Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 34

There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasmatic haunts. It may be twenty years before a living specimen can be brought out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density of their jungles that they never can be exterminated--until the natives are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire! When that day arrives, it is "good-night" to all the wild life that is large enough to eat or to wear.

The quagga and the blaubok became _extinct_ before the world learned that their existence was threatened! The giant eland, the sable antelope, the greater kudu, the bontebok, blessbok, the mountain and Burch.e.l.l zebras, all the giraffes save that of Nigeria, the big waterbucks, the nyala, the sitatunga, the bongo, and the gerenuk--all will go in the same way, everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra and rhinoceros are especially marked for destruction, as annoyances to colonists. You who read of the killing of these species to-day will read of their total disappearance to-morrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of rifle-shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about merely to be looked at.

Naturally, the open plains of Africa, and the thin forests of the plateau regions, will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy fastnesses of the great equatorial forests, and other really dense forests wherever found, the elephants, the Derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, the buffaloes (of three species), the bush-pigs, the bushbucks and the forest-loving antelopes generally will live, for possibly one hundred years,--_or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition_. Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is time to measure each big-game animal for its coffin.

The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust.

The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region (_Elephas pumilio_) will be the last African elephant species to disappear--because it inhabits dense miasmatic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the least commercial value.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE GAME OF ASIA

After a successful survival of man's influence through two thousand years, at last the big game of India has made a good start on the road to vanishment. Up to 1870 it had held its own with a tenacity that was astonis.h.i.+ng. In 1877, I found the Ganges--Jumna dooab, the Animallai Hills, the Wynaad Forest and Ceylon literally teeming with herds of game. The Animallais in particular were a hunter's paradise. In each day of hunting, large game of some kind was a certainty. The Nilgiri Hills had been quite well shot out, but in view of the very small area and open, golf-links character of the whole top of that wonderful sky plateau, that was no cause for wonderment.

In those days no native s.h.i.+karee owned and operated a gun,--or at the most very, very few of them did. If a rogue elephant, a man-eating tiger or a nasty leopard became a public nuisance, it was a case for a sahib to come and doctor it with a .577 double-barreled express rifle, worth $150 or more; and the sahibs had shooting galore.

I think that no such great wild-life sights as those of the plateau regions of Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The sambar deer and muntjac of the dense forests, the axis of the bamboo glades, the thameng deer of the Burmese jungles, the sladang, or gaur, of the awful Malay tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The ibexes, markhors, tahr and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out by sportsmen who are "sheep crazy." The sheep and goats of Asia will disappear soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game that lives in the open can much longer endure the modern, inexpensive long-range rifles of deadly accuracy and limitless repet.i.tion of fire.

Eventually, I fear that by some unlucky turn of Fortune's wheel all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles; and when they do, we soon will see the end of the big game.

Even to-day we find that the primitive conditions of 1877 have been greatly changed. In the first place, about every native s.h.i.+karee (hunter) owns a rifle, at a cost of about $25; and many other natives possess guns, and a.s.sume to hunt with them. The logical conclusion of this is more hunting and less game. The development of the country has reduced the cover for game. New roads and railways have made the game districts easily accessible, and real sportsmen are now three or four times as numerous as they were in 1877.

At Toonacadavoo, in the Animallai Hills where thirty-five years ago there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with gra.s.s thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a _club_, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to guess how much big game remains on the Delectable Mountains in comparison with the golden days of 1877. I should say that there is now only one game animal for every twenty-five that were there in my day.

I am told that it is like that all over India. Beyond question, the gun-sellers and gun-users have been busy there, as everywhere else. The game of India is on the toboggan slide, and the old days of abundance have gone forever.

The first fact that strikes us in the face is the impending fate of the great Indian rhinoceros, an animal as wonderful as the t.i.tanothere or the Megatherium. It is like a gift handed down to us straight out of the Pleistocene age, a million years back. The British paleontologists to-day marvel at _Elephas ganesa_, and by great labor dig his bones out of the Sewalik rocks, but what one of them all has yet made a move to save _Rhinoceros indicus_ from the quick extermination that soon will be his portion unless he is accorded perpetual and real protection from the a.s.saults of man?

Let the mammalogists of the world face this fact. The available cover of the Indian rhinoceros is _alarmingly_ decreasing, throughout a.s.sam and Bengal where the behemoth of the jungle has a right to live. It is believed that the few remaining rhinos are being shot much faster then they are breeding; and what will be the effect of this upon an animal that requires fourteen years to reach full maturity? To-day, the most wonderful hoofed mammal of all Asia is booked for extermination, and unless very radical measures for its preservation are at once carried into effect, it is probable that twenty years more will see the last Indian rhino go down to rise no more. One remedy would be a good, ample rhinoceros preserve; and another, the most absolute and permanent protection for the species, all along the line. Half-way measures will not suffice. It is time to ring in a general alarm.

