Science in Conservation During War Times 63 
"CONSERVATION OF GAME'' 
By A. S. Leopolo, 
Game Technician, Missouri Conservation Commission 
Like many another applied science, the field of wildlife man- 
agement has grown steadily in breadth and complexity. From 
the direct and obvious approaches to wildlife restoration, such 
as legal protection, refuges and restocking, we have progressed 
into the more difficult, but in the long run more basic, enterprise 
of attempting to correlate the principles and practices of good 
wildlife conservation with all other land uses, to the end that 
maximum game yields may be produced on all lands, compliant 
with other interests. Game crops need not be solely the products 
of ''submarginal" or waste lands. Small game, like quail, rab- 
bits, squirrels and some furbearers can be produced on the best 
dairy farms without interfering with the flow of milk. Deer and 
w^ld turkeys may be an important by-product of well managed 
forests. Wildlife products, such as foods and fur, in addition to 
the important recreational values, are potential supplementary 
crops of all the farms and woodlands of Missouri. A wildlife 
program, based on this thesis, adheres to the principle of multiple 
use of the land, and in war time or in peace, this is good eco- 
nomics and good conservation. 
To adequately provide for the needs of wildlife in a bal- 
anced program of land management, it is important that our 
plans dove-tail with the objectives of the agriculturalist and 
forester, the erosion control engineer and the economist. As one 
of the lesser products of the soil, wildlife is due its place in the 
future pattern of rural economy. This is the field of long-range 
land planning, a vital concern to all agencies dealing with the 
land and its products. 
But prerequisite to planning an action program, we must 
have at our disposal a considerable array of factual material 
dealing with the wildlife itself, its needs and environmental re- 
quirements. Thus has arisen a demand for far more information 
than we have possessed in the past on the numbers and distribu- 
tion, food habits, cover and water requirements, mobility, pro- 
ductivity and general ecological relationships of all important 
species of game. The relatively new but increasingly important 
field of wildlife research attempts to provide this infonnaliun on 
which future management programs are based. 
The research programs of the Conservation Commission and 
the Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit in Columbia have al- 
ready contributed to our knowledge of a number of species. 
