Read Ebook: Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador Supplement to an Address Presented by Lt.-Colonel William Wood F.R.S.C. Before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation in January 1911 by Wood William

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Commission of Conservation Canada

SUPPLEMENT TO

ANIMAL SANCTUARIES IN LABRADOR

SUPPLEMENT TO AN ADDRESS PRESENTED BY LT.-COLONEL WILLIAM WOOD, F.R.S.C. Before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation in January, 1911

OTTAWA, JUNE 1912

SUPPLEMENT TO AN ADDRESS BY LT.-COLONEL WILLIAM WOOD OTTAWA, CANADA 1912

SUPPLEMENT TO AN ADDRESS ON Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador

LIEUT.-COLONEL WILLIAM WOOD, F.R.S.C.

Such an extension takes me beyond my original limits. Yet, both for the sake of completeness and because this system is a most valuable means toward the end desired by all conservers of wild life, I willingly insert leaseholds as the connecting link between laws and sanctuaries.

LAWS

It is a truism and a counsel of perfection to say so, but, to be effective, wild-life protection laws, like other laws, must be scientific, comprehensive, accepted by the public, understood by all concerned, and impartially enforced.

There is need, and urgent need, for extending protective laws all along the Atlantic Labrador and over the whole of the Canadian Arctic, where the barren-ground caribou may soon share the fate of the barren-ground bear in Ungava, especially if mineral exploitation sets in. Ungava and the Arctic are Dominion grounds, the Atlantic Labrador belongs to Newfoundland, Greenland to Denmark, and the open sea to all comers, among whom are many Americans. Under these circumstances the new international conference on whaling should deal effectively with the protection of all the marine carnivora, and be followed by an inter-dominion-and-provincial conference at which a joint system of conservation can be agreed upon for all the wild life of Labrador, including the cognate lands of Arctic Canada to the north and Newfoundland to the south.

This is only one of the many reasons why a special effort should be made to bring a knowledge of the laws home to everyone in the areas affected, including the areas crossed by the lines of migration.

The language should be unmistakeably plain. Every form of wild life should be included, as wholly, seasonally, locally or otherwise protected, or as not protected, or as exterminable, with penalties and rewards mentioned in each case. All animals should be called by their scientific, English, French, and special local names, to prevent the possibility of mistake or excuse. Every man, resident or not, who uses rod, gun, rifle, net or snare, afloat or ashore, should be obliged to take out a license, even in cases where it might be given gratis; and his receipt for it should contain his own acknowledgment that he has a copy of the laws, which he thoroughly understands. Particular clauses should be devoted to rapacious dealers who get collecting permits as scientific men, to poison, to shooting from power boats or with swivel guns, to that most diabolical engine of all murderers--the Maxim silencer,--to hounding and crusting, to egging and nefarious pluming, to illegal netting and cod-trapping, and last, but emphatically not least, to any and every form of wanton cruelty. The next step may be to provide against the misuse of aeroplanes.

I believe it would be well worth while, from every point of view, to publish the laws, or at all events a digest of them, in all the principal papers. Even educated people know little enough; and no one, even down the coast, at the trading posts, or in Newfoundland, should have the chance of pleading ignorance. "We don't know no law here" ought to be an impossible saying two years hence. And we might remember that the Newfoundlanders who chiefly use it are really no worse than others, and quite as amenable to good laws impartially enforced. They have seen the necessity of laws at home, after depleting their salmon rivers, deer runs and seal floes to the danger point. And there is no reason to suppose that an excellent population in so many ways would be any harder to deal with in this one than the hordes of poachers and sham sportsmen much nearer home.

The Ungava peninsula, Hudson bay and Arctic together would mean a million square miles for barely a hundred men. But, with close co-operation between sea and land, they could guard the sanctuaries as efficiently as private wardens guard leased limits, watch the outlets of the trade, and harry law-breakers in the intervening spaces. Of course, the system will never be complete till the law is enforced against both buyers and sellers in the market. But it is worth enforcing, worth it in every way. And the interest of the wild life growing on a million miles will soon pay the keep of the hundred men who guard its capital.

LEASEHOLDS

"It was in the year 1895, that the idea took substance of setting apart some two thousand five hundred square miles of the wild and mountainous country north of Quebec and south of Lake St. John as 'a forest reservation, fish and game preserve, public park and pleasure ground'. At a later date, the area was increased, until now some three thousand seven hundred square miles are removed from sale or settlement. An important though indirect object was the maintenance of water-level in the dozen or more rivers which take their rise in the high-lying plateau forming the heart of the Park.

