Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador | Page 9

a
legal footing; so they may understand that it is not a mere bluff on the
part of the people living on the coast. So far there has been nothing but
talk, and nothing official; no arrest made, etc., so one can hardly blame
them for the position they take, especially as they have been doing the
same thing for many years.
The notice should be very clear and penalties set forth plainly.
Mr. W.T. Lindsay, M.E., who has travelled thousands of miles through
Labrador, writes:
I have spent two summers in the north eastern wilderness of Quebec
and can fully appreciate your suggestions.
I take the liberty of sending you a copy of an "interview" by the
Montreal Witness upon my return in 1909, by which you will see that I
am in accord with your views, _i.e._, unless the Government takes
immediate steps to protect the wild animals in the Province of Quebec,
many of them will become extinct....
I would suggest that the Commission of Conservation make a close
investigation of the ways and means of the fur traders along the north
shore, and I believe that official, unbiassed and independent
investigation will expose a very peculiar state of affairs in connection
with the mal-conservation of game.

Mr. Clive Phillips-Wolley, the well known authority on big-game sport,
writes from Koksilah, Nanaimo, B.C., Canada:
... of course I agree with your views: we have in this Province been
doing our best to put them in practice with the most excellent results.
Dr. W.T. Hornaday stirred us up, and, though we did not put our
sanctuaries exactly where he suggested we took a hint from him and
have been rewarded by an extraordinary increase in big-horns, wapiti
and other big game. I, of course, have shot a great deal as a big game
hunter, but, thank God, I don't remember one wanton kill, and I know I
have not killed one per cent. of the beasts I might have done. No one
wants to....
The Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States,
writes:
I desire to extend my most earnest good wishes and congratulations to
the Commission of Conservation of Canada. Your address on the need
of animal sanctuaries in Labrador must appeal, it seems to me, to every
civilized man. The great naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, in his book,
"The World of Life," recently published, says that all who profess
religion, or sincerely believe in the Deity, the designer and maker of
this world and of every living thing, as well as all lovers of Nature,
should treat the wanton and brutal destruction of living things and of
forests as among the first of forbidden sins. In his own words, "All the
works of Nature, animate or inanimate, should be invested with a
certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused, and never to be
recklessly destroyed or defaced. To pollute a spring or a river, to
exterminate a bird or a beast, should be treated as moral offences and as
social crimes. Never before has there been such widespread ravage of
the earth's surface by the destruction of vegetation, and with it, animal
life, and such wholesale defacement of the earth. The nineteenth
century saw the rise and development and culmination of these crimes
against God and man. Let us hope that the twentieth century will see
the rise of a truer religion, a purer Christianity." I have condensed what
Mr. Wallace said because it is too long to quote in full. He shows that
this wanton and brutal defacement of Nature, this annihilation of the
natural resources that should be part of the National capital of our
children and children's children, this destruction of so much that is
beautiful and grand, goes hand in hand with the sordid selfishness

which is responsible for so very much of the misery of our civilization.
The movement for the conservation of our natural resources, for the
protection of our forests and of the wild life of the woods, the
mountains and the coasts, is essentially a democratic movement.
Democracy, in its essence, means that a few people shall not be
allowed for their own selfish gratification, to destroy what ought to
belong to the people as a whole. The men who destroy our forests for
their own immediate pecuniary benefit, the men who make a lifeless
desert of what were once coasts teeming with a wonderfully varied bird
life, these, whether rich or poor, and their fellows in destruction of
every type, are robbing the whole people, are robbing the citizens of the
future of their natural rights. Over most of the United States, over all of
South Africa and large portions of Canada, this destruction was
permitted to go on to the bitter end. It is late