30 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 



forty years ago there are now about 3000 buffalo; 

 nearly one-half are in the large Government breeding 

 parks and happily they are breeding quite rapidly. 



In addition to buffalo, other splendid game animals 

 have been wantonly killed. Antelope for years fur- 

 nished the meat supply of the pioneers while on the 

 prairie and the elk have been slaughtered in some cases 

 for their heads or teeth alone. Eleven species of birds 

 formerly common to the United States have been 

 totally exterminated in their wild state and other 

 species, like the heath hen, have escaped extinction by 

 a very narow margin. Besides the terrific decrease in 

 game animals owing to continued shooting by the market 

 hunter, other conditions have worked against them. 

 Their haunts have been invaded by the lumberman 

 and the resulting fires have destroyed their cover. Sheep 

 and cattle eat the ranges clean during the summer and 

 late fall so that grazing animals like the elk find little to 

 feed upon and die by hundreds of starvation. All told 

 the amount of game today is only two per cent of what 

 it was fifty years ago. 



This wholesale destruction of game not only repre- 

 sents a loss which concerns us as lovers of the outdoors 

 but by diminishing our animal life the balance of nature 

 has been upset and the forests and fields pay the 

 penalty. The public in the end pays the bill through 

 the lumber yard and grocery store. Forty years ago 

 orchards had little need of spraying. Now it is a 

 continuous fight against the many pests which prey 

 upon the fruit trees. Zoologists claim this can be 

 directly traced to the great reduction in the number of 

 birds which formerly kept these enemies in check. The 

 rapid spread of the boll weevil, the arch enemy of 

 the cotton planter, is attributed to the killing off of the 



