152 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



OPPOSITION TO SALE OF GAME 



Throughout the whole of the United States, and I think 

 all of southern Canada, the conservers of wild life are a 

 fixed and unalterable unit in opposition to the sale of game, 

 anywhere, in those regions. That matter has been con- 

 sidered, and at times fought over, for fully ten years; 

 and, if any principles in wild life protection can be regarded 

 as settled for all time, it is the ban on the sale of game 

 and on the sale of the plumage of wild birds. The Sulzer 

 bill could have been, and would have been, buried under 

 a mountain of opposition, both in and outside of Congress, 

 had it been pressed forward. 



In view of the well-known and legally recorded briefs 

 of the wild life conservationists of Canada and of the 

 United States, I now regard it as a waste of time to attempt 

 to devise ways and means for the sale of wild game. The 

 principle that lately has been so gloriously reaffirmed and 

 so everlastingly fixed by the international treaty between 

 Canada and the United States for the protection of migra- 

 tory game birds against the market hunter and the game- 

 dealer, must not now be discredited in the Far North. The 

 time has come that the sale of game in Alaska must posi- 

 tively stop before it has brought great harm to the game 

 and to the people of Alaska. 



It is a curious circumstance that the men who thus far 

 have saved some of the game of Alaska from annihilation, 

 have done so without either appreciation or thanks from 

 the people of Alaska. But for the initiative of the meddle- 

 some eastern naturalist in 1902, by this time the accessible 

 regions of Alaska would have been swept bare of hoofed 

 game. It is utter folly to assume, or to believe, that the 

 people of Alaska alone are either willing or able to protect 

 their big game from extermination, and utilize it on a real 

 continuing basis. In times like the present the truth may 

 better be told bluntly than in any round-about way. 