"When the ice takes in early November the caribou make it their great rallying ground. These animals, so wary in summer and early autumn, appear to gain confidence by their numbers, and are easily stalked and all too easily shot. It is to be feared that too great an annual toll is taken, and that the herd is being diminished by more than the amount of its natural increase. Slightly more stringent regulations, the allowance of one caribou instead of two, the forbidding of shooting in December and January, when the bulls have lost their horns, would effect the result, and would ensure excellent sport in the region so long as the Park exists and is administered as it is to-day. There is, however, very serious menace to the caribou in the unfortunate fact that the great timber wolf has at last discovered this happy hunting ground. Already it would seem that there are fewer caribou, but the marked increase in the number of moose may be one cause of this. Before the days of the Park the moose were almost exterminated throughout this region; but a few must have escaped slaughter in some inaccessible fastness, and under a careful and intelligent system of protection they have multiplied exceedingly. Man may not shoot them, and probably only unprotected calves have anything to dread from the wolves.

"'Where are you going?'

"'To cut up the caribou.'

"'... I don't want them.'"

This game murderer killed three times as many as the prescribed limit on this one occasion. Yet nothing was done to him!

SANCTUARIES

However desirable they are from any point of view leaseholds are not likely to cover much of Labrador for some time to come. They should be encouraged only on condition that every lessee of every kind--sportsman, professional on land or water, lumberman or other--accepts the obligation to keep and enforce the wild-life protection laws in co-operation with the public wardens who guard the sanctuaries, watch the open areas and patrol the trade outlets.

Only twelve years ago forty mills were debasing the immemorial and gigantic sequoia into mere timber in its last refuge in California. But even the general public sees now that this was a barbarous and idiotic perversion of relative values. What is a little perishable timber, for which substitutes can be found elsewhere, compared with a grove of trees that will be the wonder and delight of generations? What is the fleeting but abominable gratification of destroying the harmless lizard-like Tuatera of New Zealand compared with the deep interest of preserving it as the last living vertebrate that takes us back to Primary times? What is the momentary gratification of wearing egret feathers compared with the certainty of soon destroying the herons that produce them altogether; or what can compensate for the vile cruelty done to mutilated parent birds and starving young, or the murder of Bradley, the bird warden when trying to protect them?

LETTERS

Dr. Robert Bell, late Chief Geologist, Geological Survey of Canada, who has made many explorations in Labrador and adjacent lands and waters, and who has always given special attention to the mammals, writes:

I approve very heartily of the plan. It will be a humane thing to try to protect the animals and will be very advantageous in every way. It will no doubt receive the sympathy of all classes. There will, however, be some difficulties to overcome and much work to be done before the plan gets into successful operation.... As to the location and dimensions of the sanctuary, the north side of the lower St. Lawrence is the most suitable or only region left, except where it is too far north to benefit the most of the mammals and birds which we should try to preserve. It will be desirable to reserve and protect as great a length of the shore as possible, but perhaps enough will be found between Bradore bay on the east and Great Mekattina island on the west, or this might be extended to Natashkwan. To carry it up to Mingan, it would become more and more difficult to protect the coast the further up you come. Between Mekattina island and Natashkwan, there are no attractive rivers to tempt trespassers to go inland, those which exist being difficult for canoe navigation....

The animals soon find out where they are safe and come to live in even a small area. The Algonquin park is a case in point. There the bears have increased immensely in a few years and the less noticeable mammals and birds have also increased very much. I know of a more conspicuous case of a small area, on the Nelson river, where, owing to an old-standing superstition of the Indians, the animals have not been molested for a long period and they have become much more numerous than elsewhere.... Everything that can be killed is called Game. Most of it should be called animal murder and should be discouraged.

The Sanctuary should be placed in charge of a committee of naturalists. But zoologists are scarce in Canada and those who have taken an interest in the animals might be included. Faithful men to carry out their instructions I think can be found.

The President of the Boone and Crockett Club, Major W. Austin Wadsworth, Geneseo, N.Y., wrote:

I wish to express officially the admiration of our Club for your paper on Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador, because the whole question of Game Refuges has been one of especial interest to us and we have been identified with all movements in that direction in this country.

Captain R.G. Boulton, R.N., retired, was engaged for many years on the Hydrographic Survey of the Lower St. Lawrence, the Gulf and Newfoundland. He says:

His Excellency the Right Hon. James Bryce, British Ambassador at Washington, who is a keen botanist and lover of the wilds, writes:

It is painfully interesting. One finds it hard to realize that such wicked waste of the gifts of Providence, and such horrible cruelty, should be going on in our time. You are doing a great service in calling attention to them and I heartily wish you success in your endeavours.

