Part 2 (2/2)

The barren-ground caribou are not hunted to any extent by whites. During the month of August, the Eskimo of the Ungava peninsula, as well as those in Baffin island, resort to certain fords, or narrows where these caribou usually pa.s.s at the beginning of the fall migration. They kill considerable numbers--rather for the skins as clothing, than for food. But the Eskimo are few in number, and I cannot conceive that there is any fear of these caribou ever being greatly reduced in number by these native hunters. Any one who has ever met a herd of barren-ground caribou, and seen the countless thousands of them, could hardly conceive of their ever being exterminated. Nor would they be if we had to deal only with the native hunters. But, with our experience of what happened to the buffalo when the white man took up the slaughter, we must take precaution in time.

Up to the present, very few white men have penetrated any distance into the interior of the Labrador peninsula, and I do not see that they are very likely to, in the near future.

But we never can tell. A few years ago we would have said the same of the Yukon region, so that it would be a wise precaution to have set apart a considerable section of the Labrador, in the interior, as a sanctuary.... It would perhaps be better to have two regions set apart, one near the Saguenay country and another nearer the Atlantic coast.

We have, however, to consider the fact that sanctuaries will be of no value unless they are well guarded.

In the case of the birds the conditions are bad; the destruction on the Labrador is horrible to contemplate. The outer islands were scoured by crews from foreign vessels, and whole loads of eggs carried off. There has not been much of this done in recent years. There can he no doubt that, if certain of the larger and less inhabited islands were set apart, and carefully protected, the birds would return to them. I believe that owing to the constant way in which the birds--eider ducks, certain of the divers, gulls, &c., were disturbed, on their natural and original nesting places, they have changed their habits; and, instead of nesting on the islands and by the sea, they have moved to the sh.o.r.es of the interior lakes. You see flocks of young birds in the fall; they have come from the interior, as they were not hatched out on the islands as they used to be.

The destruction of geese and curlew does not take place on the Labrador. These birds are not disturbed on their nesting grounds; but, to the south and west when they are pa.s.sing to their winter haunts. Geese are found feeding on the hill-sides, on the most distant and northern islands--as far north as any of our explorers have gone. The first birds Sverdrup met as he was coming south, in the early spring, were wild geese. These birds are not disturbed on their breeding grounds. The Eskimo do not meddle with them. In the same way caribou are found feeding about the sh.o.r.es of Hudson bay and strait. Like the geese, they feed on berries about the hill sides. I have shot them at the mouth of Churchill river, and near cape Digges in August, when they were very fat--so fat that it is said that, on falling on hard ground, they would burst open; though this did not actually happen in my case. I certainly think that it would be a grand thing to have certain groups of islands--or even certain sections of coast--set apart as bird sanctuaries.

Your paper deals entirely with conditions in Labrador. There is, however, another part of the Gulf coast, where the need of protection is much greater than on the Labrador. That is the interior of the Gaspe peninsula. A certain region in the interior has been set aside as a park, but it is quite unprotected. Here, we have moose, woodland caribou and the red deer, besides nearly all the fur-bearing animals that we find on the Labrador. There is no game protection whatever.

Moose and caribou are killed mostly out of season--when they are yarded, or when it is easy to run them down. In many cases the meat is left in the woods, the hide only being wanted. Lumbermen are penetrating up the rivers, further into the interior--every lumber camp is a centre from which the game laws are persistently violated.... the game, both fur and feather, (particularly the ruffled grouse) is rapidly disappearing before their pitiless onslaughts.

Lumber camps are opened much earlier in the season than they used to be; so that the interior lakes and head waters of the rivers are being cleaned out of fish taken while in the act of sp.a.w.ning. All this may seem very strong language; but it is really not exaggerated. It may help to show the need of more and better conservation....

Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, the founder and exponent of the science of zoo-geography, writes:

... your address on ”Animal Sanctuaries” in Labrador, which I have read with the greatest interest and astonishment.

Such reckless destruction I should hardly have thought possible.

There is a considerable public opinion now against the use of feathers as _ornaments_[A] because it inevitably leads to the extermination of some of the most beautiful of living things; but I think the attempts to stop it by legal enactments begin at the wrong end. They seek to punish the actual collectors or importers of the plumes, who are really the least guilty and the most difficult to get at. It is the actual _wearers_ of such ornaments who should be subject to fines or even imprisonment, because, without the _demand_ they make there would be no supply. They also are, presumably, the most educated and should know better. If it were known that any lady with a feather in her hat (or elsewhere) would be taken before a magistrate and _fined_, and, on a second offence, _imprisoned_, and if this were the case in the chief civilized countries of Europe and America, the whole trade would at once cease and the poor birds be left in peace.

You have, however, treated the subject very carefully and thoroughly, and I hope your views will be soon carried out....

I am glad to hear that Mr. Roosevelt is a reader of the ”World of Life.” My own interest is more especially in the preservation of adequate areas of the glorious tropical and equatorial forests, with their teeming and marvellous forms of life.

Numerous other letters from all parts of the world expressing appreciation of the _Address_ have been received, the correspondents expressing strong approval of the effort to establish Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador. The names of some of the correspondents are given herewith:

Sir Robert Baden-Powell, London; Prof. H.T. Barnes, Montreal; Julien Corbett, London; Rudyard Kipling; Lord Stamfordham, London; Sir James LeMoine, Quebec; J.M. Macoun, Ottawa; Henry F. Osborn, New York; Madison Grant, New York.

_Note._--As a postscript I might add that the owner of part of a very desirable little archipelago, not far from the Saguenay, has already offered to give the property outright if a suitable sanctuary can be made out of the whole. This is all the more encouraging because such a gift involves the refusal of an offer from a speculative purchaser.

May others be moved to do the same!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Mr. Wallace refers to feathers like egrets, not the permissable kinds, like ostrich plumes.]

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