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

Animal Sanctuaries
in
Labrador

SUPPLEMENT TO
AN ADDRESS
BY

LT.-COLONEL WILLIAM WOOD

OTTAWA, CANADA
1912

Supplement To An Address

ON

Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador

BY

Lieut.-Colonel William Wood, F.R.S.C.

The appeal prefixed to the original Address in 1911 announced the issue of the present supplement in 1912, and asked experts and other leaders of public opinion to set the subject on firm foundations by contributing advice and criticism.

The response was most gratifying. The twelve hundred review copies sent out to the Canadian press, and the hundreds more sent out to general and specialist periodicals in every part of the English-speaking world, all met with a sympathetic welcome, and were often given long and careful notices. Many scientific journals, like the Bulletin of the Zoological Society of America, sporting magazines, like the Canadian Rod and Gun, and zoophil organs, like the English Animals' Guardian, examined the Address thoroughly from their respective standpoints. The Empire Review has already reprinted it verbatim in London, and an association of outing men are now preparing to do the same in New York.

But though the press has been of the greatest service in the matter of publicity the principal additions to a knowledge of the question have come from individuals. Naturalists, sportsmen and leaders in public life have all helped both by advice and encouragement. Quotations from a number of letters are published at the end of this supplement. The most remarkable characteristic of all this private correspondence and public notice, as well as the spoken opinions of many experts, is their perfect agreement on the cardinal point that we are wantonly living like spendthrifts on the capital of our wild life, and that the general argument of the Address is, therefore, incontrovertibly true.

The gist of some of the most valuable advice is, that while the Address is true so far as it goes, its application ought to be extended to completion by including the leasehold system, side by side with the establishment of sanctuaries and the improvement and enforcement of laws.

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.

But before trying to give a few working suggestions on laws, leaseholds and sanctuaries, and, more particularly still, before giving any quotations from letters, I feel bound to point out again, as I did in the Address itself, that my own personality is really of no special consequence, either in giving the suggestions or receiving the letters. I have freely picked the brains of other men and simply put together the scattered parts of what ought to be a consistent whole.

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.

To be scientifically comprehensive they must define man's whole attitude towards wild life, whether for business, sport or study. One general code would suffice. A preamble could explain that the object was to use the interest, not abuse the capital of wild life. Then the noxious and beneficial kinds could be enumerated, close seasons mentioned, regulations laid down, etc. From this one code it would be easy to pick out for separate publication whatever applied only to one place or one form of human activity. But even this general code would not be enough unless the relations between animal and plant life were carefully adjusted, so that each might benefit the other, whenever possible, and neither might suffer because the other was under a different department. If, in both the Dominion and Provincial governments there are unified departments of agriculture to aid and control man's own domestic harvest, why should there not also be unified departments to aid and control his harvest of the wilds? A Minister of Fauna and Flora sounds startling, and perhaps a little absurd. But fisheries, forests and game have more to do with each other than any one of them with mines. And, whatever his designation, such a minister would have no lack of work, especially in Labrador. But here we come again to the complex human factors of three Governments and more Departments. Yet, if this bio-geographic area cannot be brought into one administrative entity, then the next best thing is concerted action on the part of all the Governments and all their Departments.

There is no time to lose. Even now, when laws themselves stop short at the Atlantic, new and adjacent areas are about to be exploited without the slightest check being put on the exploiters. An expedition is leaving New York for the Arctic. It is well found in all the implements of destruction. It will soon be followed by others. And the musk-ox, polar bears and walrus will shrink into narrower and narrower limits, when, under protection, far wider ones might easily support abundance of this big game, together with geese, duck and curlews. It is wrong to say that such people can safely have their fling for a few years more. None of the nobler forms of wild life have any chance against modern facilities of uncontrolled destruction. What happened to the great auk and the Labrador duck in the Gulf? What happened to the musk-ox in Greenland? What is happening everywhere to every form of beneficial and preservable wild life that is not being actively protected to-day? Then, there is the disappearing whale and persecuted seal to think of also in those latitudes. The laissez-faire argument is no better here than elsewhere. For if wild life is worth exploiting it must be worth conserving.

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 occasion should be taken to place the whole of the fauna under law; not only game, but noxious and beneficial species of every kind.