Page 297 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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CHAPTER XXIX
NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES (Continued)
Connecticut:
The sale of all native wild game, regardless of its source, should be prohibited at alltimes. Enactatonceafive-yearcloseseasonlawontheremnantofruffedgrouse, quail, woodcock, snipe, and all shore birds.
Even in the home of the newest and deadliest "autoloading" shotgun, those guns and pump guns should be prohibited in hunting.
The enormous bag limits of 35 rail and 50 each per day of plover, snipe and shore birdsisacrime! Theyshouldbereplacedbyaten-yearcloseseasonlawforallof those species.
The terms of the game commissioners should be not less than four years.
Like so many other states, Connecticut has recklessly wasted her wild-life inheritance. During the fifteen years preceding the year 1898, thebirdlifeofthatstatehaddecreased75percent. OnMarch6,1912, Senator Geo. P. McLean, of Connecticut stated at the hearing held by his Committee on Forest Reservations and the Protection of Game this fact: "We have more cover than there was thirty or forty years ago, more brush probably, but there is not one partridge [ruffed grouse] to-
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day where there were twenty ten years ago
First of all, Connecticut needs a ten-year close season law to save her
remnant of shore birds before it is completely annihilated. Then she needsaBaynelaw,andneedsitbadly. Undersuchalaw,andthetagging system that it provides, the state game wardens would have so strong a grip on the situation that the present unlawful sale of game would be completelystopped. Half-waymeasuresinpreventingthesaleofgame willnotanswer. AlreadyConnecticuthaswastedthousandsofdollars in fruitless efforts to restock her desolated woodlands and farms with quail, and to introduce the Hungarian partridge; but even yet she unll
not protect her own native species!
Men of Connecticut, save the last remnants of your native game birds before they are all utterly exterminated within your borders! Don't ask the killers of game what they will agree to, but make the laws what you know they should be ! If you want a gameless state, let the destruction go on as it now is going, with i6,ooo licensed gunners in the field each year, and you will surely have it, right soon.
Delaware:
vStop all spring shooting, at once ; stop killing shore birds for ten years, and protect swans indefinitely.