
U.S. F.S. RECEIVED 
LIBRARY 
JUN 19 949 






United States Department of the Intcrior 
Bureau of Biological Survey 
—-—- 
Wildlife Leaflet BS-161* 



Washington, D.C. 

WILDLIFE TECHNOLOGY 
‘ 
By W. L. McAtee, Technical Adviser 
Office of the Chief 
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 but also from belated recog- 
nition by the American people of the profligacy with which they have squan- 
dered their wildlife heritage, Originally unsurpassed by that of any other 
continent, American wildlife has been slaughtered and deprived of essential 
range tad certain species have been exterminated and many others dangerously 
reduced in numbers, 
The famed wild, or passenger, pigeon, once 
sidered inexhaustible ipriads, is now only a memor 
existing in herds so filling the plains that igi 
pioneers on the march, day after day, for weeks on 
special reservations, Wildfowl once covered 
the air, but in many areas they no longer ap 
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fraction of their former abundance, Theso are meroly symbolic cases; all 
wildlife has suffered in the same ay, if not to the same extent. 
hers we hope, 
in tine, the Américan™peopls have realized eAat DTOTIVTON Hust be maeeS “for 
wihalers 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 rofugo and se ifoty for roaring its young, and finally intoclligent 
and sympathetic mana wemont, so that all facilitics that can be devoted to 
wildlife shall have the greatest possible offect. A brighter day for wild- 
life scems to have dawned, and wildlife managoment already has a well-definod 
part in such new national cares as land=planning, rural resettlement, and 
erosion control, as well as in the revitalized general consbFvation movement, 
At last, and in some cases, as we know, too late, in o 
s 
Origin and Present Status of Wildlife Technology 
Wildlife technology had its eS in the search for better methods of 
game restoration on private estate s, has boen contributed to by some of the 
more permanently organizod of the State conservation de epartmonts, and now is 
*Reissued with slight rovisions from Leaflet BS-67 issuod by the Bureau 
of Biological Survey under the Departmont of Agriculture in October 1936. 
