Thomas Alfred Coward

“ Game preservation, a very ancient source of interference, has altered the constituents of the fauna more than most agencies, the cultivation of land and domestication of animals excepted; it has too often altered it for the benefit of the minority. Yet we must face the fact that the destruction of predatory creatures and the provision of shelters for game—woodlands, coverts, and moors—have proved advantageous to innumerable creatures, mammals, birds, and insects, for example, which were innocuous to game or beneath the notice of its guardians. ”

“ The one which perhaps appeals to the largest number, and which gets most support in that agent of popular propaganda, the Press, is the Economic argument. The lay and commercial mind understands this line of reasoning. Your animal is or may be of value—to whom or what?—to mankind in general; of value commercially; of value as a means of checking the increase of, or even of destroying, something else which appears detrimental to human welfare; of value as food for some other creature whose body or products are a commercial or agricultural (one and the same thing) asset for man. ”

“ Why should it mean any thing to us if a species becomes extinct, ceases to exist? Nature's competitive struggle has swept away untold forms without any call upon man's influence, swept them away before man appeared upon the earth, brushed them aside, the "thousand types," actually to allow the development of the better fitted creatures, amongst which man ranks so high. ”

“ The last and least popular argument is the Scientific, or, to put it in other words, the argument for scientific reasons. It is, apart from economic arguments, most difficult to advocate, and yet, I must confess, it is the one which appeals most to my mind. It is an ethical question, and it is fair to say that its force cannot be urged without admitting an element of all other arguments. ”

“ But can we not guess that awful dislocation of the balance amongst native forms occurred before the rabbit found its level; how many creatures whose absence we mourn may have owed their decline to competition with the rabbit? What it can do when placed in an alien land we know, for is not Australia still faced with the problem? And have not other efforts to check it by introducing its foes—stoat, weasel, dog, cat, and fox—all had bad results?—the destruction of the native fauna or the colonists' stock, but not of the prolific alien. ”

“ The numbers are raised above the normal, and when the normal food supply returns, famine follows as surely as when the supply was short; there are too many months to be filled. Thus, taking an average of years, the necessary average is maintained, and this is nature's balance.
It is fair to say that there cannot be in any civilised, indeed in any, country populated by man a real natural balance; man is the great disturber of nature. But in a country like Britain, where civilisation has been working for the ends of man for ages, there is what we may call a human or artificial natural balance ”

“ So long as the disturbance of nature is confined to cultivation of land or domestication of useful animals, necessities for man's existence, this disturbance is not only justifiable, but a duty. It may mean, it is certain to mean, destruction of many existing forms as well as individuals, but the loss cannot be helped; it is true, however, that in few cases has the cultivation for food or the destruction of animals for the same reason been the cause of extinction; it is when commercialism demands wholesale and usually wasteful methods that this undesirable end is evident. ”

“ Without entering into the ethics of war, we can look back and review the lessons of the recent struggle, when interference with nature was rampant. First consider food shortage apart from political and economic causes; it was deemed necessary to encourage internal resources; we strove to increase our food supply, especially of wheat, potatoes, and vegetables. We sowed wheat everywhere, but we did not always reap the harvest; in certain soils for long unsuited to or at least unused to this crop, the wheat bulb-fly appeared and worked its wicked will. ”

“ With a little more knowledge we should have avoided the catastrophe; but had we continued to grow wheat in spite of the set-back, we should probably have discovered that we had in time reached an artificial natural balance, when man would have got some wheat, but neither would the bulb-fly nor its parasites have entirely vanished. We may, in cultivation, force the pace, we do it constantly, but ultimately natural forces assert themselves ”

“ The bud-destroying bullfinch eats also the seeds of troublesome weeds, the tit kills the spider which itself ensnares alike the troublesome fly and the parasite which keeps it in check, the moth, parent of the caterpillar, and the ichneumon which destroys the grub. It is all very complicated, very confusing. All the more reason for careful, unbiassed study of all animal life; we never know where and when we may hit on fresh light, a new link in this complicated, tangled chain of nature. ”

“ The bird protector, however, is fully alive to the value of the æsthetic argument in certain circles, and gains much support from the sympathy and purses of ladies and others who are mainly concerned with "the poor, pretty little birds." From the purely æsthetic side there is much to be said in favour of maintaining all birds of bright plumage or pleasant voice, and there is, perhaps, nothing else which will combat that depraved commercial spirit which fosters the pseudo-love of the beautiful in the head-gear of unthinking woman—a survival of barbarity. ”

“ Deliberately or unintentionally man has in his dealings with animals derived profit and loss, and he has by no means invariably succeeded in attaining the ends that he desired, or which, at first blush, seemed likely to result. Animals, consciously or unconsciously, treat man as a competing species, and, however warmly a Krapotkin may advocate mutual aid, or a Drummond urge the harmony of nature, the painful fact remains, man and the primitive protozoan alike strive and have to strive to exist at all. ”

“ Looking back at fifty years of struggle to legislate on behalf of wild birds we see some strange examples of the futility of human efforts and some curious and unexpected results upon our fauna. To no man, perhaps, does bird protection owe more than to the late Professor Newton. He was a rare type of philosophical ornithologist, and largely to his determination was due the first really unselfish legislation on behalf of wild birds—the Sea-Birds Protection Act of 1869. ”

