Big-Game Refuges 



number, this means an actual contribution to the 

 State of thirty thousand dollars in cash. Besides 

 this, the protection of the game in such a refuge 

 insures a never-failing supply of meat to the settlers 

 living in the adjacent country, and offers them work 

 for themselves and their horses at a time when, ranch 

 work for the season being over, they have no paying 

 occupation. 



The value of a few skins taken by local hunters is 

 very inconsiderable when compared with such a sub- 

 stantial inflow of actual cash to the State and the 

 residents of the territory neighboring to such a 

 refuge. Moreover, it must be remembered that, fail- 

 ing to put in operation some plan of this kind, which 

 shall absolutely protect the game and enable it to re- 

 establish itself, the supply of meat and skins, now 

 naturally enough regarded as their own peculiar pos- 

 session by the settlers living where such a refuge 

 might be established, will inevitably grow less and 

 less as time goes on ; and, as it grows less, the con- 

 tributions to State and local resources from the non- 

 resident tax will also grow less. Thirty years ago 

 the buffalo skinner declared that the millions of 

 buffalo could never be exterminated; yet the buffalo 

 disappeared, and after them one species of big game 

 after another vanished over much of the country. 

 The future can be judged only by the past. Thirty 

 years ago there were elk all over the plains, from the 

 Missouri River westward to the Rocky Mountains; 

 now there are no elk on the plains, and, except in 

 winter, when driven down from their summer range 

 by the snows, they are found only in the timbered 



447 



