188 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



by the Canadian Government to select a location for a large 

 antelope preserve in southern Alberta, and submit plans 

 for the establishment. 



The result is an ideal range of 5,000 acres, well fenced, 

 and now containing about 50 head of antelope. It is situ- 

 ated 42 miles due southwest of Medicine Hat, 36 miles north 

 of the international boundary, and 54 miles from the eastern 

 boundary of Alberta Province. As the roads run, on sec- 

 tion lines, it is 13 miles from the town of Foremost, but 

 only 3 miles north of the C. P. Railway line that runs east 

 from Sterling. 



The story of this still unique range is well told by Mr. 

 Herbert Vanderhoof in the May issue of Outdoor Life maga- 

 zine (Denver), and I quote it in full. It is as follows: 



"South (east) of Banff, the government has its one 

 herd of wild antelope. There are about fifty of them, 

 the only ones known in Canada. The protected exist- 

 ence of the herd is due to the persistence of Maxwell 

 Graham, chief of the zoological department of the na- 

 tional parks, in a scheme that appealed to no one else 

 as feasible. 



"Early in February the Royal North West Mounted 

 Police had reported to J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of 

 Dominion Parks, that a herd of antelope was starving 

 in southern Alberta. They had been trying to get into 

 the straw stacks of the farmers, and had been driven 

 out. By some tangle of red tape it was April before 

 the park commissioner received the report, and Mr. 

 Graham was sent out at once to look after the antelope 

 which are as distinctive of the old West and as rapidly 

 vanishing as the buffalo. Mr. Graham went out, found 

 the antelope, and started to build a corral. Before it 

 was quite finished a chinook came along one night, and 

 by morning all the snow and all the antelope had dis- 

 appeared. Mr. Graham was satisfied the antelope had 

 gone to their summer habitat near the town of Fore- 

 most, and wired the park commissioner for authority 

 to go down there and build a fence around them. The 

 park commissioner, having in his mind a great scorn 

 for the possibility of building a fence around a bunch 

 of wild animals, wired Mr. Graham to come back to 

 Ottawa. 



