The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1913-04-29

SPliilO1l- DSSti bNNiSii VI IHoSSh EdtOES
Causing Big Loss to Farmers--Star-
Ting Facts Presented.
That American birds, like the Ameri-
can bison. soon will be extinct unless
Immediate measures are taken for
their protection is the prediction Of an
investigator who recently set forth his
views in the Chicago Record Herald.
Ornithologists and sportsmen for
several years have been calling atten-
ton to the same fact and have Repeat-
edly pointed ont that better game laws
must be passed and rigidly enforced
if we are to save the wild life of our
country
The robins. whose arrival in the
north is considered one of the first au-
thentic signs of spring, are being
slaughtered by tens Of thousands every
year, authorities say. In fact, no bird,
from hummins bird to eagle, is safe
from the craze to kill
AS for the so called game birds, the
ducks and snipe and prairie chickens,
they are already so scarce that their
busy haunts of twenty years ago are
silent and deserted today. Some species
are already extinct and many others
are almost gone, yet the sportSmen
who make our game laws refuse to
save any of the vanishing species by
the only possible means-a long closed
season. Emerson HOugh, who is n
ret nd Nn.f- of&
ward, frankly writes:
"Our game laws have failed. and we
know they have failed. Our game is
almost gone, and we know it is al
most gone. America has changed, and
we know it has changed. although we
have not changed with it. We have
handled our game in a wholly greedy,
INSCRIPTIONS and selfish fashion. This
has been our policy as a nation"
Loss to Farmers.
The game of North America does not
belong exclusively to the men who kill.
The other 9T per cent of the people
have vested rights in it far exceeding
those of the per cent.
Farmers are already suffering mil
lions of loss from insects that used to
be kept within bounds by the s1lkil
and other birds. Yet at the present
moment we are permitting the exter-
mination Of our finest species of birds,
mammals and fishes according to
law"
''There is not single state in our
country" says William T. Hornaday,
director of the New York geological
park, from which the killable game
is not being rapidly and persistently
shot to death, legally or illegally, very
much more rapidly than it is breeding,
with the determination of most of it
in sight. We have reached the point
where the alternatives are long closed
seasons or a gameless continent, and
we must choose one or the other speed
ily."
Startling Facts Cited.
Mr. Hornaday has written q book
"Our Vanishing Wild Life" in which
he sets forth some startling facts.
Here are some figures he compiled:
In 1860 pot hunters in Hartford
Mich, shipped three carloads Of dead
passenger pigeons to market each day
for forty days, making a total of H.
$4,000 birds. Another Michigan town
marketed 15,S4O,OOO in two years.
Today the passenger pigeon is total
ly extinct save for one lonely female
bird twenty years old in the Cincin-
natti geological gardens. The greed of
man has wiped it from the face of the
earth, and, like the great aux, it must
be numbered with the dead species.
| Other species that have been exter-
minated in our own day are the Lab
rador duck. the pallas cormorant, the
Eskimo curlew, the Cuban macaw, the
Carolina parrakeet and the yellow
winged green parrot.
Mr. Hornaday names more than
twenty-five other North American
birds that are threatened with early
determination. He says it is already
too late to save the stately white
whooping crane and the trumpeter
swan. Three of the most beautiful
and curious water haunting birds of
the southern United States-the fla
mingo, scarlet ibis and roseate spoon
bill-are doomed unless the European
feather trade can be stopped from
having them shot into total oblivion.
The upland plover, black capped petrol
and California condor are about gone.
The wood duck, one of the most ex-
Quisitely plumaged birds in America,
is threatened with extinction. Yet
many states are actually encouraging
its destruction by giving extra long
open seasons for the killing Of this
species.
Birds Were Shipped.
For forty years the marshes, prai-
ries, farms and streams of the whole
upper Mississippi valley have been
combed over year after year by the
guns of the market shooter.
Often the migratory game was To-
Gated by telegraphic reports. Game
birds were slain by the wagon load,