Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador | Page 3

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.
Of course, everything ultimately turns on the enforcement of the laws.
And I still think that two naturalists and twenty men afloat and the
same number ashore, with double these numbers when Hudson bay and
the Arctic are included, would be enough to patrol Labrador
satisfactorily, if they were in touch with local and leasehold wardens
and with foresters, if the telegraph was used only on their side, if they
and the general inspector were all of the right kind, and if the whole
service was vigorously backed up at headquarters. Two fast motor
cruisers and suitable means of making the land force also as mobile as
possible are sine qua non.
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
An article by Mr. W.H. Blake, K.C., of Toronto, on "The Laurentides
National Park" appeared in the February number of the University
Magazine. The following extracts have been taken from Mr. Blake's
manuscript:
"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.
"In the administration of this Reserve the government adopts a policy
which has shown admirable results; and as this policy is in