Copyright 1957 Fawcett Publications, Inc.

# GANGBUSTIN' GAME WARDEN

In 30 years of defending America's wildlife, Ernie Swift has battled everybody from hillbillies to Chicago gunmen. Now he's up against his toughest enemy—powerful interests out to steal our public lands

By KEN SMITH and JOHN KEATS

The young game warden had known what he was going to find ever since he first spotted the big Lincoln in the forest clearing, and saw the machine gun lying across the back seat. After glancing quickly around him, he had moved quietly and carefully through the woods toward the dam and now, standing on the edge of the riverbank above the rushing water, he could look down and see them. He stood there silently in the shade of the trees, nervously rubbing his hands on his trousers, knowing that only a fool would try to go down there and take them alone.

All I have to do is turn around and get the hell out of here, he told himself, and nobody will ever know. With those guns, they could cut me to pieces before I'd gone two feet. His eyes traveled from the automatic rifle that was leaning up against the sign reading CLOSED AREA, FISHING PROHIBITED to the heavy pistol butts that protruded from the pockets of the three fishermen. Why should I get myself shot over nothing but a few lousy fish, Ernest Swift thought.

Illustrated by MORTON KUNSTLER

"You told me to come shooting," Swift snapped, throwing down on the beer baron and his men.

But he knew all along that he had made his decision before he had even seen the Lincoln; he had made it back when he first heard that Chicago mobsters were coming up into his territory in Wisconsin. He had realized right then that sooner or later he would have to tangle with them. "Ah, the hell with it," he muttered impatiently, and stepped out from the protection of the trees and started down the steep bank.

One eye on the guns that stuck out of their back pockets, Swift moved rapidly, counting on the noise of the water to drown out his movements. Just as he was congratulating himself for having successfully taken them by surprise, the three men whirled around—guns gripped in their hands. Swift's first reaction, before he noticed the empty belly holsters, was to think that they had been fishing with guns in their hands.

"What in hell do you want?" a cold voice demanded. The heavy face behind the voice would have been instantly recognizable to any newspaper reader in those days of 1928; chiefly celebrated as the inventor of the one-way ride, he was known as "Machinegun" Frankie McErlane.

Fighting to keep his voice steady, Swift said, "I'm going to have to arrest you. Let me see your fishing licenses."

"Jesus, a hayseed cop," McErlane sneered. "Well, whatta you know." He grinned at Swift, somehow amused by the picture of this little shrimp taking on three armed men. The second gunman, an ugly, stupid giant named Frank Novak, stood looking at Swift out of contempt-filled eyes. With his attention on McErlane, Swift did not realize that the third man had circled around behind him until he heard the soft, emotionless voice: "Goodbye, you son of a bitch. We're settling this one right now."

In that instant, Ernie Swift knew for sure that he had been a fool. But he'd done what he said he'd do; what he thought he had to do. At least, he had that...

Looking back on it, there was no way the script could have been rewritten. The whole pattern of Swift's brief career had led him, inevitably, to that rendezvous in the woods. Swift had been brought up on a stump-choked farm in a hinterland populated by rock-fisted lumberjacks, where, to measure a man, you simply matched his deeds to his words. If they fit, he was a man. If not, he was either a fool or a coward. In this simple, direct community, where lines were so clearly drawn, there was general agreement that Swift was a man, even though he stood no more than 5 feet 8 in his caulked boots and never weighed more than 135 pounds.

When Swift signed up as a state game warden in 1926, he figured he'd made a man's solemn promise. His first assignment had been to ride herd on a gaggle of transplanted Kentucky mountaineers who had just run the former warden out of the woods in the northeastern end of the state.

Since 1900, wild-living men had been coming up from the Kentucky hills because of the logging wages, or to gather

ginseng, or because they'd shot themselves a man down home and wanted to lay low for awhile. They considered game as something God put into the woods to keep a man alive, and recognized no seasons on anything with hair or feathers. Among other things, they fished the trout streams with dynamite. They were crack woodsmen, fearless and—in their own way—possessed of a rough chivalry. Swift figured they'd respect anyone who could meet their standards; who could prove their equal in woodcraft, physical courage and straight talk.

It went as he figured. On many occasions in the next two years he found himself alone in a woods full of slouch-hat ted, spindly, be-whiskered mountaineers, every man-Jack of them armed. If they met casually, Swift and the mountaineers would nod with mutual respect. If it was a business meeting, Swift would walk boldly up and tell them to consider themselves under arrest—he'd expect them in court next day. It was a unique game of tag they played, Swift and the hill men, and they played it straight with each other. The Kentuckians admired this skinny little blue-eyed, redhaired law man, who would walk right up to a band of armed clansmen and tell them where to head in and then have the guts to turn his back and saunter away.

Swift turned in such a brilliant arrest record, and earned himself such a reputation that in 1928 he was assigned to Sawyer County to take on the toughest chore any game warden in this nation was ever called to face. High-riding Chicago gangsters had chosen the woods around Swift's hometown, Hayward, as a place to get cool when Chi got a little hot. It was certainly remote—the villagers had a word for it. The roads thereabouts, they said, ran to "Hayward, Hurley and Hell."

