214 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



dams on the Columbia are operating? The federal government 

 has spent $6,550,000 building fish ladders which it is hoped 

 will enable the fish to pass Bonneville Dam, and special screens 

 have been installed to keep the young fish returning to the sea 

 out of the turbines. Some people have objected to this expen' 

 diture. They claim the salmon will never get up as far as the 

 dam. They believed that the fish will be killed by the waste from 

 the pulp mills along the lower reaches of the river. 



For the fresh water fish such difficulties have been a near 

 disaster. In all of the United States the rivers have been the main 

 areas of settlement. Man has used them for water power, elec' 

 trie power, drinking water, irrigation, and to dispose of the 

 waste of his cities and factories. Every one of these uses has in 

 some way destroyed either the food or oxygen supply in the 

 water, or the natural lanes of fish migration. 



CONTROL OF WILD LIFE 



Wild turkeys, deer, pheasant, trout, and other species of 

 wild life provided special delicacies for the early settlers of 

 America. Today venison steaks and broiled brook trout are 

 the reward of successful hunters who try their luck but a few 

 weeks of the year. The reason for this is that the wild life 

 population has been so reduced by overhunting that it must be 

 protected by laws if it is not to disappear altogether. 



Originally there was a considerable body of hunters who 

 bagged game for a market. These men who killed game for a 

 living used any means that would enable them to get their 

 quarry traps, snares, and so on. Sportsmen and game con' 

 servationists were aroused by these methods, but too late, mv 

 fortunately, to save the passenger pigeon, a most beautiful 

 American game bird, and the heath hen, another native Amer' 

 ican species. 17 



As early as 1813 the Fowling and Fishing Association of 



17 Van Rise and Havemeyer, op. o't., p. 401. 



