in force for some time in the several African Protectorates administered
by the Foreign Office as well as in the Sudan. The obligations imposed
by the recent London Convention upon the signatory Powers will not
become operative until after the exchange of ratifications, which has
not yet taken place. In anticipation, however, steps have been taken to
revise the existing regulations in the British Protectorates so as to
bring them into strict harmony with the terms of the convention. The
game reserves now existing in the several Protectorates are: In (a)
British Central Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and the Shirwa
reserve; in (b) the East Africa Protectorate, the Kenia District; in (c)
Uganda, the Sugota game reserve in the northeast of the Protectorate; in
(d) Somaliland, a large district defined by an elaborate boundary line
described in the regulations. The regulations have the force of law in
the Protectorates, and offenders are dealt with in the Protectorate
Courts. It is in contemplation to charge special officers of the
Administrations with the duty of watching over the proper observance of
the regulations. Under the East African game regulations only the
officers permanently stationed at or near the Kenia reserve may be
specially authorized to kill game in the reserve.
Other effective measures have been taken in the Soudan
district. Capt. Stanley Flower, Director of the Gizeh Zoological
Gardens, made a very full report, which is quoted in _Nature_ for
July 25, 1901, p. 318.
STATE LAWS.
The preservation of even a few of our wild animals is a very large
proposition; it is an undertaking the difficulty of which grows in
magnitude as one comes to study it in detail and gets on the ground. The
rapidly increasing legislation in the Western States is an indication of
rapidly growing sentiment. A still more encouraging sign is the strong
sympathy with the enforcement of the laws which we find around the
National Park in Wyoming and Montana especially. State laws should be
encouraged, but I am convinced that while effective in the East, they
will not be effective in the West _in time_, because of the
scattered population, the greater areas of country involved, the greater
difficulty of watching and controlling the killing, and the actual need
of game for food by settlers.
When we study the operation of our State laws on the ground we find that
for various reasons they are not fully effective. A steady and in some
cases rapid diminution of animals is going on so far as I have observed
in Colorado and Wyoming; either the wardens strictly enforce the laws
with strangers and wink at the breaking of them by residents, or they
draw their salaries and do not enforce the laws at all.[9]
[Footnote 9: Addendum.--There is no question as to the good intention of
State legislation. The chief difficulty in the enforcement of the law is
that officers appointed locally, and partly from political reasons,
shrink from applying the penalties of the law to their own friends and
neighbors, especially where the animals are apparently abundant and are
sought for food. The honest enforcement of the law renders the officer
unpopular, even if it does not expose him to personal danger. He is
regarded as interfering with long established rights and customs. The
above applies to conscientious officers. Many local game wardens, as in
the Colorado White River Plateau, for example, give absolutely no
attention to their duties, and are not even on the ground at the opening
of the season. In the Plateau in August, 1901, the laws were being
openly and flagrantly violated, not only by visitors, but by
residents. At the same time the National forest laws were being most
strictly and intelligently enforced. There is no question whatever that
the people of various States can be brought to understand that National
aid or co-operation in the protection of certain wild areas is as
advantageous to a locality as National irrigation and National forest
protection. It is to be sought as a boon and not as an infringement.]
THE VARIOUS CAUSES OF ELIMINATION.
The enemies of our wild animals are numerous and constantly
increasing. (1) There is first the general advance of what we call
civilization, the fencing up of country which principally cuts off the
winter feeding grounds. This was especially seen in the country south of
the National Park last winter. (2) The destruction of natural browsing
areas by cattle and sheep, and by fire. (3) The destruction of game by
sportsmen plays a comparatively small part in the total process of
elimination, yet in some cases it is very reckless, and especially bad
in its example. When I first rode into the best shooting country of
Colorado in 1901, there was a veritable cannonading going on, which
reminded me of the accounts of the battle of El Caney. The destruction
effected by one party in three days was tremendous. In riding over the
ground--for I was not myself shooting--I was constantly coming across
the carcasses of deer. (4) The summer and winter killing for food; this
is the principal and in a sense the most natural and legitimate cause,
although it is largely illegal. In this same area, which was more or
less characteristic and typical of the other areas, even of the
conditions surrounding the national reserve in the Big Horn region, the
destruction was, and is, going on principally during the winter when the
deer are seeking the winter ranges and when they are actually shot and
carted away in large numbers for food both for the ranchmen and for
neighboring towns. Making all allowances for exaggeration, I believe it
to be absolutely true that these deer were being killed by the
wagonload! The same is true of the pronghorn antelope in the Laramie
Plains district. The most forceful argument against this form of
destruction is that it is extremely short-lived and benefits
comparatively few people. This argument is now enforced by law and by
public sentiment in Maine and New York, where the wild animals, both
deer and moose, are actually increasing in number.
