2o6 ■ Roosevelt Wild Life Biillcti 



but also vast numbers of individuals of the most desirable kinds 

 of fish. 



Our fishery resources have not been adequateh' appreciated by the 

 public, even during- the great wave of agitation for conservation led 

 by Theodore Roosevelt, because through the lack of constructive 

 leadership on the part of those most interested in fishery matters, the 

 fish failed to receive their due share of attention. 



The State of Xew York, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Lake 

 Champlain, the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, 

 contains in its inland waters about 125 native species of fish. It thus 

 has one of the richest fish faunas possessed by any State in the Union, 

 and yet this resource is slipping through our fingers, as it were, in 

 the main because of indifference and ignorance of its value and of 

 how to care for it intelligently. 



The following resume of the history of its original wealth and 

 gradual decline, together with an estimate of its present status and 

 future possibilities, may assist in orienting this resource among con- 

 servation problems. The emphasis on surveys and intensive investi- 

 gations, it is hoped, will serve to discourage the customary indiscrim- 

 inate planting, and the managing of this crop by promiscuous 

 methods rather than on a basis of exact data, thoroughly correlated. 

 Whether our inland fisheries will be stabilized or suffer further 

 decline depends largely on which of these policies is emphasized 

 henceforth. 



The present paper sketches the broad outlines of some of the 

 major problems involved in the fish cultural management of public 

 waters, as they appear after years of study of this general field. The 

 present drift of events seems to point ver}- clearly to the conclusion 

 that the main stronghold for game and fish in the future is to be 

 found in the forests and waters of the non-agricultural and public 

 lands. We thus anticipate an increasingly close relation among the 

 problems of wild life and other phases of forestry in its modern 

 sense. 



ORIGINAL CONDITION OF THE INLAND FISHERIES 



Former Abundance of Fish. That there was a great abundance 

 of fish of various kinds in this country in early times is almost pro- 

 verbial. Salmon, shad, alewives, striped bass and other kinds are 

 said to have " swarmed " in all New England coastal rivers, and the 

 inland waters "teemed" with brook trout, lake trout, and other choice 

 fish. Concerning salmon, Goode ro3, p. 443) wnrote : "Wonderful 

 things are said about their abundance in colonial days. Every one 

 has heard of the epicurean apprentices of Connecticut who would 

 eat salmon no oftener than twice in the week." And he quotes from 

 Peters' History of Connecticut, 1783: " The shad, bass and salmon 

 more than half support the province. From the number of seines 

 employed to catch the fish passing up the locks, one might be led to 

 suppose that the whole must be stopped, yet in six months' time 

 they return to the sea with such multitudes of young ones as to fill 



