1912 AND FISHEMES COMMISSION. 213 



trace the offence home to the person who had actually taken the animal, 

 so that all parties to the offence could be punished. 



The economic value of the fur trade is so great that infractions of 

 the law in regard to it should be treated with the utmost severity and 

 the penalties made correspondingly high. In fact, in addition to a 

 heavy fine on account of each animal taken or each pelt bought or 

 traded, any irregularity should be punished by cancellation of the 

 license of the offending persons, and the disqualification of such persons 

 from obtaining another such license for a period of at least five years. 



In the case of Indians it is plainly to be desired that they should 

 conform to the laws and regulations in force in regard to the fur-bear- 

 ing animals, and it is not to be doubted that in the main they would do 

 so were it once made apparent to them that not only would it be almost 

 impossible for them to dispose of skins illegally taken, but that infrac- 

 tions of the law would be visited by a cancellation of their permits to 

 trap and trade in furs with white men. In regard to the returns as 

 suggested to be furnished by the trapper, the buyer from an Indian 

 should be required to fill them in and forward them to the Department 

 where the Indian was insufficiently educated to attend to this work 

 himself. 



As before noted the lack of any incentive to the trappers to conserve 

 the supply of animals has been one of the main factors in their depletion. 

 At the present time on public lands it is open to any resident to trap 

 wheresoever he chooses, and the trapper is, in consequence, urged on to 

 catch all that he can, regardless of the ultimate consequences, by the 

 knowledge that if he spares, someone else will likely happen along and 

 destroy. To remedy this evil and to encourage conservation it would 

 seem that a license or permit to trap should be endorsed with the approx- 

 imate area for which it is valid, and that it should be made an indictable 

 and punishable offence to trap on Crown lands outside the limitations 

 designated on the license or permit, or at least on any area which may 

 have allocated to another trapper. The licensee, also, so long as he 

 obeyed the laws, should be entitled to a renewal of hiis license on demand. 

 By these means an individual interest in his territory should be 

 developed in the trapper, for not only would he have the sense of proprie- 

 torship and the security afforded by the knowledge that others could not 

 legally impair his grounds, but also, there would be the incentive of 

 personal profit in future years to urge him to take only a proper propor- 

 tion of animals of each species and to encourage their increase, for as in 

 many cases the land about him for miles would have been allocated to 

 others, the depletion of his territory below the point where it wais profit- 

 able to trap over it would necessitate a move to some considerable dis- 

 tance, should lie di^sire to oontinue in the business, a thing which in many 

 cases, particularly that of the settler, would be most inconvenient, if 

 not well nigh impossible. 



It is to be observed that if a license of |5.00 on trappers and a 



