OF NATUKAL HISTORY OF CANADA 23 



WILD LIFE SANXTUARIES 



(Lt.-Col. William Wood, Quebec) 



Animal sanctuaries are places where man is passive and the 

 rest of Nature active. A sanctuarj' is the same thing to wild life 

 as a spring is to a river. In itself a sanctuarj' is a natural "zoo". 

 But it is much more than a "zoo". It can only contain a certain 

 number of animals. Its surplus must overflow to stock surrounding 

 areas. And it constitutes a refuge for all species whose lines of 

 migration pass through it. So its value in the preservation of 

 desirable wild life is not to be denied. Of course, sanctuaries 

 occasionally develop ♦troubles of their own; for if man interferes 

 with the balance of nature in one way he must be prepared to 

 interfere in others. But all experience shows that an easilj' worked 

 sj'stem will ensure a maximum of gain and a minimum of loss. 



Up till quite recently Nature had her own animal sanctuaries 

 in vast and sparsely settled lands hke Labrador. But now she has 

 none. There is no place left where wild hfe is safe from men who 

 use all the modern means of destruction without being bound by 

 any of the modern means of conser\'ation. And this is nowhere 

 truer than in Labrador, though the area of the whole peninsula is 

 equal to eleven Englands, while, even at the busiest season along 

 the coast, there is not one person to more than every ten square 

 miles. Since the white man went there at least three-quarters of 

 the forests have been burnt, and sometimes the soil burnt too. 

 Wild life of all kinds has been growing rapidly less. The walrus is 

 receding further and further north. Seals are diminishing. Whales 

 are beginning to disappear. Fur-bearing animals can hardly hold 

 their own much longer in face of the ever increasing demand for 

 their pelts and the more systematic invasion of their range. The 

 opening up of the countrA' in the north will mean the extinction of 

 the great migrating herd of barren-ground caribou, unless protec- 

 tion is enforced. The coast birds are going fast. Some verj'^ old 

 men can still remember the great auk, which is now as extinct as 

 the dodo. Elderly men have eaten the Labrador duck, which has 

 not been seen alive for thirty years. And young men will certainlv^ 

 see the end of the Hudsonian and Eskimo curlews verj^ soon, under 

 present conidtions. The days of commercial "egging" on a large 

 scale are over, because eggs of the final lay were taken like the rest, 

 and the whole bird life was depleted below paying quantities. 

 But "egging" still goes on in other waj's, especially at the hands 

 of Newfoundlanders, who are wantonly wasteful in their methods, 

 unlike the coast people, who only take what the birds will replace. 

 The Newfoundlanders and other strangers gather all the eggs they 

 seei^put them into water, and throw away ever>' one that floats. 

 Thus many more bird lives are destro3'ed than eggs are eaten or 

 sold, because schooners appear towards the end of the regular laying 