Al Capone had a resort for his boys on the east fork of the Chippewa River. Bugs Moran and the Barker-Karpis gang showed up, along with Potatoes Koffman, Lefty Counsel and Gus Winkler. The incredible Joe Soltis, a huge slob of a beer baron whose Lincoln touring car sported a mounted machinegun and flew a red bandana from the left headlight, just like a general's flag on a staff car, had a resort and a golf course on Barker Lake on the Chippewa's east fork.

The Chicagoans gaily machine-gunned deer at night with the aid of auto headlights: fished illegally for muskellunge in the dam across the Chippewa where the big fish were held in a huge trap until the wardens could net them out and lift them across. Rules? Laws? Those were for suckers, the Chicagoans said. Trifling with us, they snarled, and you'll wind up at the bottom of a lake wearing a concrete kimono.

Before starting out after the gunmen, Swift tried to figure up a plan of attack, just as he'd tried to figure a method of dealing with the clannish Kentuckians. But there was no common ground. The Chicagoans weren't woodsmen, were openly derisive and defiant, and had not the vaguest spark of manhood about them. They were merely deadly.

Therefore, Swift figured he'd have to

play the game his way, for it was the only way he could imagine at the time. So, on the first morning out on his new beat he walked up to the first three Chicagoans he saw breaking the rules—and now he had a gun at the back of his head.

The man behind Swift, a chunky Italian named Joe Milaga, was about to fire when McErlane suddenly snapped, "Shove it, Joe."

Then, as the warden stood tense and sweating, the three gunmen began arguing about whether or not to kill him. Figuring his best bet was to take the initiative, Swift turned to McErlane and said, as calmly as possible, "Let's see your license."

The effrontery of it dazed the hoods. McErlane fumbled in his pockets and produced the last thing Swift expected to see—a fishing license. Silently, McErlane handed it over.

Swift's clammy fingers dropped the paper and it fluttered to the ground. As Swift bent to retrieve it, Milaga snatched at the Colt that swung on Swift's hip. Swift, not daring to turn around, brushed the Italian's hand away. Then he asked Novak for his license. Again Milaga reached for Swift's Colt, and this time Swift slapped the gunman's hand. Then he turned and collected Milaga's license. Still on the offensive, Swift stepped past the befuddled gunmen and slid the big muskellunge they'd caught into a gunny sack. He picked up the sack, collected the fishing tackle, and acidly advised the trio that fish and tackle were confiscated, and that he expected to see them in court at Hayward at 10 in the morning.

"Goddam, Frankie, I kill him now!" Milaga howled, dragging his gun out again, but McErlane was doing the thinking for the mob that morning.

"Leave him go," he said. "He's just a hayseed."

Swift knew it would be silly to go up against such odds again, or to think simple coddors would have any appeal to McErlane's kind of animal. He decided to chuck his woodsman's skill into the game to even things up. Specifically, he slipped into ambush beside the forest road that led to the dam, and two days later, nabbed Joe Soltis himself.

The 260-pound beer baron was puffing up the hill from the dam carrying half a dozen big muskies when Swift stepped out of the brush, gun in hand.

"G'wan punk, put it away," Soltis muttered. He summoned up a false little laugh. "I ain't gonna hurt ya," he added.

Swift did not change expression, and Soltis' smile faded.

"Okay," he rasped, "if you think you can pin a rap on me, let's go. But you'd better wise up, punk. Nobody arrests Joe Soltis."

"I just did," Swift said softly.

He took Joe to court and after half an hour of profane pleading and threatening, Joe Soltis contemptuously peeled $50 from a roll that was at least twice as large as the judge's and Swift's annual income put together.

"You was lucky," Soltis jeered as he and Swift walked out of court. "I've tried twice for murder in Chi and beat the rap both times. The two of them together wasn't half the grief as this stinkin' little fish business. I hope you enjoyed it this time, because you ain't gonna do it again."

"Go shoot somebody," Swift said, tired of it all. "But break a game law, and I'll see you again."

"I don't think you're right bright," the beer lord muttered. With that, he climbed into his bulletproof Lincoln and roared out of town, the bright bandana fluttering from the headlamp bracket.

Swift kept playing it that way, choosing his own ground and taking the offensive, but two weeks later he ran into a situation he couldn't handle on his own terms. He'd arrested three of Soltis' men, but couldn't herd all three of them to court. He told them to report, and when they didn't come to town to give themselves up, Swift knew he'd have to go after them—out to Soltis' camp on Barker Lake.

When Swift drove up, he saw four thick-bodied, mean-eyed, pasty-faced city types squatting on the front porch. They didn't say anything. "I want to see Joe," Swift told them.