During the past eighteen years, only three specimens of that species have come out of India for the zoological gardens and parks of the world, and I think there are only five in captivity, all told.

We are told that in India now the natives are permitted to have about all the firearms they can pay for. Naturally, in a country containing over 300,000,000 people this is a deadly thing. Of course there are shooting regulations, many of them; but their enforcement is so imperfect that it is said that the natives are attacking the big game on all sides, with deadly effect. I fear it is utterly impossible for the Indian government to put enough wardens into the field to watch the doings of the grand army of native poachers.

Fortunately, the Indian native,--unlike the western frontiersman,--does not contend that _he owns_ the big game, or that "all men are born free and equal." At the same time, he means to have his full share of it, to eat, and to sell in various forms for cash. Even in India, the sale-of-game dragon has reared its head, and is to-day in need of being scotched with an iron hand.

When I received direct from a friend in the native state of Kashmir a long printed circular setting forth the hunting laws and game-protective measures of that very interesting princ.i.p.ality, it gave me a shock. It was disquieting to be thus a.s.sured that the big game of Kashmir has disappeared to such an extent that strong protective measures are necessary. It was as if the Chief Eskimo of Etah had issued a strong proclamation for the saving of the musk-ox.

In Kashmir, the destruction of game has become so serious that a Game Preservation Department has been created, with the official staff that such an organization requires. The game laws are printed annually, and any variations from them may be made only by the authority of the Maharajah himself. Up to date, _eight_ game preserves have been created, having a total area of about thee hundred square miles. In addition to these, there are twelve small preserves, each having an area of from twenty-five to fifty square miles. By their locations, these seem to provide for all the species of big game that are found in Kashmir,--the ibex, two forms of markhor, the tahr. Himalayan bighorn sheep, burrhel and goral.

In our country we have several states that are very large, very diversified in surface, and still inhabited by large game. Has any one of those states created a series of game preserves even half way comparable with those of Kashmir? I think not. Montana has made a beginning with two preserves,--Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains,--but beside the splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention.

And then following closely in the wake of that doc.u.ment came a lengthy article in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London," by E.C. Stebbing, in which a correspondent of the Indian _Field_ clearly sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced by a peril new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character. Hear him:

"In this inventory (of game destroyers in India), the Gurkha soldier does not find a place, for he belongs to a cla.s.s which he amply fills by himself with his small but very important personality. He deserves separate notice. From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal, to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of Upper India."

Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in themselves const.i.tute a severe arraignment of the Indian government? Why should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive order to the C.O. of each post would effectually stop it?

In the making of game preserves, or "sanctuaries" as they are called out there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence.

The total number is too great for enumeration here. The native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating about 100,000 acres in area. In the Wynaad Forest, my old hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting, because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and disease. The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely ajar.

In eastern Bengal and a.s.sam, several game preserves have been created.

On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game, and the danger of the extermination of species. In the past India has been the finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna of big game would be a zoological calamity.

_Tibet_.--As yet, Tibet offers free hunting, without legal let or hindrance, to every sportsman who can climb up to her lofty, wind-swept and whizzing-cold plateau. The man who hunts the _Ovis poli_, superb creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the south help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitch.e.l.l takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard journey, over Consul Mason Mitch.e.l.l's trail; but the takin is about the only large hoofed game available.

_The Altai Mountains_, of western China, contain the magnificent Siberian argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must be seen to be believed. Through a quest for that species the Russian military authorities played upon Mr. George L. Harrison and his comrade a very grim and unsportsmanlike joke. At the frontier military post, on the Russo-Chinese border, the two Americans were courteously halted, hospitably entertained, and _prevented_ from going into the argali-infested mountains that loomed up before them only a few miles away! The Russian officers said:

"Sheep? Why, if you really want sheep, we will send out some of our brave soldiers to shoot some for you; but there is no need for _you_ to take the trouble to go after them!"

After Mr. Harrison and his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually _at their goal_! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the champions of the world.

Seven hundred miles southeastward of the Altai Mountains of western China, guarded by the dangerous hostility of savage native tribes, there exists and awaits the scientific explorer, according to report, an undiscovered wild horse. The Bicolored Wild Horse is black and white, and joy awaits the zoologist or sportsman who sees it first. Evidently it will not soon be exterminated by modern rifles.

_The Impenetrable Forests_.--Although the mountains of central Asia will in time be cleared of their big game,--when by hook and by crook the natives secure plenty of modern firearms,--there are places in the Far East that we know will contain big game forever and a day. Take the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra as examples.

Mr. C. William Beebe, who recently has visited the Far East, has described how the state of Selangor, between Malacca and Penang, has taken on many airs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak Territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber.

Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the total volume of the wild life of those regions but little. I wonder if those tangled, illimitable, ever-renewing jungles yet know that their faces have been scratched. White men never will exterminate the big game of the really dense jungles of the eastern tropics; but with enough axes, snares, guns and cartridges _the natives_ may be able to accomplish it!

In Malayana there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so th.o.r.n.y with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be impossible. In those silent places the gaur, the rhino, the Malay sambar, the clouded leopard and the orang-utan surely are measurably safe from the game-bags and market gunners of the shooting world. It is good to think that there is an equatorial belt of jungle clear around the world, in Central and South America as well as in the old World, in which there will be little extermination in our day, except of birds for the feather market. But the open plains, open mountains, and open forests of Asia and Australasia are in different case. Eventually they will be "shot out."

China, all save Yunnan and western Mongolia, is now horribly barren of wild life. Can it ever be brought back? We think it can not. The millions of population are too many; and except in the great forest tracts, the spread of modern firearms will make an end of the game.

Already the pheasants are being swept out of China for the London market, and extinction is staring several species in the face. On the whole, the pheasants of the Old World are being hit hard by the rubber-planting craze. Mr. Beebe declares that owing to the inrush of aggressive capital, the haunts of many species of pheasants are being denuded of all their natural cover, and some mountain species that are limited to small areas are practically certain to be exterminated at an early date.

DESTRUCTION OF ANIMALS FOR FUR.--In the far North, only the interior of Kamchatka seems to be safe from the iron heel of the skin-hunter. A glance at the list of furs sold in London last year reveals one or two things that are disquieting. The total catch of furs for the year 1911 is enormous,--considering the great scarcity of wild life on two continents. Incidentally it must be remembered that every trapper carries a gun, and in studying the fur list one needs no help in trying to imagine the havoc wrought with firearms on the edible wild life of the regions that contributed all that fur. I have been told by trappers that as a cla.s.s, trappers are great killers of game.

In order that the reader may know by means of definite figures the extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing animals, we append below a statement copied from the _Fur News Magazine_ for November, 1912, of the sales of the largest London fur house during the past two years.

With varying emotions we call attention to the wombat of Australia, 3,841; grebe, 51,261, and house cat, 92,407. Very nearly all the totals of Lampson & Co. for each species are much lower for the sales of 1912 than for those of 1911. Is this fact significant of a steady decline?

FURS SOLD BY C.M. LAMPSON & Co., LONDON

_Totals for Totals for 1911, Skins 1912, Skins_ Racc.o.o.n 354,057 215,626 Musquash (Muskrat) 3,382,401 2,937,150 Musquash, Black 78,363 60,000 Skunk 1,310,185 979,612 Cat, Civet 329,180 229,155 Opossum, American 1,011,824 948,189 Mink 183,574 100,951 Marten 29,881 26,895 Fox, Red 58,900 40,300 Fox, Cross 1,294 1,569 Fox, Silver 761 590 Fox, Grey 43,909 32,471 Fox, Kit 30,278 35,222 Fox, White 16,709 13,341 Fox, Blue 3,137 1,778 Otter 17,399 13,899 Sea Otter 328 202 Cat, Wild, etc 38,870 29,740 Cat, House 92,407 65,641 Lynx 2,424 5,144 Fisher 1,918 656 Badger 16,338 15,325 Beaver 21,137 17,036 Bear 16,851 13,377 Wolf 65,893 74,535 Wolverine 1,530 1,172 Hair Seal, Dry 6,455 5,378 Grebe 51,261 19,571 Fur Seal, Dry 897 1,453 Sable, Russian 10,285 8,972 Kolinsky 138,921 120,933 Marten, Baum 1,853 1,481 Marten, Stone 7,504 6,331 Fitch 26,731 20,400 Ermine 328,840 248,295 Squirrel 976,395 707,710 Saca, etc. 40,982 13,599 Chinchilla, Real 6,282 11,457 Chinchilla, b.a.s.t.a.r.d 7,533 8,145 Marten, j.a.panese 26,005 3,294 Sable, j.a.panese 1,429 52 Fox, j.a.panese 60,831 13,725 Badger, j.a.panese 183 2,949 Opossum, Australian 1,613,799 1,782,364 Wallaby, Australian 1,003,820 540,608 Kangaroo, Australian 21,648 16,193 Wombat, Australian 3,841 1,703 Fox, Red, Australian 60,435 40,724

CHAPTER XX

THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST[G]

BY C. WILLIAM BEEBE Curator of Birds, New York Zoological Park

[Footnote G: The observations which furnished this valuable chapter were made by Mr. Beebe in 1911 while conducting an expedition in southern Asia, Borneo and Java for the purpose of studying in life and nature all the members of the Pheasant Family inhabiting that region. The results of these studies and collections will shortly appear in a very complete monograph of the Phasianidae.--W.T.H.]