

CHAPTER XL 



WILDLIFE CONSERVATION 



(By Walter P. Taylor,* Senior Biologist, United States 

 Fish and Wildlife Service) 



The Abundance of Wild Animals 



* ' The manor of living nature is so ample that all may be allowed to 

 sport on it freely. The most jealous proprietor cannot entertain any 

 apprehension that the game will be diminished or even perceptibly 

 thinned." So wrote Dr. Richard Harlan, in his book, Fauna Ameri- 

 cana, published in Philadelphia in 1825, just 122 years ago. 



What a panorama of abundant wildlife must have greeted the ex- 

 plorers and pioneers, east, west, north, and south, to inspire so uni- 

 versally the blind faith in the inexhaustibility of our natural re- 

 sources. This was a false faith that even yet has not been wholly 

 eradicated, although the evidence of pitifully small remnants of some 

 of our valuable wildlife species, and some of these still diminishing, 

 should teach us better. 



It is true that in some of the unbroken forests, deer may not have 

 been so abundant as they are today in the same areas ; for deer and 

 similar wildlife like borders and developmental stages of vegetation 

 better than they do pure forest stands. Similarly, bobwhite quail may 

 have been less generously represented in the broom-sedge of the 

 southeastern United States than in the more varied environment of 

 the present. On the whole, however, taking account of variations in 

 numbers dependent on habitat, the generous abundance of the wild- 

 life resources encountered in those early days is difficult for us to con- 

 ceive. Let us examine some of the records. 



Buffalo were widely distributed on the North American continent, 

 almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and almost from the Arctic 

 barrens to the Gulf of Mexico. Their numbers were estimated at not 

 less than sixty or seventy million individuals. The American bison, 

 as they grazed the plains country or migrated with the seasons, must 

 have been one of the outstanding wildlife phenomena of all time. 



♦In charge, Texas Cooperative Wildlife Research LTnit. (The Agricultural and 

 Mechanical College of Texas ; the Texas Game, Fish, and Oyster Commission ; the 

 American Wildlife Institute ; and the Fish and Wildlife Service, U. S. Department 

 of the Interior, cooperating.) 



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