112 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



are completed, they will find that a Redwood 

 grove, such as Bull Creek Flat, is an attraction 

 that is worth to the county many times the full 

 net value of the timber contained in it. When 

 the last Redwoods are destroyed, towns like 

 Eureka and railroads like the Northwestern 

 Pacific Railway will be without resources, and 

 will die away like many another predecessor in 

 the United States and Canada. 



All these are purely commercial considera- 

 tions. It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the 

 crime involved in the destruction of the oldest 

 and tallest trees on earth. The cutting of a Se- 

 quoia for grape stakes or railroad ties (and an 

 eighteen-foot tree was cut this summer for that 

 purpose along the new state highway) is like 

 breaking up one's grandfather's clock for kind- 

 ling to save the trouble of splitting logs at the 

 woodpile, or lighting one's pipe with a Greek 

 manuscript to save the trouble of reaching for 

 the matches. 



After the fall of the Roman Empire the 

 priceless works of classic art were "needed" 

 for lime, and statues by Phidias and Praxiteles 

 were slacked down for this purpose, but the 

 men who did it are today rightly dubbed 

 ''vandals and barbarians." What then will the 

 next generation call us if we continue to destroy 

 these priceless trees because lumber is "needed" 

 for grape stakes and railroad ties ? 



It will cost money to preserve the Redwoods, 

 many millions; but California has no choice. 

 Either the amount needed to save the groves 

 must be supplied today, or else a far greater 

 sum will be required ten years hence to purchase 

 a butchered and isolated tenth part of the 

 forests. Those are the only alternatives. If 

 the groves are bought in their present condition 

 and at relatively small cost, it will be a great 

 innovation because heretofore Americans have 

 followed the wasteful policy of recklessly ex- 

 ploiting wild life, forests and streams, and 

 then as soon as the destruction is complete, the 

 policy is changed, game is reintroduced and 

 attempts are made to reforest the mountains at 

 vast cost. But Redwoods never can be replaced. 



In the negotiations for the purchase of tim- 

 ber lands, the officers of the Redwoods League 

 found sympathetic and cordial support for the 

 park among the lumbermen. They know the 

 value of the timber only too well. The timber 

 is their property, and their business is to cut 

 and to realize on it. It is not fair for a com- 

 munity to ask them to hold this timber, to 

 pay taxes on it and then to sacrifice their finan- 

 cial interests for the public welfare. It is the duty 

 of the county, the state and the nation to pur- 



chase their holdings at the proper value. The 

 question involved is not local, it is a state, a 

 national, in fact an international concern, as the 

 benefit derived from the preservation of the 

 Redwoods will be for the people of the na- 

 tion and the world at large. There is no reason 

 why the lumbermen should abandon their in- 

 terests without adequate remuneration, although 

 in many cases individuals and companies will 

 donate a certain portion of their timber, or sell 

 at low figures. If the state had been suffi- 

 ciently intelligent, before building the highways 

 which made the timber accessible, to have ap- 

 proached the lumbermen properly and to have 

 made it a condition precedent that a strip of 

 timber on either side of the road should be do- 

 nated, no doubt in many cases the lumbermen 

 would have found it greatly to their interest to 

 accept the proposal. The fact that this was not 

 done was the fault of the state, its highway com- 

 mission and its legislature, and not the fault of 

 the lumbermen. 



Experience has shown that the only effective, 

 persistent and intelligent conservators of wild 

 game have been sportsmen who have evolved 

 from game killers into game protectors, and 

 personally the writer believes that the lumber 

 owners themselves, who are among the finest 

 men on the coast, will be found to be most 

 generous and helpful in any scheme looking to 

 the preservation of the timber. The writer says 

 this not out of any desire to placate the lumber- 

 men, but from a genuine belief, based on the 

 character of the men he has interviewed, that 

 this will prove to be the case. 



A distinction must be made between the 

 owners who are doing the lumbering themselves, 

 and absentee owners who have no interest in the 

 country, no knowledge of the trees, and who are 

 operating through local agents. These agents 

 have no choice except to obey orders, and the 

 absentee landlords have no interest in the 

 country except to extract an income, and they 

 care not a rap what happens to the land after 

 it has been devastated and plundered. 



The Redwoods League 



Such were the conditions when the "Save the 

 Redwoods League" was formally organized in 

 San Francisco in July 1919. This League 

 had its origin in a trip made in 1917 by the 

 writer in company with Prof. Henry Fairfield 

 Osborn and Dr. John C. Merriam through the 

 groves of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte 

 Counties. The grandeurs of the Bull Creek Flat 

 Grove and its threatened destruction weighed 

 so heavily upon the members of this party that 

 a letter was addressed to Governor Stephens of 



