LEOPOLD: THE CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE 805 



continue to be the individual landowner. Recognition of this fact has led to 

 increasing emphasis on conservation education and extension work among farm- 

 ers and ranchers. 



The effective development of wildlife management on private lands is being 

 seriously hindered by the legal machinery set up fifty years ago during the 

 protective phase of game conservation. Ownership and custody of the game 

 has been definitely placed by the courts in the hands of public agencies whose 

 regulations governing hunting are in turn dictated in large part by organized 

 sportsmen, not by the landowners who in fact are the real custodians of the 

 game range. Rigid laws prevent the landowner from marketing a game crop in 

 the way he markets his wheat or lambs, yet he is being asked to produce the 

 crop for the public to harvest. Various legal devices such as cooperatives and 

 licensed shooting preserves are now being tested to circumvent this problem, but 

 with only partial success. Short seasons and unnecessarily conservative hunting 

 laws still serve to discourage game management as a business enterprise on most 

 private lands. In other words, there are traditional, educational, fiscal, and legal 

 barriers to general application of research findings on how to produce game. 



On public lands the problem is relatively much simpler. For example, on 

 the national forests game and fish production for public recreation is recognized 

 as an important and in some areas as a primary use of the land. The Forest 

 Service is not impelled solely by financial motives in establishing its land use 

 policies, and where the public good is best served by devoting areas to wildlife 

 (as for example, deer winter ranges, or reserves for rare species), conflicting 

 uses may be excluded or made subservient. Noticeably more progress is being 

 made in adopting scientific methods of game production on public lands than 

 on private. 



It is clear, however, that on all lands throughout the nation there has been 

 steady progress in adopting new and more effective methods of encouraging 

 wildlife, and there is every reason to hope that substantial populations of shoot- 

 able game, and of nongame native forms as well, can be retained despite intensi- 

 fied use of land resources. Recognition of the importance of outdoor recreation 

 in modern society has placed a premium on wildlife which will stimulate added 

 effort among conservationists of the future. 



Summary 



Wildlife conservation in the United States started as an effort to preserve 

 remnants of the native animal populations that had been severely depleted dur- 

 ing the era of frontier exploitation. The initial stages were protective in nature 

 and consisted principally of legal restrictions on hunting, setting aside refuges 

 and sanctuaries, and controlling natural predators. 



After the protective program was well developed, a few trained biologists 

 began to study game ecology in the field and learned that maintaining a suitable 

 habitat for game was far more effective in sustaining wild populations than 

 merely protecting existing breeding stocks. There followed a rapid reorienta- 

 tion in conservation thinking and a parallel but slower adjustment in adminis- 

 trative programs. 



One outgrowth of the success of the biological approach to wildlife manage- 



