BIRD RESERVATIONS 
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f 
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Birds being 
Driven 
Further North 
a refuge. This was a famous place for market hunters in days gone 
by. More than 300,000 ducks were taken there in one year. Another 
large series of bird-reservations is situated in the state of Louisiana. 
These include 234,000 acres of marsh-land, where numbers of ducks 
and geese now find a safe refuge. These reservations were made 
by the private purchase of Charles Willis Ward, E. A. Mcllhenny, 
Mrs. Russell Sage and the Rockefeller Foundation. 
So we are making some headway. It is a matter in 
which those of us who are actively engaged are 
naturally greatly interested, and we are very anxious 
to see the work extended to Canada. Sloughs in your Northwest 
are being drained and the wild water-fowl are being driven farther 
north. Alaska will, perhaps, be the last refuge for some of these. 
We became so apprehensive of the situatian there that we under- 
took to call the attention of the people of Alaska to the value of 
their bird-life. The Association sent two men to gather information 
on the birds of Alaska and collated from publications such material as 
was available. Then we published the combined data in illustrated 
book form, and last winter sent a copy of the Alaskan Bird-Life 
to every school-child in Alaska — eight thousand copies in all. As 
the children would take the books home, it was thus distributed 
to the people. But let us not drive all the nesting birds out of 
Canada. You have an immense wealth here yet, and I appeal to 
you, as a man from the United States, interested in bird-protection, 
to take up the work, for it is quite worth while. If we are going to 
conserve the wild water-fowl, which is a great national asset to both 
nations, we must have co-operation and must work together. 
You have an opportunity in Canada to set aside as bird-reserves 
very important areas for harbouring wild ducks and geese that 
cannot be of any great agricultural value. In establishing bird- 
reservations we have found in the United States it is necessary 
to bear in mind that people are more important than birds, 
and, if we set aside land for birds that people can really use 
for agricultural purposes, it sometimes becomes necessary later 
to relinquish such areas. But you have many lakes and sloughs in 
the west that could easily be created bird-reservations without 
interfering with the agricultural interests of the Dominion. The 
expense of guarding such territories need not be great. Very frequently 
some person who resides in the immediate neighbourhood can be 
secured to give adequate protection. We have found that a little 
protection goes a long way, that it is perfectly astonishing how kindly 
and quickly birds respond to protection, how soon they discover 
the areas in which they are immune from human attack, and how 
