110 



THE GAME BREEDER 



Railroad at Wellington and he shot them 

 to prevent them from doing damage, is 

 the plea made by Harvey Repp, of Wel- 

 lington, held in Justice Neling's court on 

 the charge of violating the State game 

 laws by shooting rabbits out of season. 



More Turkeys. 



A dispatch from Grass Valley, Cali- 

 fornia, to The World, N. Y., predicts 

 more w^ild turkeys : 



Shooting wild turkeys is going to be 

 good sport in a few years when the 

 birds get numerous enough, to warrant 

 the season being opened for that game. 

 Several years ago Postmaster Hays and 

 Game Warden Ray O'Connor planted a 

 dozen or more turkeys on the Church 

 Ranch in Penn Valley. They now are 

 said to number nearly one hundred. 

 They are very active, and those who 

 have seen them vouch for the statement 

 that the strongest of them can fly a 

 mile. They inhabit oak trees and seem 

 to have no difficulty in getting food. It 

 may be necessary to kill off some of the 

 gobblers in the interests of a larger 

 herd. 



Malheur Lake. 



Professor Pearson, the Secretary of 

 the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies, says, in Bird-Lore: 



While in Oregon discovery was made that 

 a land company was quietly working to get 

 the State Land Board to obtain from the 

 Department of the Interior title to Malheur 

 Lake. If the efforts to secure state control 

 of this territory are successful, these land 

 speculators contemplate getting title to it 

 under a recent Oregon law, and then will 

 drain the lake. To my mind this is the most 

 important bird-reservation in the United 

 States. Something of its vast bird-life is well 

 known to bird students through the writings 

 and photographs of William L. Finley and 

 Herman T. Bohlman. Their early explora- 

 tions into the Malheur country supplied 

 President William Dutcher with the neces- 

 sary data to use in making application to have 

 the lake made a Federal bird reservation. 



Upon learning of the present alarming sit- 

 uation the association at once started a cam- 

 paign of publicity to draw the public's atten- 

 tion to the threatened destruction of Malheur 

 Lake, and asked that protests be filed with the 

 Oregon State Land Board and with the De- 

 partment of Interior in Washington. Up to 



the present time the matter has not been set- 

 tled. 



On the Malheur Reservation are large 

 breeding colonies of white pelicans. Cali- 

 fornia gulls, Caspian terns and Western 

 grebes, as well as thousands of Canada 

 geese, and literally tens of thousands of wild 

 ducks representing all species found in such, 

 regions of the Northwest. 



From the foregoing it will be seen that 

 the cause of bird protection has not yet suf- 

 ficiently advanced in this country, but what, 

 eternal vigilance and the reasonable use of 

 funds are necessary if we are not to sufifer 

 irreparable loss in our wild bird life. At 

 any moment a valuable colony of birds is- 

 likely to be wiped out. 



Mr. Wm. Finley, of Oregon, writes : 



The proposal to drain Malheur Lake to 

 make more agricultural land in southeastern 

 Oregon has threatened during the past year 

 to put an end to the most important breed- 

 ing place for wild fowl in the United States. 

 This matter will soon come before the State 

 Land Board of Oregon. Mr. Pearson re- 

 cently made an inspection of Malheur Lake 

 Reservation and found it very questionable 

 whether the alkali-soaked soil of the lake 

 bed could ever be of any use for agricul- 

 tural purposes ; while, on the other hand, 

 this extensive alkali marsh is of great value 

 as a wild fowl nursery. Every effort will 

 be made, therefore, to save Malheur Lake 

 as a wild bird reservation. 



How to Save Malheur. 



It is highly important that the "most 

 important breeding place for wild fowl 

 in the United States should be saved. 

 One sure way to save it would be to 

 make it a public shooting ground where 

 the shooting could be regulated. Sports- 

 men would not shoot any but the wild 

 food birds and if a little extra work be 

 done by skilled keepers it would be pos- 

 sible to permit a large number of sports- 

 men to have at least one or two days' 

 good duck shooting without causing any 

 diminution in the numbers of the fowl. 

 Possibly the State might derive some rev- 

 enue also from the sale of a lot of the 

 wild food birds. Sportsmen can be 

 found willing to shoot one hundred or 

 more fowl in a day without charge for 

 their services. They should be per- 

 mitted to retain a dozen birds or so and 

 the rest should be sent to market so that 

 the people who are said to own the game 

 may have a taste of their property. A 

 few keepers at Malheur would ensure an 



