AMERICAN FOREST CONGRESS 445 



gress. One of these concerns especially the Territory 

 of Oklahoma, of which my friend has just spoken. 

 The Wichita Forest Reserve was created some years 

 ago, and Congressman Lacey, of Iowa, introduced a 

 bill at the last session to erect that forest reserve into 

 a game preserve, for the purpose of propagating quail, 

 prairie chickens, wild turkeys and deer, and then 

 shipping them to the Northern and Eastern States, 

 where they have been exterminated or nearly so. 



The other measure affects all the forest reservations. 

 It aims to empower the President of the United States 

 to set aside certain sections in forest reserves already 

 created, to be known as game preserves ; to stop all 

 shooting thereon and, if necessary, all fishing; to let 

 the game have a few asylums in these mountain regions 

 where it can live and increase. 



Every man and woman in this audience knows what 

 a wonderful success has been made in the Yellowstone 

 Park, in preserving the wild animals there. Mr. Lacey 

 told me to-day he had just seen photographs from the 

 park showing 500 antelope grazing, some of them in 

 the streets of Gardner, a town five miles outside the 

 park. There are supposed to be 30,000 or 35,000 elk 

 in the park. There are about forty buffaloes, several 

 hundred Rocky Mountain sheep and many thousands 

 of deer. 



I want to impress on your minds these important 

 facts that are associated so intimately with the cause 

 of forest preservation. The object of setting aside 

 these forest reserves, the primary object, is to preserve 

 trees; the secondary object, the important one of the 

 association I represent, is the preservation of wild 

 animals and birds. We are working as industriously 

 for the preservation of insectivorous and song birds 

 as we are for the game birds. 



