256 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



North Atlantic coast, the beautiful hooded seal has been hunted for 

 oil and fur until it, too, is in danger. The Pacific walrus, while in 

 some danger, is not reduced to the vanishing stage, as appears to be 

 the case with the Atlantic walrus. 



We correctly think of the white-tailed deer as our most abundant 

 big-game animal, yet the Pacific white-tail is down to about 1,000 ani- 

 mals, and was supposed to have a much lower population until Dr. 

 Victor B. Scheffer (1940) gave an account of a herd at the mouth of 

 the Columbia River. The key deer, inhabiting a few of the lower 

 Florida keys, is very rare, local in distribution, and probably does not 

 number more than 40 individuals. It was reduced by the hurricane 

 of 1937, and has been overhunted and subjected to poaching until only 

 a few remain. 



When the mad rush for gold was on in California during the middle 

 of the nineteenth century, the great valley of California, the combined 

 valleys of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento Rivers, abounded in 

 a small elk with simple antlers, the California valley or tule elk. It 

 soon became scarce. A remnant was protected on the Miller and Lux 

 Ranch, Buttonwillow, Kern County, Calif. In an effort to save these 

 animals, which may have reached a total of 350 or 400 animals in 1921, 

 some were transplanted in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. In 

 1933 all of these, and several from the Buttonwillow herd, were trans- 

 ferred to a reservation with good elk-pasture features in Owens Valley. 

 Today there probably exist not over 150 of these elk, nearly all in 

 Owens Valley, though a few may still survive on the Buttonwillow 

 Ranch. 



The last woodland caribou seen in Maine were near Mount Katahdin 

 in 1908. They had disappeared from New Hampshire and Vermont 

 about the middle of the nineteenth century. Fifteen occur in northern 

 Minnesota, only two of which are native, the others being from stock 

 brought in from Saskatchewan. In Canada, also, the woodland cari- 

 bou is vanishing, and in many regions where it was once common it is 

 now gone. The eastern moose, while not in so much immediate danger 

 as the woodland caribou, is nevertheless rapidly approaching a pre-' 

 carious situation. 



All our bighorn sheep should give us cause for worry. Two forms 

 are in especial danger. The Sierra bighorn may be reduced to less 

 than 75 animals, and the Texas bighorn, at one time thought to be 

 extirpated, is reduced to some 125 animals scattered in 6 or 8 mountain 

 ranges, and its fight for survival in competition with domestic sheep 

 and goats and in the face of illegal hunting is almost hopeless unless 

 reservation provisions are offered it. The desert bighorn has, we hope, 

 been saved by the establishment of national refuges for its preservation 

 in Arizona and Nevada. 



