Big-Game Refuges 



one being still represented by a few individuals which 

 for some years have been preserved from destruction 

 by a California cattle company ; the other, found only 

 in the Southwest, in territory now included within 

 the Black Mesa forest reservation, may be, perhaps, 

 without a single living representative. Over a vast 

 extent of the territory which the antelope once in- 

 habited, it has ceased to exist ; and so speedy and so 

 wholesale has been its disappearance that most of 

 the Western States, slow as they always are to inter- 

 fere with the privileges of their citizens to kill and 

 destroy at will, have passed laws either wholly pro- 

 tecting it or, at least, limiting the number to be killed 

 in a season to one, two or three. In 1888 no one 

 could have conceived that the diminution of the native 

 large game of America would be what it has proved 

 to be within the past fifteen years. 



That the game stock may re-establish itself in cer- 

 tain localities, the Club has advocated the establish- 

 ment in the various forest reserves of game refuges, 

 where absolutely no hunting shall be permitted. 



Through the influence of William Hallett Phillips, 

 a deceased member of the Club, a few lines inserted in 

 an act passed by Congress March 3, 1891, permitted 

 the establishment of forest reserves, and Hon. John 

 W. Noble, then Secretary of the Interior, at once 

 recommended the application of the law to a number 

 of forest tracts, which were forthwith set aside by 

 Presidential proclamation. Since then, more and 

 more forest reserves have been created, and, thanks to 

 the wisdom and courage of the Chief Magistrates of 

 the Nation within the past twelve years, we now have 



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