Page 101 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 79
horses and sheep,
where they still do
immense damage,
chiefly in killing young
stock. Inspiteofthe
great sums that have
been paid out by west-
ern states in bounties
for the destruction of
wolves, in many, many
places the gray wolf
still persists, and can
not be exterminated.
To the stockmen of
the west the wolf ques-
tion is a serious niat-
ter. The stockmen of
Montana say that a
government expert
once told them how to
get rid of the gray
wolves. His instruc-
tions were: "Locate
the dens, and kill the young in the dens, soon after they are born!" "All very easy to say, but a trifle difficult to do!" said my informant; and the ranchman seem to think they are yet a long way from a solution of the wolf question.
During the past year the destruction of noxious predatory animals in the national forest reserves has seriously occupied the attention of the UnitedStatesBureauofForestry. Bytheforestersofthatbureauthe following animals were destroyed in fifteen western states:
213 Bears
88 Mountain Lions
172 Gray Wolves 69 Wolf Pups
6,487 Coyotes 870 Wild-Cats
72 Lynxes 7,971
THE EASTERN RED SQUIRREL A Great Destroyer of Birds
In 1910 the total was 9,103.
The Red Squirrel.—Once in a great while, conditions change in
subtle ways, wild creatures unexpectedly increase in number, and a com- munity awakens to the fact that some wild species has become a public nuisance. Inasmallcitypark,evengraysquirrelsniaybreedandbe- come so fearfully numerous that, in their restless quest for food, they may ravage the nests of the wild birds, kill and devour the young, and become a pest. In the Zoological Park, in 1903, we found that the red squirrels had increased to such a horde that th«y were driving out all our nesting wild birds, driving out the gray squirrels, and making them- selvesintolerablyobnoxious. Weshotsixtyofthem,andbroughtthe total down to a reasonable number. Wherever he is or whatever his