796 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



tection might serve to ration out the remaining stocks of game — to make the 

 supply last a little longer. 



Then at the turn of the century there emerged a President with a firm con- 

 viction that permanent preservation of wildlife and of sport hunting could be 

 achieved as part of a general program of resource management. Theodore 

 Roosevelt catalyzed an astonishing advance in conservation thinking. His long 

 association with Gifford Pinchot and other foresters convinced him that wild 

 crops such as forests and game could yield an annual harvest indefinitely if 

 the rate of harvest were properly regulated and a basic breeding stock (or 

 growing stock) were retained. Installed in the presidency in 1901, he deter- 

 mined to make conservation his personal crusade. In the first years of his term, 

 Roosevelt brought public attention to focus on the need for a broad national 

 conservation program and he fanned to life the hope that such a program actu- 

 ally could save some of the native beauty of the countryside. Scientists who 

 had been busy cataloguing and describing the native animals suddenly came 

 forth with a rash of pamphlets and magazine articles on preserving our vanish- 

 ing wildlife. Newspapers devoted editorials and front page space to this new 

 crusade. State legislatures from coast to coast busied themselves creating new 

 conservation bureaus and departments. As a culmination, in 1908 Roosevelt 

 invited all the Governors of the United States to a White House conference on 

 conservation, and that event gave added stimulus to the movement which al- 

 ready was well under way. 



The initial idea of the conservation movement was to protect and preserve 

 the remnants of wildlife that had not been dissipated by the frontiersmen. 

 Administrative programs were developed to implement various phases of the 

 protective movement, and for the ensuing thirty years wildlife conservation 

 implied in large part simple protection. The concept of managing and produc- 

 ing game crops formulated slowly during this period. 



The three principal aspects of protection were (1) legal protection and law 

 enforcement, (2) establishment of refuges and wildlife preserves, and (3) con- 

 trol of natural predators. 



Legal Protection 



As stated above, game protective laws had little significance until wardens 

 were sent into the field to enforce them. Most state w^arden forces were organized 

 in the Rooseveltian era, at which time the hunting license was widely adopted 

 as a device for financing law enforcement. Whereas many game-protective laws 

 had been passed in the period from 1677, when Connecticut enacted the first such 

 regulation, until 1852, when the custom reached California, and thousands more 

 were adopted in the late nineteenth century, it was actually in the decade 1900- 

 1910 that effective legal protection was achieved. By then the near-extermination 

 of some of the most numerous of native game species pointed up the great need 

 for hunting control. Enthusiasm for game protection was stirred by the elo- 

 quent writings of such leaders as William T. Hornaday (1913, 1914), William 

 Butcher, Theodore S. Palmer, T. Gilbert Pearson, and John Phillips, and there 

 quickly developed a strong public sympathy for the cause of protection, which 

 of course was essential to its success. 



Almost from the start the protection movement brought demonstrable re- 



