CONSERVING WILDLIFE — JACKSON 263 



Of our highly edible fishes, two species of sturgeons, the common 

 and the lake, have been so reduced in numbers, largely by commercial 

 fisheries, that they have not only become of little commercial impor- 

 tance but are in actual danger of extinction. The status of Lake 

 Superior whitefish, to many of us the grandest of all table fish, is 

 almost the same as that of the sturgeons. And on our eastern coast, 

 the thousands of Atlantic salmon that formerly, early in summer, 

 ascended many of the New England streams to spawn, now migrate 

 only by hundreds to one or two rivers, more notably the Penobscot. 



SOME SPECIES THAT HAVE RECOVERED 



Dark as the picture is for many of the wildlife forms mentioned, 

 there i9 a light of hope for saving some of them if appropriate action 

 is taken. Examples we have of wildlife species that have recovered 

 after being on the verge of extinction offer that illumination. The 

 American bison roamed the prairies and plains of the United States 

 and Canada in herds that in pioneer times certainly aggregated more 

 than 50,000,000 animals. By the close of the nineteenth century, the 

 population had probably reached its low at a total of about 800 animals. 

 The American Bison Society estimated 1,917 living animals in 1908. 

 Shortly afterward, through the efforts of that Society, the National 

 Bison Range was established under the administration of the Bio- 

 logical Survey on land formerly a part of the Flathead Indian Reser- 

 vation, Montana. It was stocked October 17, 1909, with 37 bison, 

 all but one from a private herd at Kalispell, Mont. This was really 

 the beginning of the up-building of the American bison population. 

 Today there are more than 6,000 bison in the United States, mostly 

 confined to ranches, parks, and refuges, and another possible 30,000 

 on refuges in Canada, a total of not less than 35,000. Nineteen bison 

 from the National Bison Range were introduced into the Big Delta 

 region, near Fairbanks, Alaska, and had in 1941 increased to more 

 than 200 animals. In this region they are given free range. Modern 

 civilization and agricultural practices in most localities in the United 

 States no longer make possible the free-ranging of vast migrating 

 hordes of big-game animals. We can, nevertheless, save a species 

 from extinction, as witness the bison. 



That peculiarly American mammal, the prong-horned antelope, 

 through protection in refuges and by management and hunting con- 

 trol, has increased from a low of about 30,000 in 1920 to 240,000 in 

 1943. And the American elk, or wapiti, by transplantation of indi- 

 viduals of the Rocky Mountain subspecies, mainly from Yellowstone 

 National Park and the National Elk Refuge in northwestern Wyoming, 

 has been reestablished in many localities where it formerly dwelt. A 

 few bands of elk have even been established in localities outside their 

 ancestral distribution, including herds of Rocky Mountain elk in south- 



