26 THE SOCIETY FOB THE PBESEBVATION OF 



THE PEESEEVATION OF BIG GAME. 

 By Sir Henry Seton-Karr, C.M.G. 



It will doubtless be a satisfaction to the members of the 

 Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire 

 and other lovers of wild natural life if the Blue-book recently issued 

 on this subject succeeds in attracting some public attention. We 

 of the Society attach material, as well as sentimental, importance 

 to the reasonable protection and preservation of the wild fauna — 

 particularly the larger big game — in all British possessions. They 

 not only add to the interest and attraction of our outlying portions of 

 the Empire for sportsmen, naturalists, and travellers, but they also 

 contribute to the material wealth and revenue thereof. The fauna 

 of East Africa, for example, are an asset of large pecuniary value. 

 The direct revenue derived from licences, &c., in British East 

 Africa alone now amounts to between .£8,000 and £10,000 a year, 

 while the indirect annual revenue from the visits of sportsmen to 

 that British possession has been estimated at over ,£20,000. These 

 are figures — particularly in a young and sparsely populated portion 

 of the Empire — that are not to be despised. Other examples of 

 the kind could be given did space permit. 



Those who are specially interested, from knowledge and ex- 

 perience, in this question have been called ' penitent butchers.' 

 We are — shall I say wrongly and ignorantly ? — thought to be men 

 who, having in earlier days taken their fill of big-game slaughter 

 and the delights of the chase in wild, outlying parts of the earth, 

 now, being smitten with remorse, and having reached a less 

 strenuous term of life, think to condone our earlier bloodthirsti- 

 ness by advocating the preservation of what we formerly chased 

 and killed. As a matter of fact, nothing can be more misleading 

 as to our real feelings and intentions, no greater perversion of the 

 real truth can be presented than such a statement. Your true 

 sportsman is alw^ays a real lover of nature. He kills, it is true, 

 but only in sweet reasonableness and moderation, for food if 

 necessary, but mainly for trophies. Wholesale and unnecessary 

 slaughter is abhorrent to him; and he always has an eye to the 

 preservation of the stock, and so leaves severely alone all immature, 

 and particularly all female of-their-kind-producing wild animals, 

 except, of course, of the carnivora. I am confident that British 

 sportsmen, as a class, have done nothing in any wild country to 

 reduce or wipe out any kind of wild big game. Their so-called 

 depredations — and the term is a misnomer — have been more than 



