Domesticated Animals Part 9

Owing to the wise forethought of our American people, a practical foundation of the system of national reservations has been inst.i.tuted in our so-called national parks. Although these reservations were established to preserve to the public certain natural beauties in the way of scenery or vegetation, or to secure the regimen of streams, they will, if properly guarded against depredations, effect the end which we have in view. Owing to their large area and somewhat varied positions, these parks provide a safe refuge for a great part of the life which belongs in the Cordilleran district of the United States.

If the method should be extended to the whole country, we should have the peculiar satisfaction of having been the first state to inst.i.tute the system of preservation which is here suggested.

To complete a system of reservations designed to perpetuate the aboriginal life of this country would require the inst.i.tution of about a dozen other similar natural shelters. It would not be necessary to have these on as large a scale as that of the Yellowstone. In most cases areas of from ten to twenty thousand acres in extent would, if well guarded, suffice to give refuge to the animals and plants of the field in which it lay. The selection of these refuges would demand much consideration. In general, it may be said that they need to include at least two on the Atlantic coast, which might also be fitted for the use of marine birds as breeding places, one on the northern part of the coast of Maine, and another in southern Florida. The latter might serve as well for the protection of the turtles which resort to that sh.o.r.e to lay their eggs. Similar coast parks should be established on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific. Yet other closed areas would be needed in the interior, the evidently desirable fields lying in the region about the headwaters of the Mississippi, in the Adirondacks, in the mountains of North Carolina, in the lower part of the Mississippi delta, in Arizona, and at least two points in Alaska; one of these should afford a place of refuge for the persecuted fur seals and another for the musk-ox.

At first sight it may seem to be a simple matter to accommodate the wild life of a country on a relatively small piece of land. So far, indeed, as the plants, the insects, and the lesser mammalian life are concerned, an area of a few hundred acres will serve very well for their safe harborage, but when it comes to protecting the larger birds and mammals we see how easily the natural balance of life is by some chance influence destroyed. A capital instance of this difficulty which arises when preservation is essayed on small areas has recently been forced on my attention. In Dukes County, Ma.s.sachusetts, there is the vanis.h.i.+ng remnant of an interesting bird known from the island to which it is limited as the Martha's Vineyard prairie chicken. It is closely related to its better known Western kinsman, yet is a distinct variety. Although the form has apparently developed on the island and once abounded there, it has dwindled in numbers until there are but few surviving. In the hope of providing a safe refuge for the remnant, I have for a number of years stopped all shooting on a tract of a thousand or two acres which is well fitted to supply them with food and shelter. As they still dwindled, it seemed probable that the foxes were harming them. This appeared the more likely for the reason that the fox is not a native of the island, but was introduced a few years ago by some reckless experimenters. These marauders were cleared away without good results. Further inquiry made it apparent that the real enemy of these birds was the feralized domestic cat which has gone wild from the households, especially from the many homesteads that have been abandoned. This creature has bred in great numbers and is now threatening the existence of all birds that rear their broods upon the ground. It is hardly possible to exterminate them, for the reason that they are wary, and any systematic hunting of them would prove exceedingly disturbing to the very timid birds. The result is that nearly all these birds have left my land for certain plains near by which are covered with scrub oaks and where there is too little ground life to attract the cats. In that region, though it has an area of about thirty thousand acres, the food is scanty; the prairie chickens dwelling there are likely to perish for lack of the rose-hips which, in the hill country they have been forced to desert, served to maintain them at times when the ground was covered with snow.

The lesson which may be drawn from the experience above stated is to the effect that it is necessary to have a protected field of sufficient area, and in the proper conditions to keep the balance of life which arises from the exchange of relations between species in their normal state. Even in ideal reservations where all invasions are excluded, we should have to expect that from time to time certain forms would disappear, their place perhaps being taken by new species which would arise. Such is the manner of the great procession of life.

Probably at least twenty and perhaps a hundred times as many species as are now living on the earth have perished from it, and before the unimaginable goal is attained as many others may pa.s.s away. Our task with the refuges would be to keep the death of the specific inhabitants to the natural and wholesome rate that is determined by the endless struggle for existence.

It is impracticable at the present time to devise a scheme for refuge stations in other countries than our own; it is evident, however, that these would have to be numerous and widely distributed. A glance at a map showing the political distribution of the lands will make it evident, however, that within the holdings of the British, French, German, Dutch, and Russian governments there are large areas which might, without evident loss of considerable economic values, immediate or prospective, be turned to such uses, and that these reservations would probably include nearly all that would be required to preserve the most important samples of the primitive life. Some of them, as for instance those intended to retain the large tropical animals in their natural state, would have to be as imperial in their areas as the Yellowstone Park, but these would lie in realms which have no present value to our own race and are scantily inhabited by the indigenous peoples.

It is easy to see that the proposed world-wide system of wilderness stations in which the native life should be preserved from the destructive influences of man's a.s.sault upon it could not be brought about without international cooperation and with a considerable expenditure of money both for the foundation and maintenance of the establishments; but, as before remarked, the idea of public reservations of this nature is one which immediately and strongly commended itself to the people of this country and has led their representatives to set aside for such use lands which in the aggregate amount to a larger area than some of our sister states.

