216 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. s, 1910. 
Annual Meeting of Game Protectors. 
The game protectors and fire patrols of New 
York assembled in Albany last week and held 
their annual meeting. Present were the men 
who are taking the respect of the game law 
into the remotest parts of the State, and educat¬ 
ing the game law breakers to the fact that it is 
not safe to do as it was the regular custom in 
years past—kill wild life regardless of public 
policy. 
It is a satisfaction to sportsmen to see the 
kind of men who have been assembled by Com¬ 
missioner Whipple for the policing of the State 
fields and streams. The appearances of the men 
were as diverse as could be imagined. There 
were woodsmen, of course, and big-game hun¬ 
ters, sportsmen-at-heart and fishermen, farmers 
and men with big fur coats, and 1 others in city 
garb. But it is worth emphasizing that, as one 
of the speakers remarked, there is a tendency 
toward the specialized type—a sort of combina¬ 
tion of the German forester with the English 
game keeper with broader American features. 
The idea that the place of game protector is a 
“job” is giving way to the finer thought that 
it is a growing profession. 
The theory of the meetings held in Albany 
was to give the protectors a larger 1 outlook—to 
take their viewpoint from the details of their 
own district to the great aspect of the commis¬ 
sion’s relation to the State and the public. 
One could not listen to the addresses by 
Messrs. Palmer, Evans, Pierson, Carlton and 
Whipple without feeling in the buoyant tone 
their forging to success; something, too, of the 
long struggle against ravaging the forests and 
waters through which they have passed. 
The protectors came from every section of 
the State. “There’s a lot of new ones,” one 
heard them say. The new faces meant that 
efficiency only holds a man in his place in the 
commission these days. One, who had come 
through the civil service, said reminiscently: “I 
tell you, you’ve got to go some to get through. 
There were fourteen against me.” 
There was a man with twenty fish law viola¬ 
tion cases for settlement and report. Others 
from the Adirondacks thin from snowshoe work 
—outdoor men all of them. 
The first meeting was on Monday night in 
the city hall. Prof. Cary, the Superintendent of 
Forests, who succeeded the late Col. Wm. F. 
Fox, told of forestry and its beginnings and de¬ 
velopment. He described, the fates of nations 
which destroyed their forests and traced the 
development of the conservation idea. Pictures 
were shown which could not help but impress 
the woodsmen present of the failure of the 
State at large to rise to its opportunities in the 
matter of forest care. 
At Tuesday morning’s session Commissioner 
Whipple talked of the work of the department. 
He impressed on the listeners the necessity of 
viewing the work from the broad standpoint of 
the State. The meeting, he said, was for the 
purpose of having them see the relations of 
the department to the other State work, and to 
national work of the same sort. He wanted the 
men to know that they are a body of men from 
whom much is expected and with great tasks at 
hand that must be done. He said that one of 
the hardest features of his work was turning 
off the men who did not make good, but it is 
a public duty which must be performed for the 
good of the service. He said, too, that, honest 
criticism helps, and that he has learned much 
from honest criticism. Going among them one 
finds that the most efficient men are glad to 
have such a superior. 
A. Kelly Evans, member of the Ontario Com¬ 
mission on Fisheries and Game, told of his own 
and others’ work in Canada. He spoke of the 
vast importance of educational work in conser¬ 
vation. He recommended individual missionary 
work—that the protectors know the laws, the 
theories of the laws, and then tell the people of 
their districts about them. “Never lose an op¬ 
portunity to explain the object of the law—that 
law is not to take away liberties, but to main¬ 
tain public rights against individual invasion.” 
He told the story of Canada’s experience with 
reckless destruction and how difficult it is to 
overcome the resistance to efficient protection 
and conservation. He told of his own cam¬ 
paign of education, traveling through Ontario 
from place to place, taking the doctrine of game 
preservation and protection. He then read the 
announcement which is one of the mile stones 
of progress in conservation. Canada sent men 
to the conservation convention which President 
Roosevelt called. The result of the meeting at 
Washington was that some of Canada’s leading 
people went to work on the subject of preserv¬ 
ing the resources of that country. The greatest 
thinkers of Canada, regardless of party, came 
together for the glory and future of the coun¬ 
try, and a plan was at last formulated by which 
the Canadian Commission of Conservation was 
called into being. This commission consists of 
the three Federal cabinet ministers, the minister 
of each of the Provincial cabinets charged with 
the administration of Provincial National re¬ 
sources and twenty members appointed by the 
Governor-General, of which at least one mem¬ 
ber must be one of the faculty of a university 
of each province. In this commission the Cana¬ 
dians have shown a nimbleness in grasping an 
opportunity which has its lesson for the United 
States. It was naively put in excuse of this 
country that “large bodies move slowly,” and 
the men who have been awakening sentiment re¬ 
garding the need of game and fish preservation 
were not without a personal understanding of 
what the visitor put with such fine delicacy. 
