AS A CONSERVATIONIST 



387 



has increased, so, too, has the intensity of forest management. Silviculture, the deliberate cul- 

 tivation of the forest, is gradually replacing the old, haphazard methods of exploitation. 



Such necessary features of lumbering as roads, skid-trails, rollways and piling-grounds are 

 very useful to grouse. These grow up to tangles of herbs and shrubs, especially briars, which 

 persist despite occasional trampling. 



Thus the axe, like the plow, has exerted at times a favorable and again an unfavorable 

 influence on the habitat, on the condition of which, in the long run, the number of grouse 

 largely depends. 



AS A CONSERVATIONIST 



In our system of free private enterprise it has taken society a long time to recognize the 

 need for conserving our vital resources. True, from colonial times there have been a few 

 far-sighted individuals who have warned of the consequences of continued exploitation, but 

 their voices were crying in the wilderness. 



In more recent times these consequences have become all too apparent and for many the 

 time for retribution has arrived. The decline of millions of acres of once-productive land, 

 and with it much of its former crop of wildlife, has resulted in the abandonment of vast 

 areas of farm and forest. 



The concept of conservation of renewable resources — meaning %vise use — as a practicing 

 credo of man has gained much acceptance in recent years. This trend toward a more per- 

 manent system of land management has not been sudden, although its progress has acceler- 

 ated since the turn of the century. Since the first law restricting the unlimited pursuit of 

 grouse, there has been a gradual evolution of effort toward its conservation. 



Man himself has evolved as a conservationist. First believing that the enactment of laws 

 restricting the take of grouse would adequately maintain a satisfactory grouse crop, he has 

 gradually broadened the scope of conservation effort. Today the emphasis revolves around 



