Wild life conservation in theory and practice; lectures delivered before the Forest School of Yale University, 1914 (1914) (14578056458)

Identifier: wildlifeconserva00horn (find matches)
Title: Wild life conservation in theory and practice; lectures delivered before the Forest School of Yale University, 1914
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Hornaday, William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937 Walcott, Frederic Collin, 1869-1949
Subjects: Game protection
Publisher: New Haven, Yale University Press (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation



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dtree-cutter into a true forest conservator remainsto be seen. The preservation and increase of the forests isa very different matter from the salvage of the birdsand beasts. Man and nature, jointly or severally,can replant a denuded forest, and the lapse of timewill bring the renaissance. With forests, there is amodicum of time available in which to act. Withwild life, it is a case of now or never. A fauna oncedestroyed can not be brought back! The destroyersof wild life are so omnipresent, persistent andrelentless that the defenders and preservers mustact at once, or very soon it will be hopelessly toolate. No power on earth can repopulate China withthe wild species that were hers when she had forests,and before the era of extermination. Of the many blighting influences that bear downupon wild life, and promote its destruction, one ofthe most serious is local disregard for protectivelaws, and the disloyalty of juries, and sometimesof judges, also, to their sworn duty. In the western
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< <oinPi in a ^ C/3 f^ o g 3 5 f^ .2 H i- a O S c62^ Pi o -M H 4J be Pi .s c t3 ^ o 8 1 ^ c in H^ c3 O J a ^ «<-i Tl O cS c ■S DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 189 third of the United States, and especially on theso-called frontier, it is a common occurrence fora sympathetic jury of neighbors and friends toacquit a red-handed violator of the game-law bysaying: Not guilty! He needed the meat. Sometimes a judge on the bench calmly elects toturn loose without punishment a man who shouldpay the full penalty for his misdeeds and his con-tempt of the law. The latest and most disappoint-ing case occurred in Key West, Florida. Threemen were caught in the act of raiding the protectedegret rookery at Alligator Bay, on the west coast ofFlorida. By the expenditure of great efforts andmuch public funds, the offenders were finally takento Key West, a distance of about one hundredmiles. It is stated that the judge before whom theyshould have been tried kind