NATIONAL

ZOOLOGICAL PARK, WASHINGTON, D. C. WEIGHT MARCH 21, 1908, 1,050 POUNDS.

CONDITION OF WILD LIFE IN ALASKA."

[With 1 plate.]

By MADISON Grant.

The opening of the twentieth century found the game in the old territories of the United States well on the road toward the conditions that precede extinction. The bison had been practically gone for two decades. The mountain sheep had been exterminated throughout a very large part of its original range, and the number remaining in remote mountains was sadly reduced. The wapiti, while still living in herds numbering many thousand, was rapidly withdrawing to the vicinity of its last refuge, the Yellowstone Park. The prong-horn of the plains was disappearing with increasing rapidity, partly due to the increasing use of the barb-wire fences on its former ranges.

This rapid diminution of the game animals of the United States was, and is to-day, the inevitable consequence of the settlement and occupation of the best grazing lands. While there remain mountains where the game is relatively undisturbed, so far as the killing of individuals is concerned, and while these ranges in summer appear well adapted to sustain a large and varied fauna, their actual capacity to sustain life is limited to such animals as can there find sustenance during the heavy snows of winter.

Before the arrival of white men, the animals, which lived in the mountains during the summer, sought refuge in the sheltered valleys and foothills during the cold season. These favored localities, however, were at once occupied by settlers, and the game was deprived of its winter feeding grounds. In my opinion, this has done more in recent years to exterminate the large animals of the West than the actual shooting of individuals.

During the closing years of the nineteenth century the American people had obtained no little experience in game protection, and had embodied it in Federal statutes and the game laws of the various

• Reprinted by permission from the Twelfth Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society, 1907. New York, January, 1908.

States. Of all the regulations established for the preservation of wild life, the most practical and effective have been found to be, first, the prohibition of hide and head hunting; second, the prohibition of market hunting; third, and most important of all, the establishment of sanctuaries where game could roam and breed absolutely undisturbed. The most conspicuous example of such refuges is the Yellowstone Park, the unquestioned success of which is admitted on all sides.

At the end of the century, the gold discovered in the extreme northwest of Canada and in Alaska brought these territories suddenly before the public eye. Here was a district of enormous extent, lying at the extreme limit of the continent, and populated by a large and varied fauna, which was practically undisturbed. During the last ten years thousands of prospectors and miners have gone into Alaska, and in many places worked havoc with the game. On the whole, however, the destruction of the game has not yet gone far enough to permanently injure the fauna of the region, provided the matter of protection is taken in hand scientifically and in the immediate future.

We have in Alaska a gigantic preserve. In it there are not only several species rich in the numbers of their individual members, but also certain species which in point of size appear to be the very culmination of their respective genera, as, for example, the giant moose. The brown bear group of southern Alaska certainly contains the largest bears in the world, not even excepting the great fish bear of Kamchatka or the extinct cave bear of Europe. The largest known wolves are found in northern Alaska, and a wolverine of exceptional size has been recently described. When this great game region was first opened up immediate legislation was needed to protect the animals from the deliberate onslaught of hide hunters in southeastern Alaska; of head hunters, who attacked the moose, sheep, and caribou of the Kenai Peninsula, and of the market hunters generally throughout the coast regions. A game law, which certainly proved effective in making it difficult for sportsmen to hunt in Alaska, was passed, and a revision of this statute is now before Congress. It is not the intention to discuss in this paper the details of the proposed legislation, beyond saying that the measure is proposed by the friends of animal life in Alaska, and has the support of the best interests in that Territory.

The general principles of game protection applicable to the situation in Alaska are simple. It should be clearly understood that the game of Alaska, or of any other region, does not belong exclusively to the human inhabitants of that particular region, and that neither the white settlers nor the native inhabitants have any inherent right to the game other than that conferred by law. The interest of the

entire people of the United States, and to some extent that of the civilized world, is centered in the continued existence of the forms of animal life which have come down to us from an immense antiquity through the slow process of evolution. It is no longer generally conceded that the local inhabitants of any given district have a divine commission to pollute the streams with sawdust, to destroy the forests by axe or fire, or to slaughter every living thing within reach of rifle, trap, or poisoned bait. This must be thoroughly understood in advance. The game and the forests belong to the nation and not to the individual, and the use of them by the individual citizen is limited to such privileges as may be accorded him by law. The mere fact that he has the power to destroy without interference by the law does not in itself confer a right. The destruction of game is far more often effected by local residents than it is by visiting sportsmen, but the chief evil doer, and the public enemy of all classes is the professional hunter, either Indian or white, who kills for the market. Worse still, perhaps, is the professional dealer in heads and antlers, who employs such hunters to provide game heads for the decoration of the banquet halls of the growing class of would-be sportsmen, who enjoy the suggestion of hunting prowess conferred by a selected collection of purchased heads, mixed in with those of their own killing. However efficient the game laws may be in limiting the killing to a given number of individuals, and to certain seasons of the year, or, better still, to the adult males of certain species, the only permanently effective way to continue in abundance and in individual vigor any species of game is to establish proper sanctuaries, as thoroughly controlled as the Yellowstone Park, and these must contain both summer and winter ranges. In such areas no hunting or trapping, nor perhaps even dogs, should be allowed; and in them the game will then retain its native habits and breed freely, while the overflow would populate the adjoining districts. This principle has been applied in East Africa with brilliant success, where a protected strip of land on either side of the Uganda Railway is now absolutely swarming with game.

Such preserves should be set aside in Alaska, while land is yet of little value. Districts should be selected where there is but little, if any, mineral wealth; and there are abundant areas of that description in Alaska. Certain islands should also be utilized, particularly in southeastern Alaska. Beyond doubt such refuges will be ultimately established, but it is to be hoped that it can be done before the game has been decimated and the forests cut down or burned.

Another element in game protection is the relation of the Indian to the wild game. This problem is not as serious in Alaska as it is in parts of British Columbia and the Canadian Northwest, and is settling itself by the rapid decline of the Indian population. Indians,