“ Not only do I endorse this, but I would add my belief that the ancient barbaric attitude, cruel, wasteful, blind though it was, was more in harmony with nature than the greedy, commercial, devil-take-the-hindmost spirit of the so-called intelligent man of the present day who, for his own gain, exploits the weaker brain power of less highly developed creatures. ”

“ What has happened with another marsh species, the black-headed gull? Driven from place to place by the drainage of one after another of its haunts, it has still found sites to colonise and wherein to increase. True, there may be factors which explain the increase of one species and the decrease of another which have no connection with the influence, at any rate direct, of man; we can, for instance, explain the increase and spread of the great crested grebe, at one time nearly swept away by the demand for its soft breast plumage—protection gave it the start it needed. ”

“ It is because we know that within recent years species after species has vanished, and that we know that man's rapacity is in many cases responsible, that we are so anxious to check his evil influences whilst yet there is time.
There are two methods of stopping or at any rate retarding destruction—legislation and personal influence; each has its place, and as a rule one without the other fails. Protective laws cannot be passed without the strong use of the economic and humanitarian arguments, and the last has often failed to gain a hearing. ”

“ When it becomes the life work of many more philosophical naturalists, and is not merely treated as something to dabble with during years of preparation for some more lucrative career, we shall have discoveries which will make us very diffident about destroying or even attempting to destroy organisms which at the present time we think are in our way.
What is the object of protection or preservation? Why do we endeavour to maintain one plant or animal, or urge that all should have consideration? ”

“ The third argument, which may be called for want of a more descriptive title the Humanitarian argument, appeals most strongly against the cruelty of destruction. There is sound good sense in it, too, but it is often marred by a strange lack of balance. Men and women who sicken at the sight of pain in animals they admire will ruthlessly inflict it upon those they class as vermin or merely consider ugly. Here again, where there is cruelty in destruction, it is safe and right to use the humanitarian argument for all that it is worth, but we must avoid faddism ”

“ When engaged in warfare against the smaller creatures, especially those which are in reality his parasites, man usually fails to destroy, though he may succeed in keeping them in check by materially reducing numbers. But when he pits his science and cunning against the less developed intelligence of the larger forms, he can entirely wipe a species out, and often does this in his greed to secure wealth in advance of his human competitors. ”

“ The increase beyond the normal proportions of any species of bird, due to protection which has not taken into consideration consequences, may be a tragedy. It may, probably will, affect our life interests; it certainly will have influence upon the relative numbers of other forms. Need I mention as problems of the day the extraordinary increase since 1880 of the black-headed gull and the sterling, two species wholly valuable in their proper proportions, but threatening other forms, actively or passively, now that they have become so numerous. ”

“ Until protective legislation is framed by scientific, unbiassed students of bird life, who ignore the plea of the sentimentalist and weigh with caution the enthusiasm of the economist, the depletion of bird life—that is, of the species we most wish to preserve—will continue. ”

“ There are many introductions for which we are not intentionally responsible, creatures which travel with and in our food supplies. Many of these come merely as stowaways and perish in an inhospitable land, but others, the hangers-on of civilisation, follow man wherever he takes or sends his supplies. The codlin moth, estimated to cost America at least £2,000,000 annually, we sent from Europe, and in return we have to thank America for the American blight. ”

“ With larger and less numerous animals the fight is more one-sided, for they are not numerous because he is numerous. How effectually he can destroy is shown by the extinction of the vast hordes of passenger pigeons, [5] [6] the Eskimo curlew, the great auk, and many of the Australian parrots. But we need not go beyond the limits of our own land for examples. It has often been argued that drainage of marshes or cultivation of land explains the extinction as breeding species of the bittern, ruff, black-tailed godwit, great bastard, Savi's warbler, and crane. ”

“ It must, however, be admitted, as even Newton was forced to admit, that the Acts, in spite of their blundering. have accomplished much. Public feeling was and is strong, and, backed by indifferent legislation, it has so far checked destruction that many species have benefited. Here comes an anticlimax: some of the species, actively or passively protected, have increased so enormously that they have exceeded the natural limits, overweighed the balance, and it is questionable whether further protection is or is not desirable. ”

“ Any shortage, due to climatic variation, of the vegetable food supply is immediately followed by famine, which means not only famine for the phytophagous, but for the carnivorous forms; a good year, an increased output of cultivation, the introduction of a new or alien crop, is followed by an increase of vegetable feeders, an increase of their natural enemies, and of the creatures which subsist upon them. ”

“ When we exclude from our thoughts colonising man, who has the power to some extent of altering the whole face of a country, we see that the lower forms must either remain in or travel to and from the best food-supplying districts or perish. Britain is a typically crowded area, and is so well stocked with various forms of life that we may treat it as a fair example of a food area. It supplies just the necessary amount of food to make life endurable for just that number of creatures which it can support ”

“ Maybe man has the right of might, whether by strength or learning, of cultivating certain plants and animals at the expense of others, and condemning those which are in his way as "weeds" or "vermin," but he is apt to overlook a very important point. Knowledge is progressive, and, as the historian knows, the acme of knowledge is a matter of the age; what is wisdom to-day may be foolishness tomorrow. The learning of the past, in some cases at any rate, is ridiculous in our twentieth-century eyes; in each era there were philosophers who believed that they had reached the top of the tree. ”

“ It is not to the academic mind that we need to appeal, but to the great body of electors whose duty it is to send as representatives men who will realise that science is the driving power in life, and that science without education is impossible. ”