CONDITION OF WILD LIFE IN ALASKA. 



By MADISON GRANT. 



THE opening of the twentieth century found the game in 

 the old territories of the United States well on the road 

 toward the conditions that precede extinction. The bison had 

 been practically gone for two decades. The mountain sheep had 

 been exterminated throughout a very large part of its original 

 range, and the number remaining in remote mountains was 

 sadly reduced. The wapiti, while still living in herds number- 

 ing many thousand, was rapidly withdrawing to the vicinity of 

 its last refuge, the Yellowstone Park. The prong-horn of the 

 plains was disappearing with increasing rapidity, partly due to 

 the increasing use of the barb-wire fences on its former ranges. 



This rapid diminution of the game animals of the United States 

 %vas, and is to-day, the inevitable consequence of the settlement 

 and occupation of the best grazing lands. While there remain 

 mountains where the game is relatively undisturbed, so far as 

 the killing of individuals is concerned, and while these ranges 

 in summer appear well adapted to sustain a large and varied 

 fauna, their actual capacity to sustain life is limited to such ani- 

 mals as can there find sustenance during the heavy snows of 

 winter. 



Before the arrival of white men, the animals, which lived in the 

 mountains during the summer, sought refuge in the sheltered 

 valleys and foothills during the cold season. These favored 

 localities, however, were at cnce occupied by settlers, and the 

 game was deprived of its winter feeding-grovmds. In my 

 opinion, this has done more in recent years to exterminate the 

 large animals of the West than the actual shooting of individuals. 



During the closing years of the nineteenth century the Ameri- 

 can people had obtained no little experience in game protection, 

 and had embodied it in Federal statutes and the game laws of 

 the various states. Of all the regulations established for the 

 preservation of wild life, the most practical and eflfective have 

 been found to be, first, the prohibition of hide and head hunt- 

 ing ; second, the prohibition of market hunting ; third, and most 

 important of all, the establishment of sanctuaries where game 

 could roam and breed absolutelv undisturbed. The most con- 



