Page 178 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

CHAPTER XVI
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME
The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and conclu- sions,quitebroadenoughtofillawholevolume. Inthespaceatourdis- posal here it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject, without attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed evidence.
To say that all over the world, the large land mammals are being destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding, would not be literally true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost un- touched by the destroying hand of civilized man. It is true, however, that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller. It is also true that in all the regions of the earth that ai easily penetrable by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster thai, it breeds, and of necessityitisdisappearing. ThisiswhytheBritisharenowsourgently bestirring themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that they own.
It is one of the inexorable laws of Nature, to which I know of not one exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily found andeasilyexterminated. Allsuchanimalshaveaweakholdonlife. This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very easy for man to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power, long-range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska ! With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big game of the North.
The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide successfully and survive in the treeless regions of the North; but his room is always preferable to his company, because he, too, is a destroyer of big game.
I am tempted to try to map out roughly what are to-day the un- opened and undestroyed wild haunts of big game in North America. In doing this, however, I warn the reader not to be deceived into think- ing that because game still exists in those regions, those areas therefore constitute a permanent preserve and safe breeding-ground for large mammals. That is very, very far from being the case. The further "opening up " of the wilderness areas, as I shall call them for convenience,