306 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



range cattle and horses, and then after a time the 

 range stock was crowded out by the homesteader 

 and the farmer." 



Meantime, other bills to save passing wild life, 

 including one in 1876, had been pushed in Congress 

 and lost. In the early eighties GrinnelFs initiative 

 secured legislation that stopped all hunting in Yel- 

 lowstone National Park, where twenty-two bison 

 left from the slaughter have since developed two 

 splendid herds. The fame of that great centre of 

 wild life concentration had in the single decade pre- 

 ceding this law drawn to the park the big game hunt- 

 ers not only of America but of lands across the sea, 

 and after them had followed hunters of all degrees 

 and none. Recently graduated from Yale and in- 

 formed by his western explorations, young Grin- 

 nell had acquired a magazine for game preservation 

 campaigning throughout the West. His "first Yel- 

 lowstone War" not only gave original impetus to the 

 spirit of wild life preservation, starting the remark- 

 able development of conservation organizations of 

 every kind, national, state, and local which has fol- 

 lowed in the half century since, but established the 

 national policy of complete conservation for all na- 

 tional parks to follow Yellowstone. 



The wild life conservation movement of to-day 

 contemplates not only a constant supply of game in- 

 creasing with growth in population, but, more im- 

 portantly, preservation of species for future genera- 

 tions under natural conditions. Its purpose is, as 



