Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador by William Wood
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William Wood >> Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador
I know that the Commission cannot undertake any executive work of a
permanent character. But it can undertake an experimental investigation
for a term of years. And, here again, the Canadian Labrador offers a
perfect field. For if only five years' effective conservation is
extended to the bird life of that coast the whole situation will be
saved. I do not presume to lay down the law on the subject. But I would
venture to suggest that some such plan as the following would probably
be found quite effective at the very moderate cost of five thousand
dollars a year.
1. The residents to form their own "Neighbourhood Improvement
Association" under the Commission of Conservation.
2. The Commission to protect the bird life of the coast experimentally
for five years, from the 1st of May, 1913.
3. The 200 miles of coast, from Kegashka to Bradore, to be divided into
5 beats. One local boat and two local men to each beat, from the 1st of
May to the 1st of September, by contract, at $600 a boat = $3,000. Each
boat to have a motor capable of doing at least 6 knots an hour. Local
men are essential. Strangers, however good otherwise, would be lost in
that labyrinth of uncharted and unlighted islands. $2 a day a man is not
too much for these men, who would have to give up their whole time in
the busy season, the only season, in fact, when they make money, except
for the chance of "furring". $1 a day a boat is equally reasonable. The
five beats might be called the Romaine, Harrington, Tabatiere,
Shekattika and Bradore.
4. A sixth boat should move about inspecting the whole coast during the
season. It should have a trained naturalist as Inspector, the local game
warden of the Province of Quebec, and a crew of two men. The Quebec
warden would be paid by the Province. The men and boat, in view of the
larger size of the boat and the greater expenditure of fuel, would be,
say, $6 a day, instead of $5, which, for 4 months, would mean $720. The
Inspector's salary and the incidental expenses of the service would make
up the $5,000. The Province would pay the cost of punishing offenders.
Fines should be divided between the Province and the men who effect the
arrests.
5. One necessary expense would be officially warning the Newfoundlanders
and other depredators through their own press.
6. Arrange co-operation with the Dominion Fisheries Protection Service
and Dominion Government telegraph line; also with the Provincial
Government, which would naturally be glad to have red-handed offenders
consigned to it for punishment. The Commission's boats might be very
useful in giving information to the Fisheries Protection Service, and
_vice versa_. All conservation telegrams should be free.
7. Forbid all outsiders to take eggs or young birds, or to shoot
anything before the 1st of September, or to shoot after that without a
license.
8. Allow genuine residents of the Canadian Labrador to take ducks' and
gulls' eggs up to the 1st of June, and murres', auks' and puffins' eggs
up to the 15th of June. Allow them to take young birds only in case of
sickness: (gull broth is the local equivalent of chicken broth). Allow
them to shoot after the 1st of September without a license. The
conditions of the coast require these exceptions, which will not
endanger the bird life there.
9. Establish one bird sanctuary on the inshore islands between Fond au
Fecteau and Whale Head East, and another on the inshore islands round
Yankee Harbour (Wapitagun).
10. These islands are favourite haunts of the American eider
("sea-duck", "metik", _Somateria dresseri_.)
Perhaps the Northern or Greenland eider (_Somateria mollissima
borealis_) might also be induced to concentrate there. There seems to be
no reason why an eider-down industry should not be built up by the end
of the five years. The eider ought to be specially protected all the way
up to the Pilgrims, which are only 100 miles below Quebec. The Province
might do this from Natashquan west.
11. Begin by protecting all birds except the Great Blackback Gull
("Saddleback", _Larus marinus_) which is very destructive to other bird
life. Let its eggs and young be taken at all times; but prevent adult
birds from being shot before the 1st of September, so as not to starve
the helpless young to death. When other species become really noxious it
will be time enough to treat them in the same way. As a rule, the harm
done by birds popularly but falsely supposed to live on food fishes, and
by birds of prey, is grossly exaggerated. Birds and beasts of prey often
do good service in keeping up a breed by killing off the weaklings.
12. It would be well worth while to keep the Inspector on for the eight
months between the 1st of September, 1913, and the 1st of May, 1914, so
that he and the Provincial warden might make a thorough investigation of
conditions all the year round, inland as well as on the coast, and of
the mammals as well as of the birds. One man from each of the five
local boats and two men from the Inspector's boat would make seven
assistants already trained in conservation. They would have to be paid
enough to counterbalance their strong desire for the rare but sometimes
relatively enormous profits of "furring". Perhaps $50 a man a month
would do, the men to find themselves in everything, as during the
summer. This, for seven men for eight months, would be $2,800. The
incidental expenses and Inspector's salary would bring the total up to
$5,000. The Inspector cannot be too good a man. He should be a good
leader as well as a trained naturalist. The Province should send him the
best warden it can find, to act as his chief assistant. After a year's
work, afloat and ashore, in summer and winter, with birds and mammals,
he ought to be able to make a comprehensive and unbiassed report, which,
by itself, would repay the Commission for introducing conservation into
such a suitable area. Zoogeographic maps and charts would be an
indispensable part of this report.
