Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1936-03-26
The Problem of Wild Life Conservation
Address To
North American Wildife Conference
By JAY NJ DARLING

wealth-natural resources-is to bet
on the jockey and leave the horse en-
tirely out of our calculations. Our
carelessness and apathy toward this
basic fact has been notorious, and
among our rich endowment of natur-
al resources no element has been SO
completely ignored and so heedlessly
allowed to vanish as the wild life re-
sources of our North American CONT
nent. It has been the neglected step
child of our family circle, forced to
live on the crumbs from an opulent
table, the servant of all and the re-
sponsibility of none, undernourished
and exhausted by the universal de-
mands placed upon it and subsisting
on incidental charity.
eve may clarity the proposition
which lies before this conference by
first determining what is meant by
Wild Life Conservation, and its sig
nificance. We must, 1 believe, with
common accord agree that whatever
we may have been doing is not wild
life conservation-since we continue
to have less instead of more. A great
gap has existed somewhere in our
continental mechanism for wild life
conservation through which has Leak
ed a constant and increasing loss
which has drained many of our species
to the vanishing point and left an in
adequate population of all the rest.
If wild life is an economic and social
benefit our first objective must be re-
storation. We have awakened too late
to the needs of so-called conservation.
GAS I see it there is no irreconcil-
able conflict between wild life conser-
walton and any branch of industrial
interests. No one could successfully
defend any project for wild life con-
iservation which would supplant a
more beneficial use of land or water.
The trouble in the past has been that
the value of wild life resources to the
community and the continent as a
whole has never even remotely entered
into the economic bookkeeping of our
national and industrial planning. Few
are aware Of the incalculable cash
losses which have resulted to the peo-
pie of this continent through this
persistent oversight.
"If anything further were required
to emphasize this fact, it has been
made tragically eloquent during these
late years when in the time of great
economic distress we suddenly dis
covered that the people of this con-
tinent could no longer fall back on
those reserve resources Of nature in
our lakes, streams, and wooded hills,
which had served to sustain US with
profitable employment, food and the
necessities of life in time of need
since the white man invaded this con-
tinent. Our polluted rivers and de-
pleted lakes, once magnificent reser-
voirs of sustaining resources for in
ternational trade and continental con-
sumption no longer yielded their vast
bounty to stay the hunger of our peo-
pie; the drained marshes and depleted
forest lands had ceased to harbour
the furbearing animals, once a major
export commodity and fountain of
riches. From the vast plains and Wild
erness areas of public domain came
sickening cries for help where once
nature had maintained a magnificent
larder for man when other devices Of
urban civilization failed.