1 87 conservation is not enough 



count the rats, the mice, the cockroaches, the flies, the 

 fleas, the bedbugs and the whatnots, the chances are tliat 

 the nonhuman population above ground would be much 

 greater than it is in most wild areas of equal extent. Even 

 in the streets and in the air above there might well be 

 more English sparrows than there are of all kinds of birds 

 put together in a woodland-bordered meadow. 



What we will have to say if we want to be truthful is 

 something more like this: As man moves in, the larger, 

 more conspicuous and, usually, the most attractive animals 

 begin to disappear. Either they "take to the hills," go into 

 hiding, or are exterminated in one way or another. What 

 remain, and often prodigiously increase, are the creatures 

 which either escape attention or find in the filth which 

 crowds of men bring with them a rich pasture. 



Even in a region as thinly populated by man as the 

 Sonoran Desert, this law began long ago to operate. There 

 are still a good many of the larger animals to be found if 

 one looks for them in the right places. But they are both 

 fewer and more v/ary than they were not so long ago. For 

 them the problem of how to live in the desert was com- 

 plicated by a new factor when man put in an appearance, 

 and the technique which often becomes most completely 

 indispensable reduces itself to one general principle: 

 Keep out of his way. Moreover, the cover of darkness 

 becomes more and more important and some, like the 

 deer, which were once not nocturnal at all tend to become 

 largely so. To find even the larger remaining animals the 

 naturalist with the most benign intentions is compelled 

 to act like a hunter and stalk his game. 



A human community thus becomes a sort of sieve with 

 the fineness of the mesh depending upon the thickness of 



