CHAPTER X

DESTRUCTION OF WILD LIFE BY THE ELEMENTS


It is a fixed condition of Nature that whenever and wherever a wild
species exists in a state of nature, free from the trammels and
limitations that contact with man always imposes, the species is fitted
to survive all ordinary climatic influences. Freedom of action, and the
exercise of several options in the line of individual maintenance under
stress, is essential to the welfare of every wild species.

A prong-horned antelope herd that is free can drift before a blizzard,
can keep from freezing by the exercise, and eventually come to shelter.
Let that same herd drift against a barbed-wire fence five miles long,
and its whole scheme of self-preservation is upset. The herd perishes
then and there.

Cut out the undergrowth of a given section, drain the swamps and mow
down all the weeds and tall grass, and the next particularly hard winter
starves and freezes the quail.

Naturally the cutting of forests, clearing of brush and drainage of
marshes is more or less calamitous to all the species of birds that
inhabit such places and find there winter food and shelter. Red-winged
blackbirds and real estate booms can not inhabit the same swamps
contemporaneously. Before the relentless march of civilization, the wild
Indian, the bison and many of the wild birds must inevitably disappear.
We cannot change conditions that are as inexorable as death itself. The
wild life must either adjust itself to the conditions that civilized man