12 PROBLEMS IN WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



We are particularly concerned in this study with the 

 serious decline in the quantity of wild life. The natural 

 growth of population, the building of good roads into 

 regions hitherto inaccessible to the hunter and fisherman, 

 the draining of breeding areas, the improved efficiency of 

 guns and commercial fishing apparatus, the hesitancy of the 

 states to shorten their open seasons and to reduce their bag 

 limits have played havoc with the wild life resources of the 

 nation. Even to the most casual observer it has been in- 

 creasingly evident that there must be a new deal for the 

 wild life of America if the nation is to save even a small 

 part of this valuable natural resource. 1 



What Wild Life Conservation Means: The term " con- 

 servation " taken alone has various meanings, depending 

 upon the particular viewpoint of the person using it. Some 

 use it in the limited sense of protection against injury or 

 loss and thus, in speaking of wild life conservation, mean 

 preventing the destruction of the existing supply of wild 

 life. To others conservation has a positive as well as a 

 negative meaning. In their use of the term they imply 

 increasing the present supply of wild life as well as pre- 

 venting further destruction, for they assume that the nation 

 will benefit by an increase. 



Still others, questioning the accuracy of such a general 

 assumption, would attempt to measure the value of wild life 

 in relation to the human activities with which it conflicts, 

 before replenishing present stocks. For instance, in the case 

 of fur-bearing animals, they would weigh the value of the 

 pelt as compared with the damage the animal does to the 

 lumbering and farming interests. 



1 See Hearings on the Protection of Migratory Waterfoivl, Senate 

 Committee on Conservation of Wild Life Resources (1932) ; Van Rise 

 and Havemeyer, Conservation of Our Natural Resources (New York, 

 1933), PP- 405-13; Hornaday, William, Thirty Years War for Wild Life 

 (Stamford, 1931). 



