Part 1 (1/2)
Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador.
by William Wood.
The appeal prefixed to the original _Address_ in 1911 announced the issue of the present supplement in 1912, and asked experts and other leaders of public opinion to set the subject on firm foundations by contributing advice and criticism.
The response was most gratifying. The twelve hundred review copies sent out to the Canadian press, and the hundreds more sent out to general and specialist periodicals in every part of the English-speaking world, all met with a sympathetic welcome, and were often given long and careful notices. Many scientific journals, like the _Bulletin of the Zoological Society of America_, sporting magazines, like the Canadian _Rod and Gun_, and zoophil organs, like the English _Animals' Guardian_, examined the _Address_ thoroughly from their respective standpoints. The _Empire Review_ has already reprinted it _verbatim_ in London, and an a.s.sociation of outing men are now preparing to do the same in New York.
But though the press has been of the greatest service in the matter of publicity the princ.i.p.al additions to a knowledge of the question have come from individuals. Naturalists, sportsmen and leaders in public life have all helped both by advice and encouragement. Quotations from a number of letters are published at the end of this supplement. The most remarkable characteristic of all this private correspondence and public notice, as well as the spoken opinions of many experts, is their perfect agreement on the cardinal point that we are wantonly living like spendthrifts on the capital of our wild life, and that the general argument of the _Address_ is, therefore, incontrovertibly true.
The gist of some of the most valuable advice is, that while the _Address_ is true so far as it goes, its application ought to be extended to completion by including the leasehold system, side by side with the establishment of sanctuaries and the improvement and enforcement of laws.
Such an extension takes me beyond my original limits. Yet, both for the sake of completeness and because this system is a most valuable means toward the end desired by all conservers of wild life, I willingly insert leaseholds as the connecting link between laws and sanctuaries.
But before trying to give a few working suggestions on laws, leaseholds and sanctuaries, and, more particularly still, before giving any quotations from letters, I feel bound to point out again, as I did in the _Address_ itself, that my own personality is really of no special consequence, either in giving the suggestions or receiving the letters. I have freely picked the brains of other men and simply put together the scattered parts of what ought to be a consistent whole.
LAWS
It is a truism and a counsel of perfection to say so, but, to be effective, wild-life protection laws, like other laws, must be scientific, comprehensive, accepted by the public, understood by all concerned, and impartially enforced.
To be scientifically comprehensive they must define man's whole att.i.tude towards wild life, whether for business, sport or study. One general code would suffice. A preamble could explain that the object was to use the interest, not abuse the capital of wild life. Then the noxious and beneficial kinds could be enumerated, close seasons mentioned, regulations laid down, etc. From this one code it would be easy to pick out for separate publication whatever applied only to one place or one form of human activity. But even this general code would not be enough unless the relations between animal and plant life were carefully adjusted, so that each might benefit the other, whenever possible, and neither might suffer because the other was under a different department. If, in both the Dominion and Provincial governments there are unified departments of agriculture to aid and control man's own domestic harvest, why should there not also be unified departments to aid and control his harvest of the wilds? A _Minister of Fauna and Flora_ sounds startling, and perhaps a little absurd. But fisheries, forests and game have more to do with each other than any one of them with mines. And, whatever his designation, such a minister would have no lack of work, especially in Labrador.
But here we come again to the complex human factors of three Governments and more Departments. Yet, if this bio-geographic area cannot be brought into one administrative ent.i.ty, then the next best thing is concerted action on the part of all the Governments and all their Departments.
There is no time to lose. Even now, when laws themselves stop short at the Atlantic, new and adjacent areas are about to be exploited without the slightest check being put on the exploiters. An expedition is leaving New York for the Arctic. It is well found in all the implements of destruction. It will soon be followed by others. And the musk-ox, polar bears and walrus will shrink into narrower and narrower limits, when, under protection, far wider ones might easily support abundance of this big game, together with geese, duck and curlews. It is wrong to say that such people can safely have their fling for a few years more. None of the n.o.bler forms of wild life have any chance against modern facilities of uncontrolled destruction. What happened to the great auk and the Labrador duck in the Gulf? What happened to the musk-ox in Greenland? What is happening everywhere to every form of beneficial and preservable wild life that is not being actively protected to-day? Then, there is the disappearing whale and persecuted seal to think of also in those lat.i.tudes. The _laissez-faire_ argument is no better here than elsewhere. For if wild life is worth exploiting it must be worth conserving.
There is need, and urgent need, for extending protective laws all along the Atlantic Labrador and over the whole of the Canadian Arctic, where the barren-ground caribou may soon share the fate of the barren-ground bear in Ungava, especially if mineral exploitation sets in. Ungava and the Arctic are Dominion grounds, the Atlantic Labrador belongs to Newfoundland, Greenland to Denmark, and the open sea to all comers, among whom are many Americans. Under these circ.u.mstances the new international conference on whaling should deal effectively with the protection of all the marine carnivora, and be followed by an inter-dominion-and-provincial conference at which a joint system of conservation can be agreed upon for all the wild life of Labrador, including the cognate lands of Arctic Canada to the north and Newfoundland to the south.
