THE FOREIGN GAME INTRODUCTION PROGRAM 
Year by year the number of individuals seeking relaxation 
through hunting is increasing. Yet the area available for this sport 
is slowly decreasing. Likewise, much of the habitat which mothers 
the game crop is becoming less and less able to produce shootable 
surpluses under the impact of clean farming, over-grazing, drainage, 
power equipment, increased use of insecticides and herbicides, 
scientific forestry, urbanization, and declining soil fertility. 
Faced with this situation, common sense dictates an all-out 
effort to increase habitat productivity. But there are many habitats 
which have been so thoroughly changed by man that native game species 
can no longer maintain themselves therein in numbers sufficient to 
provide good hunting. Competing interests and the cost of reversing 
this trend are such that only a part of these lands can be restored 
to reasonable productivity in the foreseeable future. There are 
other coverts which never were fully occupied by native game birds 
or mammals possessing the characteristics requisite to survival in 
the face of today's intensive hunting pressure. For these, new, 
adaptable species possessing a high hunting resistance should be 
sought, so that such areas might provide greater hunting opportuni- 
ties. This is the logic behind the foreign game introduction program 
as developed cooperatively by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
cooperating State Fish and Game Commissions, and the Wildlife Manage- 
ment Institute, 
The program is based on requests for assistance from State Fish 
and Game Commissions following an ecological appraisal of their 
game-deficient habitats, After such information is in hand, biolo- 
gists are assigned to make a careful study of game species occupying 
Similar habitats and climates in foreign countries. From dozens 
considered, one or two may be selected on the basis of their charac- 
teristics, habits, reproductive capacity, resistance to predation 
and disease, relationship to agriculture, ability to withstand heavy 
hunting pressure, and the possibility of competition with game species 
native to the United States. Modest, carefully planned trial intro- 
ductions of these species, utilizing wild-trapped or farm-reared 
individuals, carefully quarantined before shipment, are then carried 
out in cooperation with interested State Fish and Game Commissions. 
Unplanned or "hit and miss" introductions are actively discouraged. 
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