BIRD REFUGES 
9 
That such realization has been reached to no small degree is evi¬ 
denced by the fact that in 1916 a treaty was signed by the United 
States and Great Britain for the protection of insectivorous, game, 
and non-game birds migrating between the United States and Canada, 
probably the most important single measure ever taken for the preser¬ 
vation of bird life. In further evidence, the United States, recog¬ 
nizing the evils resulting from the wholesale destruction of birds for 
millinery purposes, by a tariff act of 1913, prohibited the entry of 
plumage of wild birds, either raw or manufactured, not for scientific 
or educational purposes; and the Canadian Government in furtherance 
of the same purpose by an act in 1915 rendered all importations of 
wild birds’ plumage illegal, except the feathers of the ostrich, pheasant, 
and peacock, of birds used for food, and of specimens for scientific 
purposes. 
Recognition of the importance of educational propaganda regarding 
the value of birds to the State has been shown not only by the Federal 
Government in its Biological Survey publications on the food of birds 
and the best means of attracting them to various parts of the country, 
but by State Audubon societies, State boards of agriculture, and by 
the publication of important treatises on the birds of the respective 
States. 
Recognition of the value of birds is strikingly demonstrated by the 
large number of Federal and State refuges established and associations 
for the conservation of wild life organized throughout the country. 
NATIONAL AND STATE REFUGES AND STATE ORGANIZA¬ 
TIONS FOR THE CONSERVATION OF WILD LIFE 1 
NATIONAL AND STATE REFUGES 
Refuges for the protection of birds and game are Federal, State, or 
Municipal. 
In New Mexico there are two Federal bird refuges, fifty-eight big 
game refuges, and twenty-one State bird refuges, making in all, eighty- 
one tracts of land where birds are afforded protection. 
The two Federal bird refuges are both on reclamation projects— 
that of Carlsbad on the Pecos, which has two reservoirs, Lake Avalon 
and Lake MacMillan; and that on the Rio Grande, which is some thirty 
miles long, extending up the Rio Grande from Elephant Butte dam. 
The fifty-eight State big game refuges, mainly in the mountainous 
sections of the State, aggregating 1,606,900 acres, have been established 
for the purpose of providing safe sanctuaries in which game may breed 
and from which it may spread to adjacent hunting ranges. But while 
they are intended to protect deer, bear, and mountain sheep, they also 
1 Ligon, J. S. Wild Life of New Mexico: Its Conservation and Management, pp. 171-1S4, 1927* 
