138 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



between herons, bitterns and kingfishers that now 

 remain in the United States, anywhere, are such a 

 menace to fish life that those birds are a pest and 

 deserve to be shot. The inland streams of the 

 United States and Canada lack fishes because they 

 have been outrageously overfished, wastefully, 

 wickedly depleted, without sense or reason, by men 

 who scorn the idea of conservation. In Orleans 

 County, New York, a case was reported to me of a 

 farmer who dynamited the waters of his own creek, 

 in spawning time! 



Go where you will, wherever fish still exist in our 

 interior waters, and you will not be long in hearing 

 stories of fish slaughter and fish waste that will 

 amaze and anger you. In view of all the wicked- 

 ness that has been perpetrated on the game-fishes 

 of our fresh-water streams and ponds, I have no 

 patience with any of the stories of great fish 

 slaughter by herons, kingfishers or any other wild 

 birds. Such stories deserve the contempt of every- 

 one who hears them. At this moment, after fifty 

 years of wasteful and wicked fish destruction, the 

 great and virtuous state of Texas is about to con- 

 demn to death the remaining pelicans of her gulf 

 coast because they eat fish! Even a state can be 

 both stupid and mean, the same as an individual; 

 and to charge to wild birds the fish extermination 

 that has been perpetrated by man is both false and 

 cowardly. 