Just as in the movies, one of them nodded slightly, heavy with menace, and glanced at the door. It was an invitation. Swift walked past them, through the door, and the four men followed, pistols drawn, and took up various vantage points around the room behind him. Soltis waddled into the living room through another door, carrying a pint of whisky. It looked no bigger than a pill bottle in Joe's hand.

"Why, Oinie," the beer baron rumbled genially, "what'sa matta, Oinie?"

Joe let his vast bulk down into a chair behind a wooden table. He waved one of the boys to pull up a chair for Swift. The warden ignored the hospitality. Then, feeling trapped and tense, Swift told Joe how it was.

"Aw, Oinie," Joe protested, smiling greasly. "Don't get hard about it. Sit down. Let's have a drink."

He emptied the whisky bottle into two tumblers and pushed one across the table. Swift, still standing, shook his head. Joe downed one tumbler at a gulp and reached for the second glass.

For the next half hour Soltis tried to tell Swift in a hundred different ways to stop being a Boy Scout. Swift didn't seem to be getting it. At last Soltis seemed to think he realized the basic problem and hauled out his enormous bankroll, the sight of which had sent so many Sawyer County natives slavering. He spread the bills on the table.

"It's yours, Oinie," Soltis said expansively. "Take any or all of it. Here, take a grand, whadda I care? Only lay off me and my boys."

"The state pays me," Swift said flatly, feeling idiotically heroic. The state was paying him $140 a month. He knew his words sounded childish, but he was determined to finish what he had started. "I have to take three of your boys back to town with me," Swift added.

"You stupid bastard!" Soltis exploded, lunging to his full 6 feet 3, his big face red with whisky and anger. "Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you?"

Soltis brushed the table aside, lurched out the front door and down the porch steps. There was a flock of chickens scratching around in the dirt a few yards from one of the cabins. Soltis kept chickens for a purpose, and not the eggs. He drew his .45 calibre Army Colt and blasted away.

The big man wasn't all reputation. He had gigantic shoulders and arms bigger than your legs, and he was a good fisherman and a good shot. Firing rapidly, he clipped the heads off three moving chickens. Then he turned back to Swift. "Catch on?" he grated.

"Yeah, I know," Swift said. "But all I came here for was to tell you your boys have to come to court today."

Then he turned his back and walked past the quivvering, headless chickens and the silent gunmen and the fuming Soltis and climbed into his car. It was a cool day, but Swift's shirt was soaked with sweat.

At 5 p.m., just as court was about to close, Soltis and a dozen hoods walked in. Three of the gunmen admitted they'd hunted out of season and Soltis, without a word, threw a roll of bills on the desk before the bench. As the big man turned to leave, he spotted Swift near the courtroom door. "Now leme tell you something," Soltis sneered, towering over the slender warden. "Up to now I been easy on you. I thought maybe we could be friends. But the hell with that. Next time you think you gotta take me, you better come shooting."

"All right," Swift said. "I will."

Swift reported this conversation to the home office in Madison, and the effect was immediate—bringing Swift face to face with Gov. Walter Kohler Sr., father of the present governor. After the warden had told his story, the governor asked, "What do you intend to do about it?"

"Kill Soltis, if I have to," Swift said.

"I think you are absolutely right," Kohler said. "Stay with it, but use good judgment. Take all the men you need to get the job done. If necessary, I'll declare martial law in Sawyer County and call out the National Guard to back you up. These men may be the law in Chicago, but they're still a bunch of small-time hoodlums in Wisconsin and we won't permit them to ignore our laws."

It's idle to speculate how much grief this nation would have been spared had all governors thought the same way. As it was, such was the nature of the times that Governor Kohler's statement was banner news not only in state papers but throughout the Midwest.

Characteristically, Swift moved first. He called in four other wardens and this time, in addition to their issue Colts, they carried rifles. Instead of driving through the forest road that led to the dam, the law men entered the woods at dusk, worked their way around, and spent the night in a tent deep in the woods about three miles upstream.

It rained through the night and it was

raining in the morning and the wardens hiked through the wet woods to stop, at 5 a.m., at the edge of a gravel pit near the dam. They put their glasses on the dam and there was Joe, fishing.

The wardens arranged an ambush and Soltis and his two fishing companions eventually walked smack into the leveled rifles.

"Hey," the racket lord complained, his big face pale. "What the hell is this? How come all the goddam hardware?"

"You told me the next time I had to take you, to come shooting," Swift explained. "Go on. Move."

"Aw, Oinie, you're always getting hard about it," Soltis wheedled. His black eyes kept darting from side to side, his tongue licked his thick lips. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the road which Swift had used before in his normal patrol of the dam area.

"I can't unnerstan' how you guys could get in here," Soltis muttered.

The wardens caught on right away. While two of them disarmed Soltis and his minions, two others slipped into the woods and, one by one, discovered and disarmed the five guards Soltis had staked out below the dam.

The next day, Soltis was gone from Wisconsin forever. Told of this, Swift's only comment was, "I don't think Joe ever understood me."