* * * * *
To sum up:--
I beg to propose that the Commission should bring the Canadian Labrador
under conservation by protecting bird life on the coast for a term of
five years, as an experimental investigation, and by examining, for one
year, the whole question of the birds and mammals, inland as well as on
the seabord, and in winter as well as summer. The cost of the first
would be $5,000 a year for five years = $25,000. The cost of the second
would be $5,000 for one year only. The total cost would be $30,000.
I would never have ventured to suggest this plan to the Commission if I
had not been encouraged by one of your own most valued members, Dr
Robertson. But as soon as he told me what your powers were I saw clearly
that, in this particular case, the Commission and the Canadian Labrador
were each exactly suited to the other.
Under all these circumstances I have no hesitation in making the
strongest possible appeal for action before it is too late. The time has
come when the seabird life must be either made or marred for ever. And I
would ask you to remember what seabird conservation means down there. It
means fresh food, the only kind the people ever get, apart from fish. It
means new business, if the eiders are once made safe in sanctuaries; for
we now import our eider down from points outside of Canada. And it means
the quickening of every human interest, once you encourage the people to
join you in this excellently practical form of "Neighbourhood
Improvement".
There is another and very important point, which I discussed at
considerable length in my _Address_, but to which I return here, because
it can only be settled by a body of men, who, like this Commission, are
national trustees. This point is that certain parts of Labrador are
bound to become ideal public playgrounds, if their wild life is only
saved in time. The common conception of Labrador as being inaccessibly
remote is entirely wrong. It is accessible all round a coast line of
3000 miles at the proper season and with proper care; and its vast
peninsula lies straight between the British Islands and our own North
West. So there is nothing absurd in expecting people to come to Labrador
to-morrow when they are going to Spitzbergen, far north of the Arctic
Circle to-day. Of course, Spitzbergen enjoys an invincible advantage at
present, as its wild life is being carefully preserved. But once
Labrador is put under conservation the odds will be reversed. And I what
is true of Labrador in general is much truer still of the Canadian
Labrador. Here is a country which is actually south of London, which is
only 2000 miles from England, 1000 from New York, and 500 from Quebec;
which stands beside one of the most frequented of ocean highways; and
which has a labyrinth of islands, a maze of rivers, and an untamed
hinterland, all formed by Nature for wild "zoos", preserves and open
hunting grounds. And here, too, all over the civilized world, are
city-bound men, turning more and more to Nature for health and
recreation, and willing to spend increasingly large sums for what they
seek and find. Surely, it is only the common sense of statesmanship to
bring this country and those men together, in the near future, under
conditions which are best for both, by making the Canadian Labrador an
attractive land of life and not a hopelessly repellant land of death.
One good, long look ahead to-day, and immediate action following, will
bring the No-Man's-Land of the Canadian Labrador into its rightful place
within the fellowship of the Province and Dominion. You will never find
cause for vain regret. There is a sound basis of material value in the
products of the coast already; and material value is always increased by
conservation. But there is more than material value involved. We still
have far too much wanton destruction of wild life in Canada, not only
among those who have ignorantly grown up to it, but among the well-to-do
and presumably well-educated sham sportsmen who go into any unprotected
wilds simply to indulge their lust of slaughter to the full. Both these
classes will be stopped in their abominations and shown a better way;
for whenever man is taught a lesson in conservation he rises to a higher
plane in his attitude towards all his humbler fellow-beings, and
eventually becomes a sportsman-naturalist and true lover of the wilds.
Then, but not till then, he will see such a drama of Creation along the
Canadian Labrador as the whole world can never show elsewhere. On the
one hand lies the illimitable past, a past which actually existed before
the earliest of living creatures: on the other, the promise of a great
human future. The past is in the hills, the true, the only "everlasting
hills of time"; for they are of the old, the immeasurably old, azoic
rock of the Laurentians, which forms the roots of other mountains, and
which here alone appears to-day, on the face of a young Earth, the same
as at the birth of Life itself. The future lies within the ships that
sail the offing of these hills, crowded with those hosts of immigration
who are so eager to become a part of what may be a mighty nation. And
there, between and round the ships and hills, in sea and sky and on the
land, our kindred of the wild are linking these vastly different ages
close together in what should be a present paradise. Shall one, short,
heedless generation break that whole chain of glorious life and make
that paradise a desert?