The Indianapolis times., 1933-11-25
Conservation
REFUGEES FOR
WILD FOWLS
URGED IN U. S.
Crisis in Situation Causes
Senator to Take
Drastic Steps.
BY WILLIAM F. COLLINS
Times Special Writer

Senator Hawes from Missouri.
leader Of conservation in the United
States senate for years. summarized
the crisis in wild life particularly
with reference TO wild fowl in an
address before the American Game
Association. Exactly the same cause
that brought about the food and
erosion menace worked to decimate
the wild fowl population of the
United States and Canada.
Drainage Of the swamps in the
northern part Of this country pushed
breeding wild ducks over the Can
adian border in ever increasing
numbers to find nesting grounds. A
heavy concentration of broods in a
comparatively small area brought
about terrific mortality among the
young birds in adverse seasons. In
1927 more than 40 per cent of the
entire hatch died in dried up
swamps in Canada; last year and
the year before there was very
heavy mortality due to draught and
marsh fires.
The remedy for the wild fowl
mortality on nesting grounds is to
create more baskets, more marshes,
plug up the useless drainage areas
as the Kankakee sWamps, then
draught periods. ordinarily not ma
tional in scope, fail to be so deadly.
Farmland Is Wasted
Outside of the question of saving
the ducks for the hunter, whenever
a marsh is drained. it adds all of
the water it formerly stored to the
overburdened outlet. Floods result,
erosion sets in. farm land is wasted
some of it utterly beyond recall. If
a foreign enemy should land on the
rocky coast Of Maine and take an
acre of barren rock outcrop we all
would be in arms, spend half of the
national fortune, kill or cripple a
million Of our own Or some other
persons children and develop such
a fever of irrational natiOnalism as
to squander the rest of our
patrimOny.
But we sit by idly watching acre
after acre running into the thou
sands of acres torn up and laid
waste by flood eroded and rendered
sterile by deforestation, drained and
converted into a barren waste by
chques intent only on personal
enrichment.
The Great Ruler of our destinles
is not going to be so kind to this
country in the next 100 years as IN
the last century. Our national eX-
travagance is bringing out another
hand writing on the wall and the
official Interpreter is the fellow
accused of visionary carpetbagging
IN the realms of conservation.
Citizens Aid Needed
Until the majority of the citizens
of the United States become con-
servation-minded little can be done
ito remedy conditions more or less
odorous. That the people are not
in this state of mind is evident on
every hand In Indiana we find a
group fighting for flood control,
placing the blame for floods on the
lack Of levees and not on the un-
derlying cause. We earnestly advo-
cate reforestation and have a
separate department of state for it,
then turn loose an army of unem-
ploved on what little timber we
have left to cut it up for stovewOOd.
We now are uprooting the very
shade trees along state road No. 8,
south of Shelbyville, to make work
for the unemployed.
The government is taking millions
of farming acres out OF crop pro-
duction in 1884 and is paying the
farmer cash for the abandonment
of his land and there is another
drainage project under way to make
more farming land in Greene
county.
We plow under vast areas of cot
ton in 1888 and the budget for
further land reclamation work
along the Mississippi river for 1884
would pay off this states debt. We
witness a staggering burden of tax
delinquents in the United States and
then hold up for popular acclaim
a man who defOrested two counties
in northern Michigan and then let
the state take them over for un-
paid taxes. And we will continue to
do these ridiculous things for years
to come until finally the bottom
drops out. We never will miss the
water until the well runs dry, We
never will develop the attitude
France has taken toward her nat
uraI resources until we have beer
pushed headlong into it by adver-
sitv of the most rigorous kind.
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