A NATIONAL GAME PRESERVE IN ALASKA. 



W. T. HORNADAY. 



To-day, Alaska contains the grandest 

 hunting grounds in North America. They 

 are inhabited by the giant moose, the larg- 

 est antlered animal on the earth ; the Kadiak 

 brown bear, largest of all flesh-eating land 

 animals ; and the mountain caribou, larg- 

 est and finest of its genus. The snow 

 white mountain sheep is there, the moun- 

 tain goat, black and yellow bears galore, 

 and the rare, new glacier bear, as yet never 

 seen in captivity, and in only one museum. 



fective measures are taken by Congress, 

 the next 10 years of slaughter will wipe 

 out the work of ages, and leave Alaska 

 only a barren, lifeless waste of rugged 

 mountains and dreary tundras. Already 

 the Western side of Alaska has been almost 

 cleared of large mammalian life. 



The favorite haunts of the grandest 

 game of Alaska are not, and never can be, 

 adapted to the wants of the husbandman. 

 So far as known, they contain few precious 



NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY COPYRIGHT. 1900. 



KADIAK BEAR IN THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 



All these fine animals are being slaugh- 

 tered, by sportsmen, hide hunters, head 

 hunters, and Indians, who in true Indian 

 fashion kill often 5 animals for every 

 one they properly consume. In the 

 United States statutes, there is not one line 

 of game law either to protect the game 

 of Alaska or restrict its slaughter in any 

 manner. 



Nature has been millions of years in de- 

 veloping the wonderful animal forms which 

 inhabit our Arctic province, but which fool- 

 ish and shortsighted man is now thought- 

 lessly exterminating. Unless quick and ef- 



188 



metal deposits worthy of mention. Those 

 rugged, rocky crags and peaks never will 

 know the wire fence and the cowboy. Those 

 mosquito-ridden, water-soaked tundras in- 

 vite the wild goose and the sandhill crane, 

 not the plow and the harrow. 



Economically, there is no reason why 

 nature's great natural gameland in south- 

 ern Alaska should not be fixed and estab- 

 lished for all time as a National game 

 preserve, and made a heritage for genera- 

 tions yet unborn. 



We of to-day have no right, either moral 

 or legal, to destroy all the zoological re- 



