FOREST AND STREAM 
953 
FALSE CONSERVATION OF FUR SEALS 
IN THE LAUDABLE EFFORT TO STOP PELAGIC KILLING AND PRESERVE THE 
HERD OUR LAW MAKERS OVERLOOKED THE LAW OF NATURE ITSELF 
I T IS a fundamental principle of conserva¬ 
tion as we know it to-day that natural re¬ 
sources should be administered to yield 
the greatest possible annual return without 
jeopardizing future productivity. Conservation 
which merely hoards or which sacrifices the 
present without gain for the future is no con¬ 
servation at all. That, however, is the sort of 
pseudo-conservation we are now practicing with 
our fur-seals. These animals are not so valu¬ 
able as our forests or fisheries, but they have 
in the past brought to the public coffers the tidy 
sum of $10,000,000 and it scarcely seems that 
we are rich enough to disregard them even in 
these diverting days of war abroad and politics 
at home. For some years our seal herd was on 
the wane, but it is now on the increase and our 
government by failure of Congress to authorize 
the taking of the surplus (or rather by pro¬ 
hibiting it)has lost, is losing, and will lose con¬ 
siderable sums. It certainly lost well over a half 
million dollars in 1915, not quite so much in 
1914, and failing action will again lose in 1916. 
Still worse, it will lose not only its own but 
that which it is pledged to pay to Great Britain 
and Japan, so the way is being paved for an in¬ 
ternational situation in which we are scarcely 
likely to add anything to our waning prestige. 
The reasons for this undesirable state of affairs 
are in reality quite simple, but the principal one 
is the ease with which those who desire can con¬ 
fuse a few really important facts with a mass 
of irrelevant quibbling details leading to inter¬ 
minable discussion and difference of opinion. 
The main facts regarding the history and 
habits of fur-seals have been stated repeatedly, 
but are always a necessary preliminary to dis¬ 
cussion of practical questions. These seals have 
three principal characteristics and various minor 
peculiarities which make it unreasonable to treat 
them as if they were ordinary land animals. 
They are highly gregarious, they are migratory, 
and they are polygamous. Those of the North 
Pacific Ocean are and have been since the mem¬ 
ory of man, divided into three herds, the Japan¬ 
ese, the Russian, and the American. They are 
so-called from the ownership of the restricted 
land areas where they spend the summer, but 
complete ownership of the seals themselves has 
never been established, for during the winter 
season they roam the seas away from land. The 
American herd, which is much the largest, has 
its exclusive summer home and breeding grounds 
on the Pribilof Islands, two small volcanic 
islands in the southern part of Bering Sea. 
Their life on the islands has many peculiar fea¬ 
tures, most of which are involved in their polyg¬ 
amous habits. The females gather in groups called 
harems, each of which is presided over by an 
adult male. These harems vary in size from 
3 or 4 to 40 or 50 or even 75 to 100 females to 
one male. The average number under normal 
conditions is scarcely less than 40. The males, 
or bulls, guard the harems jealously and fight or 
skirmish with each other, principally to maintain 
positions of advantage, but to some extent also 
for the possession of individual females. Since 
the birthrate of males and females is practi¬ 
cally the same, it naturally follows that a large 
By Wilfred H. Osgood. 
percentage of the males are superfluous and, 
without the intervention of man, they simply re¬ 
main to harass those actually engaged in the 
conduct of the harems. These superfluous males 
or the so-called idle bulls can be kept within 
reasonable numbers by killing a considerable pro¬ 
portion of the young males before they reach 
breeding age. This is easily and simply done, 
for the young males under six years of age, or 
bachelors as they are called, do not mingle with 
the females on the breeding grounds but, through 
fear of the old bulls, herd by themselves on 
separate areas or hauling grounds. From these 
hauling grounds they can be driven up even more 
easily than cattle or sheep, and without any dis¬ 
turbance of the females and young. Moreover, 
the skins of these young males are more valuable 
commercially than those of older ones, so it is 
desirable from every point of view to kill such of 
them as are not necessary for breeding. 
During American ownership of Alaska, the 
young males have been the only seals intention¬ 
ally killed on land, and it has not been demon¬ 
strated that this so-called land killing even when 
practiced extensively has of itself caused any 
diminution in the breeding strength of the herd. 
But the herd has declined rapidly, as is well 
known, for another cause, the so-called pelagic 
sealing. When the United States purchased 
Alaska in 1867, the herd was very large, probably 
numbering not less than two million animals, 
and for some twenty years thereafter 100,000 
young male seals were taken annually. These 
were easily obtained and without apparent effect 
on the breeding strength of the herd. But when 
the pelagic sealers became numerous the herd 
began to grow smaller and continued to decline 
from year to year. Operating from boats on 
the high seas and killing the seals with shotguns 
and buckshot, these pelagic sealers were brutal, 
reckless and irresponsible. Many of the seals 
were only wounded and escaped to die lingering 
deaths, while many others sank before they could 
be retrieved. Moreover, a large percentage of 
those killed were pregnant females which left 
nursling pups to starve on land, so two and even 
three generations were snuffed out at once. 
Obviously, it was one thing to kill surplus 
males on land under definite regulations, but 
quite another matter to take males, females, and 
young indiscriminately and without stint at sea. 
Practically everyone who studied the matter 
agreed that this pelagic sealing threatened the 
commercial ruin if not the absolute extinction 
of the seal herd. But it was very difficult to 
stop it. The pelagic sealers operated principally 
outside the three-mile limit in international 
waters and it was evident that nothing short of 
an international agreement would check them. 
They were making large profits and they and 
their agents and even their governments resisted 
all efforts to curb their activities. From this 
time on for more than twenty years followed a 
long struggle to secure the abolition of pelagic 
sealing. International commissioners were sent 
to investigate, voluminous reports were pub¬ 
lished, testimony was taken widely, and expert 
opinion both scientific and legal was brought to 
bear on the question. During all this time pe¬ 
lagic sealing was the main issue and it was a 
matter for great satisfaction when finally in 1911 
a treaty was negotiated which put a stop to it. 
The parties to the treaty were the United 
States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia, and 
the essential idea of the contract was the ex¬ 
change of rights on the sea for a share in opera¬ 
tions to be conducted on land. For their relin¬ 
quishment of maritime rights, the United States 