The same motive is seen in the action of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, which a few years ago created a Board of Trustees of Public Reservations, a corporate body authorized to hold in perpetuity lands which are intended to serve the public for pleasure and instruction. The recent rapid extension of the park systems appertaining to the cities of this country and Europe is a further ill.u.s.tration of the same motive which makes for the object which we desire. It therefore seems not unreasonable to hope that very soon we may find the governments of the greater nations willing to go forward on the line of advance in which our own has so well led the way. At the right time the United States could probably do much to further the matter by asking for international action in this admirable work. There is hardly any undertaking which would afford a fairer chance for friendly cooperation among the great states than this which looks forward to the good of the time to come.

While looking forward to the establishment of a system of sanctuaries which may serve to protect examples of the present life of all the lands, it is also well to consider what can be done by local authorities and by individuals in the same direction. The numerous zoological and botanical gardens which have been established in different parts of the world have in part the same motive that is to be embodied in the larger inst.i.tutions which we would see founded; they seek to preserve the interesting and instructive animals and plants, and in some cases contrive to perpetuate the kinds. The trouble is that their main purpose is to make a striking show, one that will attract the eye and lead to profit of an immediate kind. If these inst.i.tutions could be persuaded to add to their former exhibitions grounds designed for the maintenance of the natural order, true wildernesses, where the native life would find a fit place of abode and where it would be protected from the ravages of man or from accident, a certain gain would be made; at least the ma.s.ses of our city people, who have now come to control legislation in the great states, would be brought to see the beauties of the primitive conditions which they now rarely have a chance to behold. Yet more might be accomplished if men of wealth could be induced to turn their generous spirit towards this object. There are many parts of this country where reservations are most desirable and where the price of land is so low that an area of thirty thousand acres could be acquired for that number of dollars. A capital of one hundred thousand dollars would, at the present rates of interest, afford the revenue necessary for the pay of a keeper and half a dozen guards, a sufficient force to maintain a due watchfulness against depredations. Moreover, the use of such land as an asylum would not prevent a careful exploitation of its timber resources, which in many cases would give a sufficient return to provide for the policing expenses, as well as for incidental costs incurred in bringing upon the land species from the neighboring country which it might be desirable to introduce. At a cost of not more than a million dollars it would be possible to secure and maintain a well-chosen system of guarded wildernesses which would preserve the characteristics of the original plant and animal life in all the region of this country lying to the east of the Rocky Mountains.

It would be essential in any such privately founded system of wilderness reservations to have the control of the establishments in the hands of some authorities which were of an enduring nature. In our American experience it has become certain that such trusts cannot be safely reposed in the state or national governments, or in the hands of trustees chosen for the particular function. The only authorities which commend themselves for the execution of such a purpose are those of our universities. In these inst.i.tutions we find boards which are chosen for the attainment of intellectual ends; in certain cases the choice is made by the vote of an intelligent body of alumni, or in other ways guarded by that body, so that the chance of lapse in the quality of the contract is reduced to a minimum. Several instances could be given showing that such trusts, even when they do not directly pertain to the teaching work of these inst.i.tutions, have been long and faithfully maintained. We may therefore look upon our universities as the natural repositories of confidences which pertain to the continuous intellectual work of man.

There is no other kind of a.s.sociation where interests of the sort which would have to be cared for in the reservations of the wilderness are so likely to receive continuous attention. In these homes of learning, while business considerations enter, personal greed is naturally absent.

The method which may be chosen for the control of wilderness reservations, though a problem of much importance, is of course secondary to the matter of their establishment. This work should at once command the attention of those persons who are of the foresightful cla.s.s who see beyond the interests of the day, and take account of the needs of the generations to come. Such men will do well to begin the work by organizing a society which shall endeavor to arouse public attention to the destructive effects of man's occupation of the earth by his civilizations. The people need to be taught the true meaning of the indigenous life in relation to the problems of the origin and destiny of our own and other life, to the future exercise of the domesticating art and to the most refined gratifications.

It may be noted that, beginning with the apparently simple and eminently popular questions as to the origin and economic history of the animals which have been subjugated by man, we have been naturally led to the consideration of much larger problems, those relating to the place of man in the order of nature, and his duty by the life of which he is an integral part. There can be no question that the sense of this duty which mastery of the earth gives or should afford is to be one of the moral gifts of modern learning. So long as men considered themselves to be accidents on the earth, imposed upon it by the will of a Supreme Being, but in nowise related in origin and history to the creatures amid which they dwelt, it was natural that they should exercise a careless and despotic power over their subjects. Now that it has been made perfectly clear that we have come forth from the maze of the lower life, that all these tenants of the wilderness are sharers in the order which has brought us to our estate, and that each one of them, plant and animal alike, is the record of the impulses which lead beings upward, we can no longer keep the old careless att.i.tude. We are compelled to deal with the organic hosts as we deal with the creatures of our folds and fields. We have to look upon them all as a member of the great household of man, made such by the intellectual conquest of the world to which he has attained. We may trust the sense of this large duty to extend abroad under the influences which have developed it in the minds of a few men, or we may hasten its development by a propaganda such as is carried on by the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. If this latter course is taken the teaching should be on a higher plane than that which we have yet had from those generally admirable a.s.sociations. Bad as is the ill treatment of domesticated animals, the suppression of that evil will not bring us materially nearer the true att.i.tude that we need to a.s.sume in face of our responsibilities to the natural world. We need to see the greatness of the responsibility which has been imposed upon us by the action of the guiding power that has made us lords of the earth.