But the remaining Chicagoans understood Swift only too well. He was a menace to their liberty and pursuit of happiness, and they marked him for death. The Federal Bureau of Investigation got wind of this and Swift was yanked into hiding, despite his bitter protests. "People will think I'm yellow," he said. "I'm damned if I'm going to run."

"We're getting you out of there before you get killed," the chief warden told him.

The state hid Swift and his wife in the Soldier's Home at Mendota while FBI and state police began to comb the Chicago element out of Hayward's hair. Swift fumed and fussed, but he stayed put, and it's just as well he did, for the gang's threat was no joke.

Swift hadn't been out of Hayward long before a black Packard purred into town and stopped at the pool hall. Out stepped a good-looking, clean-featured youth, dressed with quiet taste in expensive city clothes. "Does anybody know where I can find Ernie Swift?" he asked.

George Taylor, an aged Indian wolf hunter, said sure, he knew. "I take you to him."

"That's awfully nice of you," the young man replied.

There were two sinister customers sitting in the back seat of the big Packard, surrounded by machine guns, rifles, pistols, sawed-off shotguns and boxes of ammunition. All at once, the Indian knew he didn't want to go anywhere.

"Get in there, you half-breed son of a bitch," the young man said, and shoved the Indian into the car.

In front of Swift's house, Taylor received his instructions. "When he comes to the door," the young man snapped, "get the hell out of the way and maybe you won't get killed."

Taylor knocked several times. The little, hollow sounds echoed through an appalling silence. The Swifts were still in Mendota.

The gunmen retrieved their decoy and held him hostage until they got to Brice, a tiny village, where they turned him out of the car with a parting word of advice. Tell anyone about this, they said, and they'd make a good Indian out of him.

Swift might have resented being yanked to one side while the cleanup went on, but the move proved a turning point in his life. He soon found himself riding a desk in Madison, learned the intricacies of top-level administration while advancing steadily through the ranks, and in 1947 he was made director of Wisconsin's Conservation Department.

There were two red-hot issues when Swift took office. One was the invasion of the lamprey eel, which had scuttled the lake-trout fishery, and the fishermen were lobbying for a law permitting them to use fine-mesh nets and claim anything caught in such nets to be a legal fish. Second, north country hunting-camp proprietors bitterly resented the conservation department's plan to kill off a percentage of Wisconsin's deer herd in order to save it.

This was necessary because there wasn't enough natural food for all Wisconsin's deer, so all deer were threatened with starvation. The department figured the only way to save the herd was to thin it, but thinning it, in the minds of the hunting camp proprietors, meant fewer targets.

And fewer targets meant less customers. One of the most influential resort owners in the north country came storming into Madison.

"Our deer are more important to us than you are, Swift," he said. "I'm warning you. If you insist on ramming a deer-killing program down our throats, I'm going to get you if it takes every penny I own and every dollar I can borrow."

"Look," Swift said reasonably. "You've been running a resort for maybe thirty years. Right here in my office there's a fellow been studying deer, scientifically, for as long as you've been in the resort business. Now if he told you how to run your resort, you'd laugh in his face. But when you come here, you're trying to tell him you know more about deer than he does."

"Maybe I do," the resort man said, unmoved. "I'm warning you. You prune that herd, and we won't rest till we get you fired."

The man left and Swift sighed. It was Soltis all over again; this time with political complications. The legislators committed to the fishermen and those committed to the resort men were all set to do a little logrolling at the expense of the State Conservation Department. They'd vote for each other's bills and, meanwhile, try to cut the department down to size. Already they were reportedly cooking up a bill to support the public parks out of funds received through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses—funds which Swift's department then received and which it desperately needed.

Further, the bill would reduce the department's cut of the state's general fund.

Accordingly, Swift found a friend in the legislature and got him to offer a bill that would support the public parks through an increase in real estate taxes. This thought so horrified the legislature that a hasty truce was arranged. They promised that hunting and fishing license funds would remain in Swift's department, and the department's cut of the general funds would be increased, if only that real estate tax bill would be quietly forgotten.

All this was very well, but Swift had no intention of fighting one battle and calling it a war. He had the department prepare 24 conservation bills, and Sprecher went to the floor to fight them through. It went as planned. The legislators were kept so busy considering Swift's bills they never got around to those favored by the would-be fish thieves and deer-starvers. Instead, the legislature was maneuvered into passing 19 of the 24 bills Swift proposed.

In the three legislative sessions held during Swift's directorship, he and Sprecher got 79 out of 100 bills made into law—by far the best record of any government department with any legislature. The bills succeeded not only because they were as honest as Swift himself, but also because they were presented by a man who walked boldly in where few dared to tread; by a man who called his shots and never gave a political damn. The laws, incidentally, added $5,000,000 in revenue to Swift's department.

Among other things, Swift's audits disclosed that the department operated several trout hatcheries so inefficiently that fingerlings were costing the state $4 each. The inefficient hatcheries were closed. Now you can rob a trout fisherman's house, kill his kids, rape his wife and burn his aged mother at the stake with impunity, but you dare not close a trout fisherman's hatchery. A short time later, a burly gent in a Mackinaw was tramping into Swift's office. "I want to punch his nose," he explained to Swift's receptionist.

