FORESTS AND GAME PRESERVATION 



115 



Lakoe BiTi.L Elk.. 



THIS NOBLE ANLMAL IS WELL CONTENTED WITH HIS LIFE ON THE BUFFALO RANGE ON THE WICHITA NATIONAL FOREST. 



OKLAHOMA. 



ARE WE IDEALISTS? 



We have been accused of being 

 idealists, dreamers. May we ask who 

 awakened the American people to the 

 necessity of conservation? Was it a 

 lumberman? Was it a man versed in 

 the principles of scientific forestry? 

 Was it a college professor? No, it 

 was a naturalist, an idealist, a big game 

 hunter. To our Roosevelts, our John 

 Muirs and our Joaquin Millers, and 

 many others, as enthusuastic but less 

 prominent, we must give due credit 

 for awakening us to the peril of the 

 total loss of our national domain to 

 private greed and sowing for us, as a 

 national heritage for all time, our 

 national parks and forests. 



We Americans are apt to look at 

 things through the dollar sign but in 

 this let us become a little sentimental 

 and realize that the development of 

 character, of self reliance by the love 



of the real wilderness in our coming 

 generations is as important as money 

 making. 



Here may I suggest that perhaps our 

 American Forestry Association — and I 

 speak as a member of it — might well 

 advocate the extension of our system 

 of national and state parks, and their 

 maintenance as natural wild forests, as 

 happy recreation grounds, where the ax 

 might never be applied except where 

 the welfare of the forest required it 

 in the making of fire lines and the 

 necessary roads and trails. We have 

 a number of such parks but we need 

 more — not to interfere with our com- 

 mercial forests, but to be a thing apart 

 from them. 



In this connection may I mention the 

 proposed Grand Canyon National Park 

 which the Camp Fire Club is advocating. 

 The most beautiful section of the 

 canyon is now a national monument » 



