taken in the Soudan
district. Capt. Stanley Flower, Director of the Gizeh Zoological
Gardens, made a very full report, which is quoted in _Nature_ for
July 25, 1901, p. 318.
STATE LAWS.
The preservation of even a few of our wild animals is a very large
proposition; it is an undertaking the difficulty of which grows in
magnitude as one comes to study it in detail and gets on the ground. The
rapidly increasing legislation in the Western States is an indication of
rapidly growing sentiment. A still more encouraging sign is the strong
sympathy with the enforcement of the laws which we find around the
National Park in Wyoming and Montana especially. State laws should be
encouraged, but I am convinced that while effective in the East, they
will not be effective in the West _in time_, because of the
scattered population, the greater areas of country involved, the greater
difficulty of watching and controlling the killing, and the actual need
of game for food by settlers.
When we study the operation of our State laws on the ground we find that
for various reasons they are not fully effective. A steady and in some
cases rapid diminution of animals is going on so far as I have observed
in Colorado and Wyoming; either the wardens strictly enforce the laws
with strangers and wink at the breaking of them by residents, or they
draw their salaries and do not enforce the laws at all.[9]
[Footnote 9: Addendum.--There is no question as to the good intention of
State legislation. The chief difficulty in the enforcement of the law is
that officers appointed locally, and partly from political reasons,
shrink from applying the penalties of the law to their own friends and
neighbors, especially where the animals are apparently abundant and are
sought for food. The honest enforcement of the law renders the officer
unpopular, even if it does not expose him to personal danger. He is
regarded as interfering with long established rights and customs. The
above applies to conscientious officers. Many local game wardens, as in
the Colorado White River Plateau, for example, give absolutely no
attention to their duties, and are not even on the ground at the opening
of the season. In the Plateau in August, 1901, the laws were being
openly and flagrantly violated, not only by visitors, but by
residents. At the same time the National forest laws were being most
strictly and intelligently enforced. There is no question whatever that
the people of various States can be brought to understand that National
aid or co-operation in the protection of certain wild areas is as
advantageous to a locality as National irrigation and National forest
protection. It is to be sought as a boon and not as an infringement.]
THE VARIOUS CAUSES OF ELIMINATION.
The enemies of our wild animals are numerous and constantly
increasing. (1) There is first the general advance of what we call
civilization, the fencing up of country which principally cuts off the
winter feeding grounds. This was especially seen in the country south of
the National Park last winter. (2) The destruction of natural browsing
areas by cattle and sheep, and by fire. (3) The destruction of game by
sportsmen plays a comparatively small part in the total process of
elimination, yet in some cases it is very reckless, and especially bad
in its example. When I first rode into the best shooting country of
Colorado in 1901, there was a veritable cannonading going on, which
reminded me of the accounts of the battle of El Caney. The destruction
effected by one party in three days was tremendous. In riding over the
ground--for I was not myself shooting--I was constantly coming across
the carcasses of deer. (4) The summer and winter killing for food; this
is the principal and in a sense the most natural and legitimate cause,
although it is largely illegal. In this same area, which was more or
less characteristic and typical of the other areas, even of the
conditions surrounding the national reserve in the Big Horn region, the
destruction was, and is, going on principally during the winter when the
deer are seeking the winter ranges and when they are actually shot and
carted away in large numbers for food both for the ranchmen and for
neighboring towns. Making all allowances for exaggeration, I believe it
to be absolutely true that these deer were being killed by the
wagonload! The same is true of the pronghorn antelope in the Laramie
Plains district. The most forceful argument against this form of
destruction is that it is extremely short-lived and benefits
comparatively few people. This argument is now enforced by law and by
public sentiment in Maine and New York, where the wild animals, both
deer and moose, are actually increasing in number.
Granted, therefore, that we have both National and State sentiment, and
that National legislation by co-operation with the States, if properly
understood, would receive popular support, the carrying out of this
legislation and making it fully effective will be a difficult matter.