The trout man never had a chance; Swift was already attacking as the man came in. Half an hour later, burdened with a stack of pamphlets, reports and ichthyological papers, the trout fisherman left Swift's office mulling over what Swift had said about new wonder drugs eliminating hatchery diseases, and about how closing inefficient hatcheries had actually resulted in a four-fold increase in fingerling production.

The federal government had been dickering for Swift's services for years before 1954, when President Eisenhower's men asked Swift to quit the minors and join the big league in Washington. There was a newly-created job tailored specifically for Swift in the Fish & Wildlife Service—that of assistant director. Under it, Swift would not only help form policy but see it carried out, and act as liaison man between the federal government and the states. His job was simply the conservation of timber and wildlife in all the states.

In the 18 months Swift held this job, he set new Washington records for plain

At times like these it's hard for fish to realize that Swift is their best friend.

speaking, stepping on important toes,
and red-tape snipping.

As the months wore on, it became ap-
parent to Swift that he and John L. Far-
ley, Director of Fish & Wildlife Service,
held different philosophies.

Swift couldn't stomach the granting of
oil leases in public wildlife refuges and
he said so. He told it to his superiors, and
to anybody else in earshot.

Most important, he flatly refused, when
ordered to do so, to compose a memo-
randum that would nullify all the federal
rules which make it illegal to bait ducks.

The story is interesting and ugly. The
fact is, our duck population is so small
that shooting over baited grounds would
seriously deplete it. Hence, it's against
federal (and Canadian) law to bait duck.
Rich men's gun clubs in Ohio, Maryland
and California want that law changed.
In plain words, their politically potent
members want a better chance for a bird
than the chance granted any plain Joe.

One day Farley made a speech to con-
servation groups pledging the federal

duck-baiting regulations would be up-
held. Two days later he called Swift into
the office and told him to draw up a
memorandum for Farley to sign—a mem-
orandum so worded as to make enforce-
ment of the regulations practically
impossible. Swift point-blank refused to
have anything to do with it, and the
memorandum was prepared by someone
else in the office.

"If you sign this after what you prom-
ised those people," Swift told Farley with
unconcealed anger, "you better buy a
one-way ticket to China, because they're
going to come shooting."

It is to Farley's credit that the memo-
randum remained unsigned, for the po-
litical pressure on him was, and is,
immense.

At this point, Swift, who'd been feel-
ing that he was in the position of a
quarterback who had been ordered by
the coach to throw the game, resigned his
federal job. He was immediately offered
another, also especially created for him,
as executive director of the National

Wildlife Federation. Swift accepted eag-
erly, feeling certain that he could do
more good as spokesman for 3,000,000
sportsmen and conservationists than he
could do in any of the top federal jobs.

He's had the job less than two years
now, and already it's borne fruit. As all
sportsmen know, the military has always
acted as if game laws didn't apply to mili-
tary reservations, much as the mobsters
of Swift's youth didn't think game laws
applied to them. Swift, as federation di-
rector, kept sniping mercilessly at the
Pentagon and a year ago last March the
Pentagon ran up the white flag. Hence-
forth, the brass told Swift, the military
will obey conservation laws and practices
on its reservations.

The oil-lease giveaway battle isn't over
by a long shot, as far as Swift is con-
cerned. And he's still watchful for a re-
turn of the baiting issue, which will come
back as surely as the ducks themselves.
But Ernie Swift feels that he's now in
the best possible position to carry out his
lifelong aim—the protection of America's
wild life.—Ken Smith and John Keats

REPRINT FROM APRIL 1957 ISSUE

TRUE
THE MAN'S MAGAZINE

CONSERVATION PUBLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION

July 1957

This is your order blank. Please check items and quantity desired and return list to:
Servicing Division, National Wildlife Federation, 232 Carroll St., N.W., Washington 12, D.C.

NAME ADDRESS
Amt. Enclosed Check M.O. Cash CITY STATE

ELEMENTARY

Homes for Wildlife: Tips for Young Conservationists. J.D. Bulger. 8 pages, illus. Suggestions for wildlife homes and habitat improvement measures to be carried out by young people. Single copy free, 5¢ each additional.

My Land and Your Land Series. Four booklets of about 45 pages each, illustrated in color.
$1.00 per set or 25¢ per single copy.

Book 1. "Would You Like to Have Lived When...?" A narrative account of the pioneers' treatment of the land and its wildlife. Grades 3 to 5.

Book 2. "Raindrops and Muddy Rivers." A treatment of water use, conservation and some of the problems that have resulted from land abuses. Grades 4 to 6.

Book 3. "Plants and Animals Live Together." A discussion of animal and plant communities, their relationships to each other, and conservation programs designed to perpetuate them. Grades 5 to 7.

