Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation

by William T. Hornaday, William Temple

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Nature, Conservation, Ecology, Environment

507 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

From Wikipedia:
William Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, conservationist, taxidermist, and author. He served as the first director of the New York Zoological Park, known today as the Bronx Zoo, and he was a pioneer in the early wildlife conservation movement in the United States.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scathing 1913 indictment of the state of American wildlife and the laws that attempt to protect it with suggestions of how the situation might be rectified. A long but very informative book anyone interested in protecting and conserving our wildlife should read. A great history of the conservation movement of the time. Several chapters giving a good look into the millinery industry and how it almost destroyed numerous bird populations.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars is a good review for a book written over a century ago!!
This is great source for Hornaday quotes and visionary goodness at the beginning of the conservation "movement."
I will say, when I started listening to this audio book, I planned to only sample it; See if it was even bearable to listen to; see if there were any nuggets of interest and value. In the end I listened to the whole thing (less some of the long continued chapters on state-by-state game law status and recommendations....) and found it quite intriguing to carry me through!

This book is an enlightening read to gain perspective of what wildlife abundance was like 100 years ago, and how even then people were able to sound the alarm to try to halt the outright destruction and extermination. There are fascinating insights how even then, the gun lobby was at work to secure their interests through hunting alone, and argued both not to squash their innovations in automatic, multi barrel, rapid firing weapons and other mass killing innovations coming of age at the time. How similar it sounds today in their striving to protect their interest, but now presumably need only lean on their 2nd amendment rights to keep the drive alive.
Also insightful are the lengthy, wide and deep discussions and recommendations for hunting regulation - bag limits, season limits, the need for outright closure of seasons for certain species. Before reading this, I had come to accept that there are meaningful hunting regulations today and that Hunters today have a strong ethical position to respect and appreciate the wildlife and hunting regulations they have in place. Honestly, I don't know what those limits and regulations are today, but I since reading this book, I suspect they are still highly influenced by a reluctant and resistant hunting lobby and are likely still overly liberal in their allowable take!
One of the fascinating characterizations Hornaday lays out are his stereotypical characterizations of game hunters: among them, Gentleman Sport Hunters, Gunners, Commercial pot hunters, subsistence food hunters, and outright illegal destructive hunters (Can't recall the name he assigns these) -but he defines these roles clearly - those who respect nature, enjoy the hunt and likely stop well before the legal limit, especially when they know their game is on thin ice. Those who hunt to the limit, because that is what the limit is for, why would you take any less? Those that hunt up to the limit daily, continuously, across states and regions, and of course those that hunt illegally beyond limits and season....
Bottom line, with few exceptions to his categories (perhaps the impoverished subsistence hunters of the early 20th century and earlier), I suspect we have many of the same classes of hunters today. And while the figurehead of the responsible sport hunter, permitted to bag a single or small number of their game is the posterchild we'll see today on the cover of field and stream, I suspect, the more dastardly categories are still out there. hunting to their limit or beyond because the limit is there to tell them when to stop... or worse yet, as long as there is game for the taking, that is what they came for.
Anyway, long story short. Some fascinating looks into the mindset of hunting and conservationists 100 years ago.
Yes, there are irrelevant and very dry sections that aren't of much interest to a reader today (discussing state by state game laws, inadequacy, species at risk, species taken etc...).
And Yes, Hornady is what we would consider today a straight up racist. Though I imagine in his time he was likely fairly progressive on his view on race, and might even argue that from a scientific, descriptive point of view, the way he describes Italians and Negros with disdain in their subsistence hunting with no regard for the effects on bird species etc, may be considered as purely factual description, with a slight edge of racial discrimination.

[Galicius]

Sad, sad story of the Passenger pigeon.