Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation by William Temple Hornaday
page 118 of 733 (16%)
page 118 of 733 (16%)
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successful evasions of the law are responsible for the other third.
[Illustration: TWO GUNNERS OF KANSAS CITY Who Believe in Killing all That the Law Allows. They are not so Much to Blame as the System That Permits Such Slaughter. (Note the Pump Guns)] [Illustration: WHY THE SANDHILL CRANE IS BECOMING EXTINCT Nineteen of Them Killed as "Game" by Three Gunners. Note the Machine Gun.] The only remedy for the present extermination of game according to law that so rapidly and so furiously is proceeding all over the United States, Canada, Alaska, and Africa, is ten-year close seasons on all the species threatened with extinction, and immensely reduced open seasons and bag limits on all the others. Will the people who still have wild game take heed now, and clamp down the brakes, hard and fast before it is too late, or will they have their game exterminated? Shall we have five-year close seasons, or close seasons of 500 years? We must take our choice. Shall we hand down to our children a gameless continent, with all the shame that such a calamity will entail? We have _got_ to answer these questions like men, or they will soon be answered for us by the extermination of the wild life. For twenty-five years we have been smarting under the disgrace of the extermination of our bison millions. Let us not repeat the dose through the destruction of other species. |
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