800 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



range, was vigorously denied by state authorities, and in 1925 most of the deer 

 died of starvation. Tlie herd continued to shrink until by 1939 there were only 

 10,000 left and the range was ruined. That sequence has been repeated a 

 thousand times on deer ranges all over the West, the Lake States, and the North- 

 east. Today many biologists argue in favor of less predator control on big game 

 ranges as a safeguard against population irruptions. 



On the other hand, predator control as a measure to increase small game 

 such as quail, pheasants, and rabbits, has never been proved to have any mate- 

 rial effect at all. Great sums that have been paid for reduction of foxes, weasels, 

 hawks, owls, and crows, probably have not raised the level of farm game above 

 what the terrain would support anyway. 



Like many another sovereign remedy for game shortage, the control of preda- 

 tors did not prove to be a panacea. 



Artificial Propagation — ^the Game Farm Mania 



After the program of wildlife protection was well under way, a new ap- 

 proach was devised to give hunters more game to shoot. Various birds and mam- 

 mals, some native but many exotic, were propagated in pens and liberated in 

 the depleted coverts. 



The one great success of the restocking program was the introduction of the 

 ring-necked pheasant from China into farmlands of the northern and central 

 United States. Unfortunately, this initial coup de maitre inspired great confi- 

 dence in propagation as a method of increasing game, leading over the years to 

 expensive and usually fruitless attempts to repeat the process with other spe- 

 cies. Most of the exotic pheasants, partridges, and grouse that were introduced 

 failed to survive and the few that became established, such as the Chukar and 

 Hungarian partridges, did so on a relatively small scale. 



Among native species, repeated studies have shown that pen-raised birds 

 and mammals have a low survival rate and serve scarcely to augment the natu- 

 ral crop of birds, raised in the wild at no expense. Where native stocks were 

 literally exterminated by overhunting or trapping, introducing live-trapped 

 animals from elsewhere often has been successful. For example, elk, antelope, 

 and beaver have reoccupied great areas of range following reintroduction. But 

 it was demonstrated that propagated stocks, for instance, of the wild turkey 

 and the bobwhite quail were sometimes genetically inferior to native stocks in 

 their ability to survive in the wild, and that mixing of the strains actually led to 

 a decrease in wild populations. It has been proved that, where a breeding stock 

 of game already exists, there is little advantage in attempting to build it up 

 by artificial propagation. 



Habitat Management 



The shortcomings of simple protection and of propagation as methods of 

 managing wildlife led finally to appreciation of the habitat as the transcend- 

 ent force that, more than any other, determines the level of wild populations. 

 It had long been recognized that each wild species was associated with a given 

 sort of habitat and required certain types of food and of cover, but the idea 