Book 4. "Nature's Bank -- The Soil." A description of the soil, its origin and treatment in various sections of the country. Grades 6 to 8.

Soil Means Life. Fair C. Griffin. 8 pages, illus. Elementary introduction to the Why and What of soil, and our dependence upon it. What happens to soil through bad land practices is explained as are methods for restoring it. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

State Birds and Flowers. 1 page. One to 25 copies free, 1¢ each in quantities over 25.

True to Life Series. R. W. Eschmeyer. Ten books of about 50 pages each, illustrated in two colors. Realistic conservation stories for children. $5.00 for set of ten or 50¢ per copy.

Al Alligator Billie Bass Bob White Bobbie Bluegill Charlie Cottontail

Freddie Fox Squirrel Mac Mallard Tommy Trout Willie Whitetail

Woodie Woodchuck.

Water. Bernard Frank. 8 pages, illus. An elementary description of the water resources and the part Man can play in protecting it. Water conservation projects for children are suggested. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

ADULT AND HIGH SCHOOL

Ask Me Another. Brochure of questions and answers about the conservation program of the National Wildlife Federation. Free in reasonable quantities.

Conservation Clubs for Juniors. William L. Reavley. 20 pages, illus. A comprehensive outline for organizing a junior conservation club. Activities and projects are suggested. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

Conservation Directory. Published annually. 100 pages. A listing of private and public conservation organizations of the United States, Canada, Central and South America. 50¢ ea.

Conservation Education for American Youth. 50 pages. An excellent teaching outline on the conservation of soil, water, animal, plant, mineral and human resources. Teachers will find this particularly useful. 40¢ each.

Desert in Your Own Backyard. 16 pages, illus. A graphic demonstration of the vital need for forest, soil and water conservation. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

- 2 -

Ditches, Dust and Ducks. R. G. Lynch. 8 pages, illus. Series of four articles on abuses of the land and water resources of the Dakotas' rich waterfowl marshes. Free in reasonable quantities.

**Habitat Improvement: Key to Game Abundance.** W. O. Nagel. 24 pages, illus. A key to greater understanding of wildlife conservation through improvement of wildlife living areas. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

**How Your Wildlife Stamp Dollars Work for Conservation.** Brochure describing use of funds for the conservation program of the National Wildlife Federation. Free in reasonable amount.

**Let's Build for Conservation Series.** J. D. Bulger. 4 pages each, illus. Descriptive folders on practical conservation projects. Single copy (choice of title) free, 5¢ each additional.

— Let's Build Brush Shelters for Fish

— Let's Be a Snapper Trapper

— Let's Build Log Dams

— Let's Work for Welcome Woodie Week

— Let's Build V-Dams

— Plot, Pond and Pine

— Let's Build Brush Shelters for Wildlife

— Let's Plant Willows

— Let's Boxtrap Bunnies

— Back-forty for Wildlife

— Let's Develop a Marsh for Wildlife

— Let's Give a Tithe for Trout

— Let's Develop Odd Corners for Wildlife

— Adopt a Reservoir

— Plant a Plot for Wildlife

— Spawning Beds for Trout and Salmon

— Ponds for Wildlife

— Spawning Boxes for Bass

**No Magic Formula for Solving the Dilemma of the Dollar.** A guide for fund raising and the financial management of the conservation organization. One to 25 copies free, 2¢ each in quantities over 25.

**Our Endangered Wildlife.** 32 pages, illus. Authoritative discussion of fourteen endangered species of the United States and their restoration needs. 15¢ each.

**Protecting Our Living Waters.** 12 pages, illus. Describes the effect of polluted waters on our health, recreation, wildlife and national livelihood. Suggests methods of restoring pure waters. Single copy free, 15¢ each additional.

**A Selected Listing of Motion Picture Films on Conservation and Natural History.** 67 pages. A list of 16 mm films and film sources to assist in planning interesting and enjoyable programs. Single copy free, 5¢ each additional.

**Suggestions for Organization of a Sportsmen's Club.** 25 pages. Pointers for organizing local and country clubs. One to 5 copies free, 3¢ each in quantities over 5.

**Wetland Is Fur Country.** L. E. Yeager. 10 pages, illus. Points out the economic importance of wetlands as fur producers. Single copy free, 5¢ each additional.

**You and Conservation.** W. P. Taylor. 16 pages, illus. A source of many helpful ideas and suggestions for the individual or groups wishing to advance conservation knowledge and practices. This is a comprehensive treatment of the conservation jobs to be done by the alert citizen. Single copy free, 10¢ each additional.

**Conservation News.** C. H. Callison, editor. A bi-weekly newsletter. Reports in popular form on important developments and issues of interest to conservationists. Free subscription to adults upon request.

**Conservation Legislative Report.** C. H. Callison, editor. A factual weekly report of bills introduced in Congress. Issued while Congress is in session, it complements the "Conservation News" in providing the basis for active participation by an informed public in legislation affecting our natural resources. Free subscription to adults upon request.