This occasion should be taken to place the whole of the fauna under law; not only _game_, but noxious and beneficial species of every kind. And here both local experts and trained zoologists ought to be consulted. Probably everyone would agree that flies, wolves and English sparrows are noxious. But the indiscriminate destruction of all mammals and birds of prey is not a good thing, as a general rule, any more than any other complete upsetting of the balance of nature. A great deal could be learnt from the excellent work already done all over the continent with regard to the farmer's and forester's wild friends and foes. A migrating flight of curlew, snipe, plover or sandpipers is worth much more to the farmer alive than dead. But by no means every farmer knows the value of the difference.
This is only one of the many reasons why a special effort should be made to bring a knowledge of the laws home to everyone in the areas affected, including the areas crossed by the lines of migration.
The language should be unmistakeably plain. Every form of wild life should be included, as wholly, seasonally, locally or otherwise protected, or as not protected, or as exterminable, with penalties and rewards mentioned in each case. All animals should be called by their scientific, English, French, and special local names, to prevent the possibility of mistake or excuse. Every man, resident or not, who uses rod, gun, rifle, net or snare, afloat or ash.o.r.e, should be obliged to take out a license, even in cases where it might be given gratis; and his receipt for it should contain his own acknowledgment that he has a copy of the laws, which he thoroughly understands. Particular clauses should be devoted to rapacious dealers who get collecting permits as scientific men, to poison, to shooting from power boats or with swivel guns, to that most diabolical engine of all murderers--the Maxim silencer,--to hounding and crusting, to egging and nefarious pluming, to illegal netting and cod-trapping, and last, but emphatically not least, to any and every form of wanton cruelty. The next step may be to provide against the misuse of aeroplanes.
I believe it would be well worth while, from every point of view, to publish the laws, or at all events a digest of them, in all the princ.i.p.al papers. Even educated people know little enough; and no one, even down the coast, at the trading posts, or in Newfoundland, should have the chance of pleading ignorance. ”We don't know no law here”
ought to be an impossible saying two years hence. And we might remember that the Newfoundlanders who chiefly use it are really no worse than others, and quite as amenable to good laws impartially enforced. They have seen the necessity of laws at home, after depleting their salmon rivers, deer runs and seal floes to the danger point. And there is no reason to suppose that an excellent population in so many ways would be any harder to deal with in this one than the hordes of poachers and sham sportsmen much nearer home.
Of course, everything ultimately turns on the enforcement of the laws.
And I still think that two naturalists and twenty men afloat and the same number ash.o.r.e, with double these numbers when Hudson bay and the Arctic are included, would be enough to patrol Labrador satisfactorily, if they were in touch with local and leasehold wardens and with foresters, if the telegraph was used only on their side, if they and the general inspector were all of the right kind, and if the whole service was vigorously backed up at headquarters. Two fast motor cruisers and suitable means of making the land force also as mobile as possible are _sine qua non_.
The Ungava peninsula, Hudson bay and Arctic together would mean a million square miles for barely a hundred men. But, with close co-operation between sea and land, they could guard the sanctuaries as efficiently as private wardens guard leased limits, watch the outlets of the trade, and harry law-breakers in the intervening s.p.a.ces. Of course, the system will never be complete till the law is enforced against both buyers and sellers in the market. But it is worth enforcing, worth it in every way. And the interest of the wild life growing on a million miles will soon pay the keep of the hundred men who guard its capital.
LEASEHOLDS
An article by Mr. W.H. Blake, K.C., of Toronto, on ”The Laurentides National Park” appeared in the February number of the _University Magazine_. The following extracts have been taken from Mr. Blake's ma.n.u.script:
”It was in the year 1895, that the idea took substance of setting apart some two thousand five hundred square miles of the wild and mountainous country north of Quebec and south of Lake St. John as 'a forest reservation, fish and game preserve, public park and pleasure ground'. At a later date, the area was increased, until now some three thousand seven hundred square miles are removed from sale or settlement. An important though indirect object was the maintenance of water-level in the dozen or more rivers which take their rise in the high-lying plateau forming the heart of the Park.
”When the ice takes in early November the caribou make it their great rallying ground. These animals, so wary in summer and early autumn, appear to gain confidence by their numbers, and are easily stalked and all too easily shot. It is to be feared that too great an annual toll is taken, and that the herd is being diminished by more than the amount of its natural increase. Slightly more stringent regulations, the allowance of one caribou instead of two, the forbidding of shooting in December and January, when the bulls have lost their horns, would effect the result, and would ensure excellent sport in the region so long as the Park exists and is administered as it is to-day. There is, however, very serious menace to the caribou in the unfortunate fact that the great timber wolf has at last discovered this happy hunting ground. Already it would seem that there are fewer caribou, but the marked increase in the number of moose may be one cause of this. Before the days of the Park the moose were almost exterminated throughout this region; but a few must have escaped slaughter in some inaccessible fastness, and under a careful and intelligent system of protection they have multiplied exceedingly. Man may not shoot them, and probably only unprotected calves have anything to dread from the wolves.