Ml 



United States Department of Agriculture 

 Bureau of Biological Survey 



LIBRARY 



RECEIVED 



• NOV 2 1936 • 



U. S. Dep&rtseit of A. priotltue 



V /ildlife Research, end Management Leaflet BS-67- - 



Washington, D. C. 



October 1936 



WILDLIFE TECHNOLOGY 



By f, L. McAtee, Technical Adviser and Research. Specialist 



Office of the Chief 



i ntrodu c tion - 



The livest, the most widespread, and perhaps the most socially sig- 

 nificant activity in the field of American "biology today is the technology 

 known as wildlife management. This technology derives its importance not 

 from the logic of present conditions alone out also from "belated recog- 

 nition "by the American people of the profligacy with which they have 

 squandered their wildlife heritage. Originally unsurpassed "by that of any 

 other continent, American wildlife has "been slaughtered and deprived of 

 essentia.1 range until certain species have been exterminated and many others 

 dangerously reduced in numbers.' 



The famed wild, or passenger, pigeon, once present in wiiat were con- 

 sidered inexhaustible myriads, is now only a memory. The buffalo, once 

 existing in herds so filling the plains that they were never out of sight of 

 pioneers on the march, day after day, for weeks on end, exists now only on 

 special reservations. Wildfowl once covered the waters, as pigeons filled 

 the air, but in many areas they no longer appear and in all they have but a. 

 fraction of their former abundance. These are merely symbolic cases; a,ll 

 wildlife has suffered in the same' way, if not to the same extent. 



At last, and in" some cases, as we know, too late, in others we hope, 

 in time, the American people have realized that provision, must be made for 

 wildlife if it is to continue to exist. Such provision must include not 

 merely better protection, but adequate allotment of lands on which wildlife 

 may find refuge and safety for rearing its young, and finally intelligent 

 and sympathetic management, so that a,ll facilities tha.t can' be devoted to 

 wildlife shall have the greatest possible effect. A brighter day for wild- 

 life seems to have dawned, and wildlife mana,gement already has a well-defined 

 part in such now national cares as land-planning, rural resettlement, and 

 erosion control, as well ask the revitalized general conservation movement. 



Origin and Present Statu s of Wildlife Technology 



game 



V/ildlife technology has its origin in the starch for better methods of 

 „.iq restoration on private esta,tes, has been contributed to ''oj some of the 

 more permanently organized of the State conservation departments, and now is 

 a major function of six Federal agencies— the iia.tional Park Service, the 

 Forest Service, Soil Conservation Service, Resettlement Administration, the 

 Tennessee "Valley Authority, and the Bureau of Biological Survey. 



