] 97 conservation is not enough 



Thus, for every creature there is a paradox at the heart 

 of the necessary "struggle for existence" and the paradox 

 is simply this: Neither man nor any other animal can af- 

 ford to triumph in that struggle too completely. Uncondi- 

 tional surrender is a self-defeating formula — even in the 

 war against insect pests. To the victor belong the spoils 

 in nature also, but for a time only. When there are no 

 more spoils to be consumed, the victor dies. That is be- 

 lieved by some to be w^hat happened to the dominant 

 carnivorous dinosaurs many millions of years ago. They 

 became too dominant and presently there was nothing left 

 to dominate — or to eat. It is certainly what happens to 

 other creatures like the too-protected deer in a national 

 forest who multiply so successfully that their herds can no 

 longer be fed, or, more spectacularly, like the lemmings 

 who head desperately toward a new area to be exploited 

 and end in the cold waters of the North Sea because that 

 area does not exist. 



Curiously, the too tender-minded dreamed a dream 

 more attractive than that of the ruthless exploiters but no 

 less unrealizable. They dreamed of "refuges" and "sanctu- 

 aries" where the "innocent" creatures might live in a per- 

 petually peaceful paradise untroubled by such "evil" crea- 

 tures as the fox and the hawk. But it required few 

 experiments with such Utopias to demonstrate that they 

 will not work. A partridge covey or a deer herd which is 

 not thinned by predators soon eats itself into starvation 

 and suffers also from less obvious maladjustments. The 

 overaged and the weaklings, who would have fallen first 

 victims to their carnivorous enemies, survive to weaken 

 the stock, and as overpopulation increases, the whole com- 

 munity becomes affected by some sort of nervous tension 



