TWENTY-SEVENTH BIENNIAL REPORT. Ill 



have some deterrent effect upon the deliberate class of fish and o-ame law 

 violators, either for their own selfish pleasure, or personal profit. Our 

 newspapers, city and country, have cooperated most effectively in a 

 continual campaign of education aiming to impress the general public 

 with the petty larceny nature of wilful violation, which amounts vir- 

 tually to stealing- the sport of the law-abiding class which leaves its 

 guns and rods encased nntil the law says "let's go" for everybody. The 

 economic injury of shooting nesting birds and thereby depreciating the 

 attractions to outdoors has been impressed quite effectively. All of this 

 finds statistical proof in records of the Los Angeles office, showing 137 

 convictions during the year ending June 30, 1921, with average fines 

 of $28 and a conviction percentage of 92.7 ; which was increased during 

 the last fiscal year to 219 cases, with average fine $28.26, and a convic- 

 tion percentage of 94.5. In 1921, $3555 was collected in fines in the 

  southern division ; last year, this was substantially increased to $5850. 

 As no less than 128 of these 219 cases were made for game law viola- 

 tions, almost er{ualling prosecutions for all classes of violation the year 

 prior, the interests of the hunters would appear to have been fairly well 

 served ; while the diversification of patrol attention is proved by 29 cases 

 for sport or game fish violations and 50 prosecutions for commercial 

 fisheries infractions. To these might be added some cases made by the 

 sea patrol of which the Los Angeles office lacks record; those given 

 mostly were prosecutions by the regular warden force incidental to 

 their general patrol work. 



However, patrol efficiency must always remain relative; the increas- 

 ing totals of cases does not indicate more violation or increasing lawless- 

 ness ; rather, it suggests that the intelligent cooperation we have been 

 able to enlist from all allied authorities is "rounding up" an ever- 

 increasing proportion of offenders. Welcome as would be the day Avhen 

 patrol work could be dispensed with and its high costs spread upon 

 more directly constructive operations, none but dreamers expect it short 

 of the millennium ; so our efforts will continue correlating and cooperat- 

 ing with local authorities in every practical way toward rendering fish 

 and game law violation an increasingly bad risk, with certainty of 

 ever stiffer penalties upon conviction. 



EDUCATION AND PUBLICITY. 



"Backing-up" of patrol by publicity as a part of our general edu- 

 cational program is a policy established and persistently ami)lified all 

 possible in the southern division; the most important work in l)(>half 

 of wild-life conservation is inculcation of a favorable sentiment, wliicii 

 can not be maintained by working with the better class alone and leav- 

 ing the lawless to work their will. There is a small minority which does 

 not read, has no sentiment about fish or game, and respects only one 

 kind of "education". For such, we have the iron fist of the law. Those 

 who respect all regulations not from fear or force but from recognition 

 that restrictive laws are necessary and right, are entitled to protection, 

 and deserve to know that they have been getting it. Hence the impor- 

 tance of public announcements of prosecutions is not limited merely to 

 their deterrent effect upon the careless, whom fear of fines might 

 restrain. 



