SHALL THE WALRUS BECOME EXTINCT? 



By Joel Asaph Allen 



THE walruses are doomed to early extinction like many other large 

 mammals, hunted as game or for their commercial products. This 

 will be true unless provision for their protection be soon made by 

 international agreement, prohibiting their slaughter for commercial purposes 

 or for trophies, and making the sale of such products illegal. As the accom- 

 plishment of such an agreement and provision for its strict enforcement will 

 naturally require a considerable period even in this age of conservation 

 sentiment, the matter cannot be taken up too soon nor too earnestly to 

 secure the preservation of the remnants of the former vast herds of one of 

 the most specialized and interesting types of mammal life. 



The following practical facts supplied by Mr. Beverly B. Dobbs of 

 Nome, Alaska, eye witness for many years of the slaughter of the walrus, 

 are of peculiar value as an incentive to action. 



Walruses are greatly prized for their heavy pelts and ivory by the Eskimo of 

 northwestern Alaska and northeastern Siberia. As the time approaches for the 

 giving birth to the young, the females withdraw from the general herd and drift along 

 toward the Arctic Ocean with the great ice fields, which each year begin movement 

 toward the Pole about May 15. Until the middle of September great herds of these 

 females with their young are found in these waters. I have often seen as many as 

 ten thousand within three miles of our boat and it is during this time that the hunters, 

 both Eskimo and white men, conduct a wholesale slaughter of the animals. During 

 the hunting season the Eskimo keep their large skin boats or umiaks on stanchions 

 out near the edge of the shore ice. Watchers are stationed at advantageous points 

 where they may quickly detect a herd on a passing ice cake and give the signal to the 

 village. Immediately upon receipt of the good news all available men rush to the 

 boats, mount them on runners made of inflated sealskin pokes and push out over the 

 rough ice into the open water. 



Keeping the walrus to the windward the Eskimo in the boat stealthily approach 

 to within a few hundred feet of the herd, which may contain five or six hundred 

 animals. Then climbing on a neighboring ice floe, they lie low and patiently wait 

 until some walrus raises its head above the others. When this occurs a shot rings 

 out, the head drops and the Eskimo settle down to await the appearance of another 

 unprotected head. In this way an entire herd may be annihilated without one 

 animal leaving the ice floe. Strange though it may seem, the loud report of the rifle 

 causes no alarm among the herd. This is possibly due to the fact that fissures forming 

 in the ice often produce sounds similar to the report of a gun and the walrus being 

 accustomed to these sounds pays no heed to them. Should the animals get a scent 

 of the hunters, they would plunge headlong into the open sea and in the scramble 

 only a few would be captured. A bullet lodged in the body of the walrus instead of 

 the head will not prevent escape into the water. 



Another method of hunting, which is employed mainly by the American native, 

 is conducted along more hazardous lines: Fifteen or twenty natives armed with 



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