Page 184 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

Itj2 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
can protect from slaughter those Arizona sheep? Absolutely no one? They are too few and too widely scattered for the game wardens to keep in touch with them. The "prospectors" have them entirely at their mercy, and the world well knows what prospectors' "mercy" to edible biggamelookslikeontheground. Itleadsstraighttothefrying-pan, the coyotes and the vultures.
The Lower California peninsula contains about five hundred moun- tain sheep, without the slightest protection save low, desert mountains, heat and thirst. But that is no real protection whatever. Those sheep are too fine to be butchered the way they have been, and now are being, butchered. In1908IstronglycalledtheattentionoftheMexicanGov- ernment to the situation; and the Department© de Fomento secured the issue of an executive order forbidding the hunting of any big game in Lower California without the written authority of the government. I am sure, however, that owing to the political and military upheaval itneverstoppedtheslaughterofsheep. Insucheasymountainsasthose of Lower California, it is a simple matter to exterminate quickly all the mountain sheep that they possess. The time for President Madero and his cabinet to inaugurate serious protective measures has full}' arrived.
Both British Columbia and Alberta have even yet fine herds of big- horn, and we can count three large game preserves in which they are protected. TheyareGoatMountainPark(EastKootenaydistrict,be- tween the Elk and Bull Rivers) ; the Rocky Mountains Park, near Banff, and Waterton Lakes Park, in the southwestern corner of Alberta.
In view of the number of men who desire to hunt them, the bag limit on big-horn rams in British Columbia and Alberta still is too liberal, by half. One ram per year for one man is quite enough; quite as much so as one moose is the limit everywhere. To-day "a big, old ram" is regarded by sportsmen as a much more desirable and creditable trophy than a moose; because moose-killing is easy, and the bagging of an old mountain ram in real mountains requires five times as much effort and skill.
The splendid high and rugged mountains of British Columbia and Alberta form an ideal home for the big-horn (and mountain goat), and it would be an international calamity for that region to be denuded of its splendid big game. With resolute intent and judicial treatment that region can remain a rich and valuable hunting ground for five hundred years to come. Under falsely "liberal" laws, it can be shot into a state of complete desolation within ten years, or even less.
Other Mountain Sheep.—In northern British Columbia, north of Iskoot Lake, there lies a tremendous region, extending to the Arctic Ocean, and comprehending the whole area between the Rocky Mountain continental divide and the waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end of this great wilderness ranges the black mountain sheep, and throtighoul the remainder, with many sheepless intervals, is scattered the white mountain sheep.