Granted, therefore, that we have both National and State sentiment, and
that National legislation by co-operation with the States, if properly
understood, would receive popular support, the carrying out of this
legislation and making it fully effective will be a difficult matter.
It can be done, and, in my judgment, by two measures. The first is
entirely familiar to you: certain or all of the forest reserves must be
made animal preserves; the forest rangers must be made game wardens, or
special wardens must be appointed. This is not so difficult, because
the necessary machinery is already at hand, and only requires adaptation
to this new purpose. It can probably be carried through by patience and
good judgment. Second, the matter of the preservation of the winter
supply of food and protection of animals while enjoying this supply is
the most difficult part of the whole problem, because it involves the
acquisition of land which has already been taken up by settlers and
which is not covered by the present forest reserve machinery, and which
I fear in many instances will require new legislation.
Animals can change their habits during the summer, and have already done
so; the wapiti, buffalo, and even the pronghorn have totally changed
their normal ranges to avoid their new enemy; but in winter they are
forced by the heavy snows and by hunger right down into the enemy's
country.
Thus we not only have the problem of making game preserves out of our
forest reserves, but we have the additional problem of enlarging the
area of forest reserves so as to provide for winter feeding. If this is
not done all the protection which is afforded during the summer will be
wholly futile. This condition does not prevail in the East, in Maine and
in the Adirondacks, where the winter and summer ranges are practically
similar. It is, therefore a new condition and a new problem.
Greater difficulties have been overcome, however, and I have no doubt
that the members of this Club will be among the leaders in the
movement. The whole country now applauds the development and
preservation of the Yellowstone Park, which we owe largely to the
initiative of Phillips, Grinnell, and Rogers. Grant and La Farge were
pioneers in the New York Zoological Park movement. We know the work of
Merriam and Wadsworth, and we always know the sympathies of our honored
founder, member, and guest of this evening, Theodore Roosevelt.
What the Club can do is to spread information and thoroughly enlighten
the people, who always act rightly when they understand.
It must not be put on the minutes of the history of America, a country
which boasts of its popular education, that the _Sequoia_, a race
10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the United States, with
individual trees older than the entire history and civilization of
Greece, that an appeal to the American people was unavailing, that the
finest grove was cut up for lumber, fencing, shingles, and boxes! It
must not be recorded that races of animals representing stocks 3,000,000
years of age, mostly developed on the American continent, were
eliminated in the course of fifty years for hides and for food in a
country abounding in sheep and cattle.
The total national investment in animal preservation will be less than
the cost of a single battleship. The end result will be that a hundred
years hence our descendants will be enjoying and blessing us for the
trees and animals, while, in the other case, there will be no vestige of
the battleship, because it will be entirely out of date in the warfare
of the future.
_Henry Fairfield Osborn_.
Distribution of the Moose
Republished by permission from the Seventh Annual Report of the Forest,
Fish and Game Commission of the State of New York.
The Scandinavian elk, which is closely related to the American moose,
was known to classical antiquity as a strange and ungainly beast of the
far north; especially as an inhabitant of the great Teutoborgian Forest,
which spread across Germany from the Rhine to the Danube. The half
mythical character which has always clung to this animal is well
illustrated in the following quotation from Pliny's Natural History,
Book 8, chapter 16:
"There is also the achlis, which is produced in the island of
Scandinavia. It has never been seen in this city, although we have had
descriptions of it from many persons; it is not unlike the elk, but has
no joints in the hind leg. Hence it never lies down, but reclines
against a tree while it sleeps; it can only be taken by previously
cutting into the tree, and thus laying a trap for it, as, otherwise, it
would escape through its swiftness. Its upper lip is so extremely large,
for which reason it is obliged to go backwards when grazing; otherwise
by moving onwards, the lip would get doubled up." Pliny's achlis and
elk were the same animal.
The strange stiffness of joint and general ungainliness of the elk,
however, were matters of such general observation as to apparently have
become embodied in the German name _eland_, sufferer. Curiously
enough this name _eland_ was taken by the Dutch to South Africa,
and there applied to the largest and handsomest of the bovine antelopes,
_Oreas canna_.
In mediaeval times there are many references in hunting tales to the elk,
notably in the passage in the Nibelungen Lied describing Siegfried's
great hunt on the upper Rhine, in which he killed an elk. Among the
animals slain by the hero is the "schelk," described as a powerful and
dangerous beast. This name has been a stumbling block to scholars for
years, and opinions vary as to whether it was a wild stallion--at all
times a savage animal--or a lone survivor of the Megaceros, or Irish
elk. In this connection it may be well to remark that the Irish elk and
the true elk were not closely related beyond the fact that both were
members of the deer family. The Irish elk, which was common in Europe
throughout the glacial and post-glacial periods, living down nearly or
quite to the historic period, was nothing more than a gigantic fallow
deer.
