76 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



national forests and complete spoliation; and the more 

 quickly every American recognizes that fact, the better for 

 us all. 



It is only natural that every pathfinder and pioneer 

 should feel that by virtue of his hardships he has a right 

 to "live off the country," if he can. Up to a certain point 

 that theory is correct, and its practice is right. But in the 

 course of state development a point presently is reached 

 where the flesh of wild game no longer is necessary to ward 

 off starvation. Because a poor man now elects to move his 

 family into a remote game region of the Rocky Mountains, 

 that is no reason whatever why he should claim the right 

 to feed his hungry family all the year round on the na- 

 tion's asset of big game. In reality such a man now has 

 no more right to live on game than has any poor family 

 in New York City. Mere meat hunger does not now con- 

 stitute a right to slaughter wild animals. If it did, the wild 

 game of the United States would all of it be swept away in 

 one year. 



The great bulk of the national forests, distinguished by 

 dozens of separate forest names, lie in the Rocky Mountain 

 and Pacific states. Hunting now is permitted over all these 

 180 million acres, under the laws of the various states in 

 which they lie. In every one of them, with but a very few 

 exceptions, the game is being exterminated according to 

 law. In nearly every one of them, the game is being killed 

 far faster than it is breeding. Over millions of acres of 

 the national forests, today the big game is locally extinct. 

 It can be brought back only by systematic and determined 

 effort, and twenty years of absolute protection. In twenty 

 years any deer country or elk country can be so restocked 

 with deer and elk as to justify the killing of the young 

 males, for human food. 



The Vermont development with the white-tailed deer 

 places this statement absolutely beyond the reach of dis- 

 pute. 



Of course no one (so far as we are aware) ever intended 

 that any agricultural lands should be sequestrated for for- 

 estry purposes. In the haste that attended the first setting 



