THE CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE 



By A. STARKER LEOPOLD 



Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley 



In the year 1852 the Legislature of the new State of California passed a law 

 protecting deer from hunting for six months of the year. This event marked 

 the beginning of wildlife conservation in the West. 



In the year 1952 several branches of the California state government spent 

 $3,379,000 on fish and game management (Calif. Dept. Fish and Game, 1953) 

 and the state legislature had on its docket over 150 bills affecting wildlife in 

 one way or another. During the intervening century there had evolved a com- 

 plicated set of concepts and administrative programs concerned solely \vith ways 

 and means of preserving and managing wild animal populations. Although the 

 evolution of ideas in wildlife management is proceeding faster now than ever 

 before, it may be well at this point to review the events of the past century as 

 a guide to our future thinking and planning. 



Early Beginnings 



On the frontier, of course, there w^as little thought of wildlife preservation. 

 Many a post mortem has been written about the careless treatment of animal 

 resources by our pioneer forefathers. The slaughter of the bison and passenger 

 pigeon, the ruthless commercialization of fur animals, the feather trade, have 

 all been thoroughly lamented and there is no point in retracing the dark and 

 bloody history here. In point of fact, human behavior is so completely condi- 

 tioned by circumstances as to suggest that our most ardent conservationists 

 today (the author included), had they been born into frontier society, would 

 perhaps have acted much like their contemporaries. The concept of saving some- 

 thing only assumes meaning when that thing becomes scarce. The conservation 

 idea could not have been born until the native wealth of wildlife was clearly 

 being dissipated. Our history of the conservation movement begins, therefore, 

 with the first flickerings of recognition for its need. 



From 1852, when the first game-protective law was passed in California, 

 until after 1900, despair over the steady shrinkage of game and fur resources 

 in the West deepened into the conviction that game was ultimately doomed. 

 More and more protective laws were dutifully adopted by the various state 

 legislatures but there is no evidence of real optimism that the laws would stem 

 the receding tide. Since no provision was made for enforcing the game laws, 

 they were largely ignored by the hunting public, a fact well known to the 

 legislators. The passage of game laws was in that era no more than an expres- 

 sion of pious regret that the deer, elk, beavers, and so forth, were yielding to 

 the inevitable advance of settlement. At the most it was hoped that legal pro- 



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