The old world elk is still found in some of the large game preserves of
eastern Germany, where the Emperor, with his somewhat remarkable ideas
of sportsmanship, annually adds several to his list of slaughtered
game. They are comparatively abundant in Scandinavia, especially in
Norway, where they are preserved with great care. They still survive in
considerable numbers in Russia and Siberia as far east as Amurland.
Without going into a detailed description of the anatomical differences
between the European elk and the American moose, it may be said that the
old world animal is much smaller in size and lighter in color. The
antlers are less elaborate and smaller in the European animal, and
correspond to the stage of development reached by the average
three-year-old bull of eastern Canada. There is a marked separation of
the main antler and the brow antlers. That this deterioration of both
body and antlers is due partly to long continued elimination of the best
bulls, and partly to inbreeding, is probable. We know that the decline
of the European red deer is due to these causes, and that a similar
process of deterioration is showing among the moose in certain outlying
districts in eastern North America.
The type species of this group, known as _Alces machlis_, was long
considered by European naturalists uniform throughout its circumpolar
distribution, in the north of both hemispheres. The American view that
practically all animals in this country represent species distinct from
their European congeners is now generally accepted, and the name
_Alces americanus_ has been given to the American form. It would
appear, however, that the generic name _Alces_ must soon be
replaced by the earlier form _Paralces_.
[Illustration: YEARLING MOOSE.]
The comparatively slight divergence of the two types at the extreme east
and west limits of their range, namely, Norway and eastern Canada, would
indicate that the period of separation of the various members of the
genus is not, geologically speaking, of great antiquity.
The name _moose_ is an Algonquin word, meaning a wood eater or
browser, and is most appropriate, since the animal is pre-eminently a
creature of the thick woods. The old world term elk was applied by the
English settlers, probably in Virginia, to the wapiti deer, an animal
very closely related to the red deer of Europe. In Canada the moose is
sometimes spoken of as the elk, and even in the Rocky Mountain region
one hears occasionally of the "flat-horned elk." We are fortunate in
possessing a native name for this animal, and to call it other than
moose can only create confusion.
The range of the moose in North America extends from Nova Scotia in the
extreme east, throughout Canada and certain of the Northern United
States, to the limits of tree growth in the west and north of
Alaska. Throughout this vast extent of territory but two species are
recognized, the common moose, _Alces americanus_, and the Alaska
moose, _Alces gigas_, of the Kenai Peninsula. What the limits of
the range of the Alaska moose are, may not be known for some
years. Specimens obtained in the autumn of 1902 from the headwaters of
the Stikine River in British Columbia, appear to resemble closely, in
their large size and dark coloration, the moose of the Kenai Peninsula.
The antlers, however, are much smaller. These specimens also differ from
the eastern moose in the same manner as does the Kenai Peninsula animal,
except in the antlers, which approximate to those of the type species.
I have no doubt that the moose on the mainland along Cook Inlet will
prove to be identical with those of the Kenai Peninsula itself, but how
far their range extends we have at present no means of knowing. It is
even possible that further exploration will bring to light other species
in the Northwestern Provinces and in Alaska.
Taking up this range in detail, the Nova Scotia moose are to-day
distinctly smaller than their kin in Ontario, but are very numerous when
the settled character of the country is taken into consideration. I
have seen very few good antlers come from this district, and in my
opinion the race there is showing decided signs of deterioration.
[Illustration: MAINE MOOSE; ABOUT 1890.]
These remarks apply, but with less force, to New Brunswick and to Maine,
where the moose, though larger than the Nova Scotia animal, are
distinctly inferior to those of the region north of the Great
Lakes. This is probably due to killing off the big bulls, thus leaving
the breeding to be done by the smaller and weaker bulls; and, also, to
inbreeding.
In Maine the moose originally abounded, but by the middle of the last
century they were so reduced in numbers as to be almost rare. Thanks to
very efficient game laws, backed by an intelligent public opinion, moose
have greatly increased during the last few days in Maine and also in New
Brunswick. Their habits have been modified, but as far as the number of
moose and deer are concerned, the protection of game in Maine has been a
brilliant example to the rest of the country. During the same period,
however, caribou have almost entirely disappeared.
Moose were found by the first settlers in New Hampshire and Vermont,
appearing occasionally, as migrants only, in the Berkshire hills of
Massachusetts. In the State of New York the Catskills appear to have
been their extreme southern limit in the east; but they disappeared from
this district more than a century ago. In the Adirondacks, or the North
Woods, as they were formerly called, moose abounded among the hard wood
ridges and lakes. This was the great hunting country of the Six
Nations. Here, too, many of the Canadian Indians came for their winter
supply of moose meat and hides. The rival tribes fought over these
hunting grounds much in the same manner as the northern and southern
Indians warred for the control of Kentucky.
