Page 182 - Our Vanishing Wild Life
P. 182
160 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE
was credited with two thousand head. To-day, the number alive, by actual count, is only five hundred head ; and this after twenty-five years of protection! Where have the others gone? This shows, alas! that perpetual close seasons can not always bring back the vanished thousands of game I
Here is a reHable report (June 29, 1912) regarding the prong-horned antelopeinLowerCalifornia,fromE.W.Nelson: "Antelopeformerly ranged over nearly the entire length of Lower California, but are now gone from a large part of their ancient range, and their steadily decreasing numbers indicate their early extinction throughout the peninsula."
In captivity the antelope is exasperatingly delicate and short-lived. Ithasaboutasmuchstaminaasapetmonkey. Asanexhibitionanimal in zoological gardens and parks it is a failure; for it always looks faded, spiritless and dead, like a stuffed animal ready to be thrown into the discard. Zoologists can not save the prong-horn species save at long range, in preserves so huge that the sensitive little beast will not even suspect that it is confined.
Two seri—ous attempts have been made to transplant and acclimatize
the antelope
in the Wichita National
Bison Range, in Oklahoma, and