KEEP THE WILDERNESS WILD

Aided by testimony at last summer's hearings, sponsors drafted a revised bill to protect wild areas within the Federal public lands

by Howard Zahniser

"SHALL WE, exploiting all our resources, reduce also every last bit of our wilderness to roadsides of easy access and areas of convenience, and ourselves soften into an easy-going people, deteriorating in luxury and ripening for the hardy conquerors of another century?"

Congressman John P. Saylor of Pennsylvania asked this question on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 12, 1956. He answered it himself: "I hope not!" he said. "In our preservation of wilderness and our encouragement of the hardy recreation that puts a man or a woman or a red-blooded child on his own in the face of primitive hardships, we can help meet this need for maintaining a nation of strong healthy citizens."

Fortunately for all Americans, the opportunity to test the challenge of the wilderness is still with us. But only a little more than two per cent of the total land area of the United States is still in its near primitive state. Most of this is found in the federal public lands: within the wilderness, wild, primitive, and roadless areas of our national forests; in the undeveloped back country of our national parks; and in certain wildlife refuges and Indian reservations.

The United States has never had an over-

all national policy for the preservation of any of its wilderness as such, in spite of the fact that there is nothing in our history to indicate that we can be expected to leave by accident any extensive areas of wilderness. If we are to see wilderness preserved, we must preserve it deliberately.

This is the aim of the National Wilderness Preservation Act—popularly known as the Wilderness Bill—introduced in the 84th Congress to widespread acclaim, and, reintroduced in the 85th Congress. The bill features seven points:

1. It recognizes what wilderness is and that its preservation is doomed unless deliberately provided for in basic legislation by our Congress.

2. It recognizes that areas of wilderness can serve various purposes and still maintain wilderness character.

3. It designates for preservation wild areas now existing within our national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and in other such federal areas where present uses of the lands can be served in keeping with wilderness preservation.

4. It provides that these areas shall continue under their present administration (National Park Service, Forest Service, etc.), with no change of jurisdiction, and with no alteration of basic purposes.

5. It provides that Congress shall charge administrators of such areas of wilderness with responsibility to manage them for any other purposes in such a way as to make sure that their wilderness character is preserved.

6. It safeguards existing private rights, and also insures the integration of a wilderness preservation program with the necessary development and exploitation of resources.

7. It establishes a council made up of the land administrators involved, together with a few citizens, to bring to a focus the various interests of our national wilderness preservation program and to serve the public as a source of information on wilder-

ness. This council has no jurisdiction over lands or agencies.

These are the provisions of the bill to make sure that some parts of America will always remain unspoiled and beautiful in their own natural way—untrammeled by man and unmarred by machinery. It is not too late now to act. But it may soon be. We could miss our present great opportunity. We could fail. Were this to happen, what would we lose?

To begin with, we would lose some of the opportunity for “hardy recreation” and “primitive hardships” that Mr. Saylor has spoken of. And Mr. Saylor is not alone in his concern. For as the magazine *Newsweek* reported on September 26, 1955, in an article entitled, “Are We Becoming Soft?”, many Americans are also concerned with this question.

Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service, is there quoted as saying “we are not inherently a nation of softies, but it’s a harder fight for us to stay fit than for a lot of less privileged people. Our kids are all right, but autos, inner spring mattresses, and regulated heating make it tougher for us to stay fit.”

We suggest that our wilderness areas give us all—and our youth in particular—a fine chance to do just that.

So long as it remains in its natural condition, the wild country of our parks, forests, and refuges will play an ever-more-vital part as the scene for a great adventure for youth. For a few precious days each year, youngsters can be Indians, trap-pers, wilderness explorers, and pioneers. Yet for a lifetime after, such experiences remain to strengthen them as men and leaders of our civilization.

In addition to building health and stam-ina, intimate contact with wild nature builds character. Many young men first brought into contact with wilderness in CCC camp days underwent remarkable changes. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in his book, *Of Men and Moun-

Reprinted by
TRUSTEES FOR CONSERVATION
251 Kearny Street
San Francisco 8, California
in cooperation with

THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY
from the

February 1958 Issue of
OUTDOOR AMERICA

published by the
IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE
OF AMERICA

tains, describes one pretty tough, mean character from the streets of Brooklyn after two years in the woods:

"This chap was mellow. Now he had no chip on his shoulder. He was considerate. He was a tough guy transformed into a philosopher. He had found how great and good his country was. He was going to try and repay it for what it had done for him."

Some of our leading conservationists today received their first inspiration from early wilderness experience. Ernest Swift, former state and federal conservation administrator now executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, wrote in an article in the Summer-Fall 1955 issue of

THE LIVING WILDERNESS Magazine:

"During my formative years, there developed within me, under the influence of my wilderness, a deep and abiding love for space, a passion for freedom of action, and also a profound delight in growing things and wild things. My wilderness also engendered a wordless ecstacy which has taken most of a lifetime to comprehend. This became the foundation for unswerving convictions as to what I wanted to do with my life and what I wanted to stand for. Contact with wilderness after maturity would never had molded these convictions nor produced the spiritual strength. Youth needs wilderness."

