Page 221 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST 199
DEADFALL TRAPS IN BURMA
ALongSeriessetAcrossaValley,bytheKachinsoftheBurma-ChineseBorder. AWholesale Method of Wild-life Slaughter, Photographed by C. William Beebe, 1910
As a contrast to the milliner}' hunter of fifty years ago it is refreshing to find that at last sincere efforts are being made in British possessions to stop this traffic. I happened to be at Rangoon when six large bales of pheasant skins were seized by the Custom officials. A Chinaman had brought them from Yunnan via Bhamo, and was preparing to ship them as ducks' feathers. Two of the bales were opened for my inspection. The first contained about five hundred Lady Amherst pheasant skins, falling to pieces and lacking heads and legs. The second held over four hundredsilverpheasants,inalmostperfectcondition. Thechiefcollector had put the absolutely prohibitive fine of £200 on them, and was waiting for the expiration of the legal number of days before burning the entire lot. They must have represented years of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China.
Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma, and over the Yunnan border, we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of native trapping, a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, Borneo,ChinaandotherpartsoftheFarEast. Alowbamboofenceis built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended.
Any creature attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks and by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim.