106 FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



added by the steadily-increasing skill of our sportsmen anglers, although 

 this carries with it at least the crumb of comfort in a consistent growth 

 of sentiment against the use of salmon eggs, which bait must be con- 

 sidered among the foremost unnatural enemies of the trout fry being 

 planted in millions each summer by this Commission in California's 

 streams. 



Fortunately the average annual bag or creel would not show even a 

 suggestion of these totals of legal-limit possibility; but the enormous 

 multiplication of individual demands surely is alarming enough. It 

 has become one of the most serious problems now facing wild-life con- 

 servationists, although but one among many. Aided by the automobile 

 whose destructive possibilities through rapid and pleasant transporta- 

 tion are enormously enhanced by the ever-spreading system of cement 

 boulevards, this increase of hunting and angling enthusiasm has sug- 

 gested in itself the means to meet its demands. The sportsmen who 

 pay for all wild-life work have embraced their responsibility with an 

 ardor and an insistence upon raising their license contributions to an 

 adequate figure which places us, their servants, in a peculiarly delicate 

 position ; for we do not wish to be misunderstood as attempting to evade 

 their apparent willingness to finance further and more extensive work 

 in their behalf. 



As to the opportunity for greatly increasing expenditures, little need 

 be said. All the present income of the Fish and Game Commission 

 could be expended for rearing and distributing trout alone. Last 

 year, although the Department of Fishculture broke all known records 

 by taking 25,000,000 trout eggs and distributing over 24,000,000 fry 

 successfully, applications were on file for considerably over twice that 

 number. The amount of money that could be expended efficiently in 

 patrolling this vast state, greater than many, an independent nation, 

 comprising every condition from alpine to oceanic, scarcely calls for 

 any extended argument. Importation of promising alien species of 

 game birds from Mexico, projected and perforce held up from lack of 

 funds last year; sweeping antivermin campaigns and closer patrol of 

 the game refuges; substantial improvements in behalf of the hunter, 

 all would become possible were the revenues available to undertake them 

 upon a wholesale basis. 



Foreseeing the post-war situation was one thing ; financing its antici- 

 pated demands with a depreciated dollar is another, and vastly different. 

 By no process short of the supernatural can one dollar do the work of 

 five; but that is substantially the situation confronting your servants 

 in conservation since the armistice. "We have met it as well as we could. 

 Substantial cooperation from county supervisory boards, the Forest 

 Service, the sportmen's associations, chambers of commerce, lias been 

 enlisted wherever possible. As a result, M^e have now a patrolman in 

 every southern county excepting one, and something of a localized 

 organization in fish and game work. County supervisors are realizing 

 that we are undertaking a big job under a financial handicap; some 

 have contributed to the cost of planting fish, an item enormously in- 

 creased throughout the state by the withdrawal of former free trans- 

 portation of fish cars and messengers over the railroads. Others add to 

 the state lion bounty and make the extermination of these vermin, 



