See DU BON BUR EsTahN I 
Thoughts of Conservation — and 
A\fterthoughts 
By C. W.-G. Errric 
When one looks at the efforts put forth by federal, state, and private 
organizations to protect the wild things, a feeling of deep disappointment, 
coupled with discouragement, must seize one. When one sees how agencies 
that have federal or state power behind them are continually thwarted 
and hampered, their efforts made of no avail, or how some of these officials 
show only too plainly that they themselves are not interested in the ob- 
jectives they are paid to attain, one is inclined to become a hopeless pessi- 
mist. For if these agencies are productive of so little good, what may one 
expect of the more scattered attempts of private organizations, such as 
our Audubon Society? 
If our aims and purposes were not so worthy and necessary, if the 
prize at stake, the continued existence and enjoyment of our great outdoors 
were not so valuable, yes, essential, to the coming generations, one would be 
inclined to say, let us give up. But we must not, we dare not do so. The 
more industrious the powers of iniquity are along these lines, the more 
persistent and well directed must be our efforts. Let the calls for help of 
the stricken things in nature, sent forth by that veteran leader in conserva- 
tion, William Hornaday, by several of the members of the Biological Sur- 
vey in Washington, by the Emergency Conservation Committee, and by 
the national and state Audubon Societies, rouse us again and again to re- 
newed activity in the large or small sphere wherein we may be able to 
help. 
The denizens of our great outdoors most threatened in their existence 
just now continue to be the wild ducks—notably the Redhead, the Ring- 
neck, and the Lesser Scaup—other waterfowl, our hawks, and some game 
birds, as the Prairie Chicken, the Bobwhite, even the gentle Mourning 
Dove. Notes of alarm have been sounded, more and more insistently, by 
people who are best in position to know, such as game wardens and other 
officials in our northwestern states and Canada, by sportsmen of the old 
type, who are not game butchers, both singly and by their societies, all 
agreeing that if something drastic and sweeping is not done at once to help 
our ducks and others to recuperate and somewhat come back to their 
former numbers, their days will soon be numbered. Last summer’s terrific 
heat and drouth over a large part of the ducks’ breeding grounds seems 
to have been the last straw. Instead of now eliminating the open season 
entirely, as conditions made it imperative, it was only reduced to thirty 
days. Even that would have been a little gain, had not the Biological Sur- 
vey left it to the discretion of the several state commissions whether they 