At a special meeting of the Board of Governors of the Camp-Fire Club of America, held on December 12th last, the following resolution was unanimously passed:

"We believe that the establishment of adequate sanctuaries is one of the most potent factors in the conservation of our rapidly disappearing wild life. The Camp-Fire Club of America has taken, and is taking, an active part in the movement for the establishment of such sanctuaries in various places. We believe that such sanctuaries should be established in Labrador in the near future, while an abundance of undeveloped land is available and before the wild life has been decimated to such an extent as to make its preservation difficult;

Dr. John M. Clarke, Director, Science Division, New York State Education Department, and a gentleman acquainted with the wild life of the gulf of St. Lawrence, writes:

I have taken much interest in reading your paper. It seems to be based on an extraordinary acquaintance with the situation.

Canada is blessed with many unique natural resorts of animal life and I have been particularly impressed with the invasions that have been made on the wonderful nesting places of the waterfowl. In my repeated stays on the coast of Gaspe and the islands of the Gulf, now running over a dozen years, I have had my attention forced to the hideous sacrifices of bird life that are constantly going on; for example in the Magdalen islands with their extraordinary array of shore birds. The great lagoons within the islands afford ideal breeding conditions, and an extraordinary attraction for the hunter as well.

My observation leads me to the conviction that the shooting law is not in the least respected on these islands, except perhaps by the residents themselves. In some cases the outsider is obliged to wait for the fall migration of the ducks and geese and so comes within the law, but there are plenty of early migrants that arrive during the close season, only to be quickly picked up by the summer hunter, who realizes that he is too far away to incur the law's force.

As far as the shore birds are concerned, it is not the occasional hunter that does the real damage. The islands are becoming widely known to students of birds, and it is the bird student, the member of the Audubon Society, who are guilty of ruthless slaughter of the shore birds for their skins, and particularly for their eggs; all this in the protected season.

The situation is even worse on the Bird rocks. That is a protected area and yet is subject to fearful attacks from the egg hunters. I do not mean the commercial "eggers," but the member of the Audubon Society who has a collection of birds' eggs and skins and wants duplicates in order to enter into exchange with his colleagues. I met there on one of my visits an American "student" who had taken 369 clutches of eggs of each of the seven or more species of waterfowl there breeding, thus destroying at one swoop upwards of two thousand potential birds. It is no wonder that, with such a hideous desecration of the rights of the birds, the population of the Rocks is rapidly decreasing.

I believe the light-keeper is supposed to be a conservator of the birds and to prevent such uncontrolled destruction; but what can he do, a man who is practically exiled from the rest of his race for the entire year, frozen in for six months of the year? He is naturally so overjoyed at the sight of a fellow creature from the big world outside as to indulge him, whatever his collecting proclivities may be. The eggs that are taken by the occasional sailor seem to me to cut no figure at all in the actual diminution of the bird life there. That is a slender thing compared with the destruction caused by the bird students. It is a severe indictment of the ornithologist that such statements as the foregoing happen to be true.

Almost as remarkable for its number of waterfowl of the same species is the roost on the east cliffs of Bonaventure island. These have fortunately been rendered by Nature, thus far, inaccessible and the bird men have not yet found a way of getting among them. Yet, even so, there is constantly a great deal of reckless shooting at the birds simply for the sake of "stirring them up." This place is not protected by law, I believe, as a special reservation, but that might easily be brought about if the matter were placed in the hands of some responsible citizen residing on that island.

There is a happy situation in connection with the great Perc? rock at Perc?, on the top of which the gulls and cormorants have kept house for untold generations. These birds are a constant temptation to the men with a gun, but the Perc? people are so attached to the birds that no one would ever think of killing one, except the occasional French fisherman who will eat a young gull when hard pressed. Any attempt made by outsiders to use the birds as targets is resented so strongly that even the cormorants are let live.

Your address seems to me timely and extremely pertinent. I hope your proposition may receive more than passing attention and the suggestions therein be made effective, for they certainly aim to maintain the natural attractions and the natural resources of the country.

Dr. W.T. Grenfell has a long and most intimate knowledge of the Atlantic Labrador. He writes:

The matters of animal preservation which interest me most are: The rapid decline in numbers of harp seals which we Northern people can get for our boots and clothing. This food and clothing supply, formerly readily obtainable all along the Labrador, helped greatly to maintain in comfort our scattered population. It is scarcely now worth while putting out seal nets. We attribute this to the destruction of seals at the time of their whelping, by steamers which are ever growing larger and more numerous. No mammal, producing but one offspring can long survive this.

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