CONCLUSION 



227 



half-dozen families accumulated great wealth through the 

 fur trade which virtually wiped out the fur-bearing animals 

 on this continent. But what did society as a whole gain 

 from such exploitation of the nation's natural wealth? 

 True, the country was opened to settlement but the same 

 results, if somewhat less rapidly, would have occurred even- 

 tually. Society at large today must replace the resources 

 which these few individuals so thoughtlessly destroyed in 

 the past. 



The basic principle of future conservation policy in this 

 country seems to be that the government should adopt on 

 the one hand regulatory policies to prevent further exploi- 

 tation and on the other, so long as we keep even a modified 

 form of the laissez-jaire economic system, policies which 

 will make it advantageous to the individual to use the nat- 

 ural resources committed to his care so as to benefit society 

 at large as well as himself. 



A revamping of the tax policies dealing with forestry 

 and wild life, as has been pointed out earlier in this study, 

 might go a long way toward achieving this result. So far 

 as wild life itself is concerned, every effort should be made 

 to induce the private individual to devote his land to wild 

 life breeding purposes as secondary to its major use. The 

 easiest way to accomplish this result is to make it economi- 

 cally advantageous to the individual landowner through a 

 system of tax rebates. 



Need for Integrated Conservation Policies: The second 

 factor that becomes evident is that wild-life conservation 

 cannot stand alone apart from other forms of conservation. 

 The soil, the timber, the water, and the wild life resources 

 of the country are all bound together and must be treated 

 as one problem. It is uneconomical to consider them as 

 entirely separate entities. Too often in the past the wild-life 

 enthusists have forgotten this essential fact. 



