CONSERVING WILDLIFE — JACKSON 253 



Amargosa meadow mouse, known only from a small tule marsh at a 

 spring near Shoshone, eastern Inyo County, Calif., had vanished by 

 1916 after the marsh had been burned several times and used for a 

 pasture. The largest of our elk, the Merriam elk of Arizona and 

 New Mexico, was exterminated by 1900 or before. The Audubon or 

 Badlands bighorn sheep of the Dakotas and eastern Montana was 

 last known alive about 1914, and it is quite probable that the lava beds 

 or rimrock bighorn of southeastern Oregon and northwestern Ne- 

 vada has gone. No longer will any stockmen need to worry over dep- 

 redations of the big Plains wolf, which ceased to exist about 1930. 



Within the borders of the United States, five forms of birds are 

 now certainly extinct, namely, the great auk (1844) ; the Labrador 

 duck (1875) ; the passenger pigeon (last native wild bird, 1908; last 

 survivor in captivity, which died of old age in the Cincinnati Zoolog- 

 ical Gardens, September 1914) ; the heath hen, or eastern representa- 

 tive of the prairie chicken, was last seen alive on March 11, 1932, 

 and can be said to be extinct in 1933 ; and the Carolina paroquet about 

 1935, or previous thereto. Two other species are probably gone, the 

 Eskimo curlew, of which there have been only very indefinite and 

 unsatisfactory records for recent years, and the Cape Sable seaside 

 sparrow, probably wiped out of existence by the tropical hurricane 

 of southern Florida in 1937. 



ENDANGERED WILDLIFE SPECIES 



We shall not go into details as to the status of all foreign vanishing 

 and endangered wildlife, but we should know at least a few of the species 

 that are in a more precarious condition in continents other than our 

 own. Europe, through private and public game preserves, has been 

 able to care for most of its wildlife species. The eagle owl has been 

 persecuted and is in some danger, and the white stork, though at least 

 up to the time of World War II well protected in Europe where it 

 nests, has been depleted in numbers through being killed for food by 

 natives in its African winter home. The European brown bear is 

 becoming exceedingly rare, and the ibex and chamois are in danger, 

 as is also the European beaver. The wisent, or European bison, became 

 so reduced in numbers that it has been crossbred with the American 

 bison and domestic cattle of old-lineage strain in an effort to retain 

 some semblance of the species. Even these may now be wiped out 

 through economic strain of wartime conditions. 



We have already mentioned the status of Przewalsky's horse in 

 Asia, but in that continent the ancestor of the donkey, the kiang, is 

 so reduced in numbers as to be nearing the danger line. Other Asian 

 mammals in danger of extirpation include the seladang, a huge wild 

 ox of India; that large deer, the Malayan sambhur; and the three 



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