6 DEPARTMENT OF THE XAYAL SERTICE 



8 GEORGE V, A. 1918 



inland. The managers of the canneries and the buyers for the San Francisco markets 

 joined in these requests. Our patrol force corroborated the statements and alleged 

 that the territory covered by them swarmed with these animals. Formerly the sea- 

 lions were hunted for commercial purposes, but their hides and oil no longer find a 

 profitable market, and the industry has failed, in consequence of which they have 

 greatly increased in number." 



Fishermen, market men, and cannery men were unanimous in asking for a 

 reduction in number on account of the destruction by them of salmon and other food 

 fishes. So voluminous was the evidence that such scientists as Jordan, Gilbert, and 

 Harkness were convinced of the justice of the plea. 



As a number of the larger rookeries were situated on federal lighthouse reserva- 

 tions, the commission wrote to the Hon. Lyman Gage, then Secretary of the Treasury, 

 to ask permission to kill sea-lions on these reservations, giving quite fully the 

 reasons advanced for making such a request. The request was granted on April 27, 

 but on May 31, before any lions were killed, the permit was suspended. On June 9 

 a letter from the Treasury Department gave the information that the suspension 

 was due to protests from the United States Fish Commission, the secretary of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, the New York Zoological Society, and 

 various others. 



The commission in reply stated its case at greater length, and called the atten- 

 tion of the Treasury Department to the fact that while their evidence was backed up 

 and accepted by scientists who had studied the question at first hand, all of the 

 opposition came from men who had no personal knowledge of the various aspects of 

 the question. This reply was sufficient to convince the United States Commissioner 

 of Fisheries, who therefore withdrew his opposition. However, it failed elsewhere, 

 and consequently the Lighthouse Board refused to cancel the suspension until further 

 evidence was deduced. 



The ease of the commission, of which A. T. Vogelsang was chairman, may be 

 stated briefly as follows : — 



Previous to 1S84 sea-lions were killed for commercial purposes. Cheaper substi- 

 tutes have been obtained for the hides, oil, and trimmings, and commercial killing 

 is no longer profitable. Since that time the animals have greatly increased in 

 number, and hence the amount of destruction has greatly increased. They chase the 

 salmon for a long distance up the bays and rivers. " They are voracious and destruc- 

 tive to the last degree. It is estimated by the fishermen upon the rivers, and the 

 salmon canners, that from 20 to 40 i>er cent of the fish entering the bays are destroyed 

 by this means. They enter the nets of the fishermen and take the fish already gilled. 

 They tear and destroy the nets and cause irreparable damage to the hardy and indus- 

 trious fishermen. They are seen every day during the salmon run with fish in their 

 jaws and almost no net is hauled that does not show a large percentage of fish 

 destroyed by these animals. It is so now that the fishermen, when laying out their 

 nets, must patrol them from end to end as they drift with the current or tide, armed 

 with Winchester rifles, to protect the nets from the depredation of these beasts." 

 There is little use in providing hatcheries to increase the supply of salmon if the 

 sea-lions are allowed to kill so many of them in the sea. Captain Butwell, chief 

 lightkeeper at Ano Nuevo island, in the summer of 1899 made an examination of 

 the stomach of a large grey sea-lion (Eumetopias stelleri) and found over sixty 

 poiinds of fish bones. In the following summer a deputy killed a sea-lion with a 

 salmon in its jaws, the head of which sea-lion is now preserved at Stanford Uni- 

 versity. 



The case of the opposition is presented most fully by W. T. Hornadaj', as repre- 

 senting the New York Zoological Society. He says: — 



" Judging from all the facts which have been brought forward up to this 

 date, and from correspondence with naturalists from the Pacific coast, we 



