Page 270 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

248 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
civilized that fails to recognize the necessity to protect wild life. I anii tempted to make a list of the states and nations that were at latest advices destitute of game laws and game protectors, but I fear to da injusticethroughlackofthelatestinformation. However,thetimehas come to search out delinquents, and hold up to each one a mirror that will reflect its shortcomings.
Naturally, we are most interested in our own contingent of the Army- of the Defense.
The United States Government.—To-day the feeHng in Congress-. toward the conservation of wild life and forests is admirable. Both, houses are fully awake to the necessity of saving while there is yet some- thingtobesaved. ThepeopleoftheUnitedStatesmaybeassuredthat the national government is active and sympathetic in the prosecution of such conservation measures as it might justly be expected to promote. For example, during the past five years we have seen Congress take favorable action on the following important causes, nearly every one of which cost money:
The saving of the American bison, in four National ranges. The creation of fifty-eight bird refuges.
The creation of five great game preserves.
The saving of the elk in Jackson Hole.
The protection of the fur seal.
The protection of the wild life of Alaska.
There are many active friends of wild life who confidently expect to
see this fine list gloriously rounded out by the passage in 1913 of an ideal bill for the federal protection of all migratory birds. To name the friends of wild life in Congress would require the printing of a list of at least two hundred names, and a history of the rise and progress of wild life conservation by the national government would fill a volume. Such a volume would be highly desirable.
When the story of the national government's part in wild-life pro- tection is finally written, it will be found that while he was president, Theodore Roosevelt made a record in that field that is indeed enough to make a reign illustrious. He aided every wild-life cause that lay within the bounds of possibility, and he gave the vanishing birds and mammals thebenefitofeverydoubt. Hehelpedtoestablishthreenationalbison herds, four national game preserves, fifty-three federal bird refuges, and to enact the Alaska game laws of 1902 and 1907.
It was in 1904 that the national government elected to accept its share of the white man's burden and enter actively into the practical business of wild life protection. This special work, originally undertaken and down to the present vigorously carried on by Dr. Theodore S. Palmer, has considerably changed the working policy of the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture, and greatly influenced game protection
throughout the states. The game protection work of that bureau is alone worth to the people of this country at least twenty times more per