It can be done, and, in my judgment, by two measures. The first is
entirely familiar to you: certain or all of the forest reserves must be
made animal preserves; the forest rangers must be made game wardens, or
special wardens must be appointed. This is not so difficult, because
the necessary machinery is already at hand, and only requires adaptation
to this new purpose. It can probably be carried through by patience and
good judgment. Second, the matter of the preservation of the winter
supply of food and protection of animals while enjoying this supply is
the most difficult part of the whole problem, because it involves the
acquisition of land which has already been taken up by settlers and
which is not covered by the present forest reserve machinery, and which
I fear in many instances will require new legislation.
Animals can change their habits during the summer, and have already done
so; the wapiti, buffalo, and even the pronghorn have totally changed
their normal ranges to avoid their new enemy; but in winter they are
forced by the heavy snows and by hunger right down into the enemy's
country.
Thus we not only have the problem of making game preserves out of our
forest reserves, but we have the additional problem of enlarging the
area of forest reserves so as to provide for winter feeding. If this is
not done all the protection which is afforded during the summer will be
wholly futile. This condition does not prevail in the East, in Maine and
in the Adirondacks, where the winter and summer ranges are practically
similar. It is, therefore a new condition and a new problem.
Greater difficulties have been overcome, however, and I have no doubt
that the members of this Club will be among the leaders in the
movement. The whole country now applauds the development and
preservation of the Yellowstone Park, which we owe largely to the
initiative of Phillips, Grinnell, and Rogers. Grant and La Farge were
pioneers in the New York Zoological Park movement. We know the work of
Merriam and Wadsworth, and we always know the sympathies of our honored
founder, member, and guest of this evening, Theodore Roosevelt.
What the Club can do is to spread information and thoroughly enlighten
the people, who always act rightly when they understand.
It must not be put on the minutes of the history of America, a country
which boasts of its popular education, that the _Sequoia_, a race
10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the United States, with
individual trees older than the entire history and civilization of
Greece, that an appeal to the American people was unavailing, that the
finest grove was cut up for lumber, fencing, shingles, and boxes! It
must not be recorded that races of animals representing stocks 3,000,000
years of age, mostly developed on the American continent, were
eliminated in the course of fifty years for hides and for food in a
country abounding in sheep and cattle.
The total national investment in animal preservation will be less than
the cost of a single battleship. The end result will be that a hundred
years hence our descendants will be enjoying and blessing us for the
trees and animals, while, in the other case, there will be no vestige of
the battleship, because it will be entirely out of date in the warfare
of the future.
_Henry Fairfield Osborn_.
Distribution of the Moose
Republished by permission from the Seventh Annual Report of the Forest,
Fish and Game Commission of the State of New York.
The Scandinavian elk, which is closely related to the American moose,
was known to classical antiquity as a strange and ungainly beast of the
far north; especially as an inhabitant of the great Teutoborgian Forest,
which spread across Germany from the Rhine to the Danube. The half
mythical character which has always clung to this animal is well
illustrated in the following quotation from Pliny's Natural History,
Book 8, chapter 16:
"There is also the achlis, which is produced in the island of
Scandinavia. It has never been seen in this city, although we have had
descriptions of it from many persons; it is not unlike the elk, but has
no joints in the hind leg. Hence it never lies down, but reclines
against a tree while it sleeps; it can only be taken by previously
cutting into the tree, and thus laying a trap for it, as, otherwise, it
would escape through its swiftness. Its upper lip is so extremely large,
for which reason it is obliged to go backwards when grazing; otherwise
by moving onwards, the lip would get doubled up." Pliny's achlis and
elk were the same animal.
The strange stiffness of joint and general ungainliness of the elk,
however, were matters of such general observation as to apparently have
become embodied in the German name _eland_, sufferer. Curiously
enough this name _eland_ was taken by the Dutch to South Africa,
and there applied to the largest and handsomest of the bovine antelopes,
_Oreas canna_.
In mediaeval times there are many references in hunting tales to the elk,
notably in the passage in the Nibelungen Lied describing Siegfried's
great hunt on the upper Rhine, in which he killed an elk. Among the
animals slain by the hero is the "schelk," described as a powerful and
dangerous beast. This name has been a stumbling block to scholars for
years, and opinions vary as to whether it was a wild stallion--at all
times a savage animal--or a lone survivor of the Megaceros, or Irish
elk. In this connection it may be well to remark that the Irish elk and
the true elk were not closely related beyond the fact that both were
members of the deer family. The Irish elk, which was common in Europe
throughout the glacial and post-glacial periods, living down nearly or
quite to the historic period, was nothing more than a gigantic fallow
deer.
The old world elk is still found in some of the large game preserves of
eastern Germany, where the Emperor, with his somewhat remarkable ideas
of sportsmanship, annually adds several to his list of slaughtered
game. They are comparatively abundant in Scandinavia, especially in
Norway, where they are preserved with great care. They still survive in
considerable numbers in Russia and Siberia as far east as Amurland.
Without going into a detailed description of the anatomical differences
between the European elk and the American moose, it may be said that the
old world animal is much smaller in size and lighter in color. The
antlers are less elaborate and smaller in the European animal, and
correspond to the stage of development reached by the average
three-year-old bull of eastern Canada. There is a marked separation of
the main antler and the brow antlers. That this deterioration of both
body and antlers is due partly to long continued elimination of the best
bulls, and partly to inbreeding, is probable. We know that the decline
of the European red deer is due to these causes, and that a similar
process of deterioration is showing among the moose in certain outlying
districts in eastern North America.
The type species of this group, known as _Alces machlis_, was long
considered by European naturalists uniform throughout its circumpolar
distribution, in the north of both hemispheres. The American view that
practically all animals in this country represent species distinct from
their European congeners is now generally accepted, and the name
_Alces americanus_ has been given to the American form. It would
appear, however, that the generic name _Alces_ must soon be
replaced by the earlier form _Paralces_.
[Illustration: YEARLING MOOSE.]
The comparatively slight divergence of the two types at the extreme east
and west limits of their range, namely, Norway and eastern Canada, would
indicate that the period of separation of the various members of the
genus is not, geologically speaking, of great antiquity.
The name _moose_ is an Algonquin word, meaning a wood eater or
browser, and is most appropriate, since the animal is pre-eminently a
creature of the thick woods. The old world term elk was applied by the
English settlers, probably in Virginia, to the wapiti deer, an animal
very closely related to the red deer of Europe. In Canada the moose is
sometimes spoken of as the elk, and even in the Rocky Mountain region
one hears occasionally of the "flat-horned elk." We are fortunate in
possessing a native name for this animal, and to call it other than
moose can only create confusion.
The range of the moose in North America extends from Nova Scotia in the
extreme east, throughout Canada and certain of the Northern United
States, to the limits of tree growth in the west and north of
Alaska. Throughout this vast extent of territory but two species are
recognized, the common moose, _Alces americanus_, and the Alaska
moose, _Alces gigas_, of the Kenai Peninsula. What the limits of
the range of the Alaska moose are, may not be known for some
years. Specimens obtained in the autumn of 1902 from the headwaters of
the Stikine River in British Columbia, appear to resemble closely, in
their large size and dark coloration, the moose of the Kenai Peninsula.
The antlers, however, are much smaller. These specimens also differ from
the eastern moose in the same manner as does the Kenai Peninsula animal,
except in the antlers, which approximate to those of the type species.
I have no doubt that the moose on the mainland along Cook Inlet will
prove to be identical with those of the Kenai Peninsula itself, but how
far their range extends we have at present no means of knowing. It is
even possible that further exploration will bring to light other species
in the Northwestern Provinces and in Alaska.