Big-Game Refuges 



big game will rapidly increase if absolutely protected 

 is perfectly well known ; and in the Yellowstone Park 

 we have ever before us an object lesson, which shows 

 precisely what effective protection of game can do. 



It is little more than twenty years since the first 

 efforts were made to prevent the killing of game 

 within that National Reservation, and only about ten 

 years since Congress provided an effective method for 

 preventing such killing. He must be dull indeed who 

 does not realize what that game refuge has done for 

 a great territory, and of how much actual money 

 value its protection has been to the adjoining States 

 of Montana and Idaho, and especially of Wyoming. 

 The visit of President Roosevelt to the National Park 

 last spring made these conditions plain to the whole 

 nation. At that time every newspaper in the land 

 gave long accounts of what the President saw and 

 did there, and told of the hordes of game that he 

 viewed and counted. He saw nothing that he had not 

 before known of, nothing that was not well known to 

 all the members of the Boone and Crockett Club ; 

 but it was largely through the President's visit, and 

 the accounts of what he saw in the Yellowstone Park, 

 that the public has come to know what rigid protec- 

 tion can do and has done for our great game. 



Since such a refuge can bring about such results, it 

 is high time that we had more of these refuges, in 

 order that like results may follow in different sec- 

 tions of the West, and for different species of wild 

 game; as well for the benefit of other localities and 

 their residents, as for that wider public which will 

 hereafter visit them in ever increasing numbers. 



445 



