- 3 -i 



2-10-33 



T'he ftidtire courtroom glares ^7ith. hostility at tlie treasel as it glides quickly 

 along on its short » st-ibty legs. One s^oectator remembers a storj/ her grandmother 

 told her years ago. Just after the grandmother get -op ho'asekeeping, a weasel got 

 into her henhouse one night and killed 17 of her prize Plymoui;h Rocks. Other 

 spectators recall similar stories. No qtiestion as to the weasel's guilt. You, 

 the .jury, may he ready to declare Mr. T7easel guilty, along r^ith the other hirds 

 and animals against which the evidence seems to he strong. 



s7e might go on for the rest of the day, calling one "bird and animal after 

 another "before the court. v7ith our opinions already formed, we would brand them, 

 one after another, as "vermin." By the tine we had gone through the entire docket, 

 the clerk's record would probably show about 90 per cent of our wild life listed 



under the heading of "vermin" wild life that is considered harmful wild life 



to be destroyed. 



Something is obviously wrorog. 



TTe've slated 90 per cent of our wild life for extermination. Do the facts 

 in the case warrant any such verdict? Did we arrive at our decision fairly, imr- 

 partially, and scientifically? 



Maybe we were not careful enough in weighing the evidence. TJe accepted 

 opinions, and prejudices, and circumstantial evidence. But we had no expert 



testimony no testimony from a witness who had made a careful study of the habits 



of our wild life and of their relations to one another. Let's hear an expert 

 witness before we pronounce sentence. 



He have such a witness in T7. L. Mcitee, of the U. S- Biological Survey. 



McAtee has spent years and years studying the food habits and other habits 

 of much of our wild life. He has been gathering the inside facts we need if we 

 are to draw up sensible game laws and to work out a sane conservation program. 



TThat does McAtee say about the fox, for example? Is the fox an enemy of bird 



life? 



McAtee reports on a special study of that question in Virginia. 



Many folks in Virginia, and thro"aghout the Southeastern States, claim th^t 

 foxes kill so many quail that we need to kill off the foxes. They pointed to the 



scarcity of the bobwhite in some sections also to cases where they had surprised 



a fox as it finished up a fine meal of quail. 



But, when McAtee, and the Virginia Game Commission, began to check up on 

 Br'er Fox, they found he wasn^t such a bad character after all. In fact, when 

 they examined the stomachs of 50 foxes, they foimd quail in only one. Those 50 

 foxes had been living mainly on rabbits. McAtee saySr "Of course, we^ll have to 

 check t:^) on a great many more foxes "before we can say definitely Just how much 

 quail the foxes are eating. But, from our study of those 50 fox stomachs, we can 



not conderan foxes as a menace to quail at least, not in Virginia, Neither can 



we condemn the fox family as a whole as a threat to any other kind of bird or 

 animal life. The worst we can say is that Virginians may '-lave to kill off the 

 occasional fox th-at gets too much interested in chicken coops or develops too much 

 of an appetite for such food as quail." 



