The River of the Mother of God: and other Essays by Aldo Leopold

Report to the American Game Conference on an American Game Policy [1930]

Report to the American Game Conference on an American Game Policy [1930] Leopold served on dozens of professional committees during his career, almost always taking the lead in drafting the reports. Perhaps most noteworthy was his service during 1929-1932 as chairman of the Committee on Game Policy of the American Game Association, forerunner to the Wildlife Management Institute and the National Wildlife Federation. The game policy proposed by Leopold's committee was adopted by resolution at the seventeenth American Game Conference in December 1930. It became the basis for wildlife administration policies in many states and set the general direction of the wildlife profession in America for decades. The report included an explanatory appendix not reprinted here. Introduction Demand for hunting is outstripping supply. If hunting as a recreation is to continue, game production must be increased. Where? How? By whom? For whom? These are the questions with which a game policy must deal. In the case of ordinary economic products, the free play of economic forces automatically adjusts supply to demand. Game production, however, is not so simple. Irreplaceable species may be destroyed before these forces become operative. Moreover, game is not a primary crop, but a secondary by-product offarm and forest lands, obtainable only when the farming and forestry cropping methods are suitably modified in favor of the game. Economic forces must act through these primary land uses, rather than directly. It is axiomatic that timber and farm crops must be bought and sold, otherwise they would not be produced at all. Is this also true of game? Some say yes, but the majority adhere to the deep-rooted American pioneer tradi150 Report to the American Game Conference 151 tion that hunting is a free privilege, and insist that it can be kept so, in spite of the contrary pressure of economic law. The two opposing schools of thought have so far nullified each other, because the proponents of each have insisted that the two ideas cannot coexist; that one must prevail to the exclusion of the other. This Committee contends that they can and should coexist, each on its appropriate kind of land, and often in close proximity to each other. We submit that public hunting under the license system is workable for game species inhabiting cheap land which the public can afford to own (or lease) and operate, but that compensation to the landowner in some form or other is the only workable system for producing game on expensive private farmland. We submit that recognition of this principle, and a spirit of mutual cooperation in acting upon it, will bend the two hitherto opposing schools of thought to a new and common direction. We do not pretend to foresee or prescribe all of the detailed actions necessary to accomplish this. This report, however, segregates certain fundamental moves which have this new and common direction. We urge all factions to co-operate in executing them, and to let experience dictate succeeding steps. We believe, in short, that experiment, not doctrine or prophecy, is the key to an American Game Policy. Seven fundamental actions are recommended (Part A) for adoption by theAmerican Game Conference as an American Game Policy. An Appendix (Part B) presents in additional detail how the seven fundamental suggestions were arrived at by the Committee, and describes such ways and means as are known to it for carrying them out. These particular ways and means are not offered as final. Better ones may be developed by experimentation. The proposed policy offers no panacea. We urge frank recognition of the fact that there is no panacea; that game conservation faces a crisis in many states; that it is only a question of time before it does so in all states; that the present order is radically unsatisfactory; and that mild modifications of it will not do. We are convinced that only bold action, guided by as much wisdom as we can muster from time to time, can restore America's game resources. Timidity, optimism, or unbending insistence on old grooves of thought and action will surely either destroy the remaining resources, or force the adoption of policies which will limit their use to a few. 152 Report to the American Game Conference S. F. Rathbun Wm. J. Tucker John C. Phillips J. W. Titcomb COMMITTEE ON GAME POLICY AIdo Leopold, Chairman I. Zellerbach P. S. Lovejoy Seth E. Gordon Paul G. Redington...