It should be observed that in Canada game, 
fur-bearing animals and game fish are in the 
eyes of this high and powerful commission 
worthy of a committee, especially to consider 
the requirements of their preservation, and this 
cannot fail to be of extraordinary benefit to 
wild life. • Mr. Evans made especial mention of 
the need of considering hydro-electric develop¬ 
ment wherever there is a natural flow of water 
in power quantities. 
Chief Protector Burnham, the chairman, fre¬ 
quently commented on the speeches made and 
applied particular statements to conditions con¬ 
fronting the New York department’s work. 
Then, in introducing the speakers, he took pains 
to tell what each speaker stood for. And the 
speakers were all of that class which has done 
and is doing things in the world of sportsmen’s 
most serious endeavor. 
Commissioner Carleton, of Maine, was par¬ 
ticularly interesting, the protectors said, because 
he had done the work he set out to do—carried 
the game law into the intelligence of the people 
of Maine. It is success that counts, and the 
hearts of the protectors warmed to the big gray 
man who had not forgotten how to laugh in 
the face of the conditions found in Maine four¬ 
teen years ago, when the law had not yet gone 
across that State’s wilderness. It was interest¬ 
ing to see the expressions of the men who lis¬ 
tened to his vivid story of efforts to overcome 
prejudice, ignorance, selfishness and complais¬ 
ance. Moose and deer had been so nearly ex¬ 
terminated by hunting in deep snow and killing 
in hot weather that a commission was appointed 
to see if there was enough parent stock left to 
breed a new supply of deer and moose if they 
were protected. The time came when from 
15,000 to 17,000 deer and 500 moose were killed 
in a year, and the supply is kept up in spite of 
the great drain. Mr. Carleton, speaking of the 
habit of carrying firearms into the woods in 
close season, said this practice should be stop¬ 
ped by law. The keynote of his address was to 
turn public sentiment from hating and despis¬ 
ing the enforcers of the game laws, to uphold¬ 
ing and respecting them, and is continuing now 
throughout the country section by section. New 
York protectors know what it is to have their 
friends turn upon them, and their neighbors to 
hate and assail them. Thus one protector’s barn 
was burned, another was shot at a few days 
ago, and the loafing places along the borders of 
the Adirondacks hear the threats of “blue pills” 
for the lone man seeking the violators of the 
game laws. 
Dr. Palmer, of the Biological Survey, re¬ 
viewed the efforts to promote game protection. 
His viewpoint was nation wide and compre¬ 
hensive in the grasp of the essential marks of 
game law history. This was in line with the 
effort to give the protectors a sight of the wide 
significance of their work—how the man plod¬ 
ding over Blue Berry Mountain in search of a 
cruster has a place, a big place, in the tremend¬ 
ous work of the whole country as it enters upon 
the new and most significant period of game pro¬ 
tection, for as Dr. Palmer pointed out, the new 
movement has only just begun. No longer is 
it a “job” to do game, fish and forest protec¬ 
tion work—it is becoming a profession, which 
requires special qualifications and abilities. One 
must know game law, woodcraft, court proced¬ 
ure, birds, beasts and fishes and their ways, with 
much knowledge of their own particular beats 
and of human nature. The protectors whose 
success has been great must have been pleased 
by Dr. Palmer’s statement of the requirements 
of their work. 
• The doctor told of the coming of equal op¬ 
portunity into the ranks of the game protectors 
—how the civil service laws are creeping in 
apace in New York, New Jersey and Wiscon¬ 
sin. It was pleasant to the protectors who had 
won their places against competitors to hear of 
the good work the civil service does. 
Dr. Palmer impressed on his hearers that mis¬ 
sionary work is needed to bring the people of 
all localities to a high appreciation of the under¬ 
lying principles of game, bird and fish protec¬ 
tion, and in this work the protectors may best 
educate their respective localities. It is some¬ 
thing of a task when there are eighty-five pro¬ 
tectors to 8,000,000 people. 
It was said that the proper basis of a pro¬ 
tector’s work is not square miles, but the hun¬ 
ter population. The work is largely with the 