Far from new at wilderness battles, the Izaak Walton League is equipped with more than 30 years of experience in defending the famous Quetico-Superior canoe country. League members undoubtedly recognize that the Wilderness Bill is a companion measure to the League's bill to establish an Outdoor Recreation Resources Review.

The ORRR bill provides for a thorough and comprehensive study of all outdoor recreation resources and needs and program requirements. The Wilderness Bill, on the other hand, proposes to establish at once an orderly policy for preservation of areas vital to the comprehensive program. So the two bills have parallel purposes. Pointing to this fact, Congressman Saylor has said:

"We welcome eagerly all the support we can get for establishing the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. We hope to pass this bill promptly. But I say to you, while we are doing this study, let's be saving something too; let's pass the Wilderness Bill, just as soon as we can."

Some folks would have you believe that we cannot hope to preserve wilderness forever—that the best we can do is fight a rear-guard action against “irresistible” pressures for development. But they are wrong! We see a farther vision—a hope for preservation of our wilderness in perpetuity.

The wilderness comes to us from the eternity of the past. We must have the boldness to project it into the eternity of the future, to fashion deliberately the kind of policy and program that will insure now—before it is too late—the preservation of wilderness forever wild, for ourselves and for our children.

Howard Zahniser is executive secretary of the Wilderness Society. He finds what relief he can from the civilized jungles of Washington, D. C., at his home in Hyattsville, Maryland—and in frequent trips to the wild lands he serves.

## WILDERNESS BILL ROUNDUP --

### Objections and Author's Answers

1. It "locks up" resources that are needed for economic reasons.

Not so. It does not apply to areas now available for development. It does give added protection for areas now being preserved, and for every lock it provides a key that the future can use if needed.

2. It would substitute special interest for multiple use.

No. It is itself a multiple-use bill. It says that all the areas affected shall continue to serve the multiple uses they now serve but they shall likewise keep the wilderness character that they also now have. It provides for no special use or special users but assures wilderness for all who choose to use the areas without destroying them as wilderness.

3. It would add vast acreages to lands set aside for preservation.

No. The areas involved are now being protected as park, refuge, or as wilderness in national forests. What will be added is more certain protection of wilderness values, and an orderly policy established in basic law by Congress. Any additions would be subject to Congressional scrutiny.

4. It would set up a special Council that would be a super-agency over existing bureaus and greatly complicate their administration of park, forest, and refuge lands.

Not true! Our land administration will continue as at present. The Bill says so. The proposed Council takes the place of and makes unnecessary any super-agency; it is a meeting ground, an information center regarding the common wilderness interest in lands administered by the various agencies. Heads of the land managing bureaus make up a majority of this 9-man Council.

5. The Bill isn't needed: the Forest Service, the Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service are already doing a good job in preserving wilderness.

They are indeed. And the Bill will help them resist the great and growing pressures that constantly make it harder to

preserve wilderness.

6. The Bill is still unnecessary. The areas it protects are just for a privileged few anyhow.

This is a serious misunderstanding. Wilderness is for all—for anyone who chooses to use it without destroying it. Our wilderness areas are like our art galleries. They are not just for the few who happen to be in them at any one time.

7. You can't hope to pass a Wilderness Bill because of opposition from mining, timber, and other commercial interests. Don't be too sure about the opposition. There is no threat in the Wilderness Bill to any existing private right. No lands affected by it are now available for timber cutting. No grazing now going on will be affected. Provision is made for mining if the President finds this to be in the national interest. These facts, plus the advantage to all of a clearly defined policy, should end most opposition. Also, there are many among the commercial interests also who are both conservationists and wilderness enthusiasts. Of course, if we must, we should and will fight for it, and fight hard. ***

### Sponsors and Status

The Wilderness Bill in the Senate is S.1176 by Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon, and 10 other Senators in a bi-partisan coast-to-coast sponsorship: Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota, James E. Murray of Montana, Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania, Frank J. Lausche of Ohio, Henry M. Jackson of Washington, Warren G. Magnuson of Washington, and Wayne Morse of Oregon.

John P. Saylor of Pennsylvania and Lee Metcalf of Montana introduced companion measures in the House, as did five other Congressmen from California, Oregon, Illinois, and Wisconsin. [John Baldwin, Charles O. Porter, Barratt O'Hara, and Henry S. Reuss]

***

### The League and the
Wilderness Bill

The Izaak Walton League has a long and fruitful history as defender and advocate of wilderness, beginning with its leadership in establishment of the Quetico-Superior area in the twenties. At its 1957 convention, the League approved a resolution favoring legislation aimed at providing Congressional sanction for a strong wilderness preservation policy.

The League stands by that resolution and congratulates sponsors of the Wilderness Bill for accepting—and proposing—amendments to meet objections by commercial interests and federal agencies.

OUTDOOR AMERICA