Going westward in the United States we find no moose until we reach the
northern peninsula of Michigan and northern Wisconsin, where moose were
once numerous. They are still abundant in northern Minnesota, where the
country is extremely well suited to their habits. Then there is a break,
caused by the great plains, until we reach the Rocky Mountains. They are
found along the mountains of western Montana and Idaho as far south as
the northwest corner of Wyoming in the neighborhood of the Yellowstone
Park, the Tetons and the Wind River Mountains being their southern limit
in this section.[10] The moose of the west are relatively small animals
with simple antlers, and have adapted themselves to mountain living in
striking contrast to their kin in the east.
[Footnote 10: William Roland, an old-time mountaineer, states that he
once killed a moose about ten miles north of old Ft. Tetterman, in what
is now Wyoming.--EDITOR.]
[Illustration: MOOSE KILLED 1892, WITH UNUSUAL DEVELOPMENT OF BROW
ANTLERS. UPPER OTTAWA RIVER. CANADA]
North of the Canadian boundary we may start with the curious fact that
the great peninsula of Labrador, which seems in every way a suitable
locality for moose, has always been devoid of them. There is no record
of their ever appearing east of the Saguenay River, and this fact
accounts for their absence from Newfoundland, which received its fauna
from the north by way of Labrador, and not from the west by way of Cape
Breton. Newfoundland is well suited to the moose, and a number of
individuals have been turned loose there, without, as yet, any apparent
results. Systematic and persistent effort, however, in this direction
should be successful.
South of the St. Lawrence River, the peninsula of Gaspé was once a
favorite range, but the moose were nearly killed off in the early '60's
by hide-hunters. Further west they are found in small numbers on both
banks of the St. Lawrence well back from the settlements, until on the
north shore we reach Trois Rivières, west of which they become more
numerous.
The region of the upper Ottawa and Lake Kippewa has been in recent years
the best moose country in the east. The moose from this district average
much heavier and handsomer antlers than those of Maine and the Maritime
Provinces. However, the moose are now rapidly leaving this country and
pushing further north. Twenty-five years ago they first appeared, coming
from the south, probably from the Muskoka Lake country, into which they
may have migrated in turn from the Adirondacks. This northern movement
has been going on steadily within the personal knowledge of the
writer. Ten years ago the moose were practically all south and east of
Lake Kippewa, now they are nearly all north of that lake, and extend
nearly, if not quite, to the shores of James Bay. How far to the west of
that they have spread we do not know; but it is probable that they are
reoccupying the range lying between the shores of Lake Superior and
James Bay, which was long abandoned. Northwest of Lake Superior,
throughout Manitoba and far to the north, is a region heavily wooded and
studded with lakes, constituting a practically untouched moose country.
No moose, of course, are found in the plains country of Assiniboia,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta; but east in Keewatin, and to the north in
Athabaska, northern British Columbia, and northwest into Alaska we have
an unbroken range, in which moose are scattered everywhere. They are
increasing wherever their ancient foe, the Indian, is dying off, and
where white hunters do not pursue too persistently. In this entire
region, from the Ottawa in the east to the Kenai Peninsula in the far
west, moose are retiring toward the north before the advance of
civilization, and are everywhere occupying new country.
[Illustration: ALASKA MOOSE HEAD SHOWING UNUSUAL DEVELOPMENT OF
ANTLERS--KENAI PENINSULA. Kindness American Museum of Natural History,
New York.]
Wary and keen, and with great muscular strength and hardihood, the moose
is pitting his acute senses against the encroaching rifleman in the
struggle for survival, and it is fair to believe that this superb member
of the deer family will continue to be an inhabitant of the forest long
after most other members of the group have disappeared.
The moose of Maine and the Maritime Provinces occupy a relatively small
area, surrounded on all sides by settlements, which prevent the animals
from leaving the country when civilization encroaches. In this district
their habits have been greatly modified. They do not show the same fear
of the sound of rifle, of the smell of fire, or even of the scent of
human footsteps, as in the wilder portions of the country. In
consequence of this change of habit, it is difficult for a hunter, whose
experience is limited to Maine or the Maritime Provinces, to appreciate
how very shy and wary a moose can be.
In the upper Ottawa country, when they first began to be hunted by
sportsmen, the writer remembers landing from his canoe on the bank of a
small stream, and walking around a marsh a few acres in extent to look
at the moose tracks. Fresh signs, made that morning, were everywhere in
evidence, and it had apparently been a favorite resort all summer. Snow
fell that night and remained continuously on the ground for two weeks,
when the writer again passed by this swamp and found that during the
interval it had not been visited by a single moose. The moccasin tracks
had been scented, and the moose had left the neighborhood. A moose with
a nose as sensitive as this would find existence unendurable in New
Brunswick or Maine.