THE CLUB’S LEGACY: A CONTINENTAL SYSTEM OF WILD LIFE CONSERVATION
By Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science,
Faculty of Environmental Design. The University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

One of the great cultural achievements of North American society is the creation of a uniquely successful system of - continental - wildlife conservation. It brought back wildlife from near extinction in the United States and severe depletion in Canada, a feat which may rank as the greatest environmental success story of the 20th Century. It not only met the conditions of what is today’s Holy Grail, “sustainable development” of a natural resource, but exceeded such, because it steadily increased the wildlife resource throughout the century. Compare that to our “successes” managing offshore fish stocks. It utterly defeated Garett Hardin’s famous “Tragedy of the Commons” and demonstrated how in a capitalistic society a natural resource can not only be treasured by its citizen, but turned into a great Public Good by which the private sector generated unprecedented wealth and employment. Whatever its flaws - and there are some - it is a system we can justly celebrate, as well as those that spared no effort so may decades ago to make it possible.

Our wildlife conservation system is continental in scope. That is, the same basic policies govern the fate of wildlife in Canada as in the United States. And that is remarkable, because Canada, a loyal, dedicated colony of Great Britain, followed the lead of the United States in wildlife conservation. Canada did not embrace the policies and practices of wildlife ownership and management as accepted in the “mother country” of Great Britain, foremost among these being the tie of wildlife and hunting to landownership, and the sale of wildlife as a commodity in the market place. Even more remarkable is the fact that some of Canada’s negotiators and movers that were instrumental in creating this new system of wildlife conservation were Englishmen, immigrants to Canada. How is it possible than that an untried system of wildlife conservation was embraced by both nations, despite the conspicuous presence of older European systems that boast then much larger wildlife populations?

It appears that at the turn of the century when both nations had become cognisant of wildlife’s plight and grappled for solutions, a like-minded elite arose on both sides of the border that knew and befriended each other, learned from each other’s successes and failures and acted on such with insight and resolve. The Canadian effort revolved about the Commission on Conservation which was constituted under The Conservation Act of 1909. The Commission was chaired till 1918 by Sir Clifford Sifton, lawyer, businessman, millionaire and one of the ablest politicians that ever served Canada. He was knighted for his distinguished services in 1915. The commission consisted of 18 members and 12 ex-officio members. The caliber of the Commission and the seriousness with which conservation was considered, may be judged by the Commission’s composition. It including one knight besides the chairman, Sir Edmund, B. Osler, four deans, chancellors or presidents of universities plus an additional five PhD’s or professors, two members of parliament, one Senator and the business managers for one of Canada’s most influential dailies, “The Globe” from Toronto. The ex-officio members were federal or provincial ministers of agriculture, lands, lands and forests, the interior, mines, attorney-generals and even three provincial premiers, including Clifford Sifton’s older brother the Honourable Arthur, L. Sifton, Premier and Minister of Railways and Telephones from Alberta. The Commission parcelled out work to various committees including one on Fisheries, Game and Fur-bearing Animals, under the chairmanship of Dr. Cecil, C. Jones, Chancellor, University of New Brunswick. This was, clearly, an assembly of able men from Canada’s elite. It is unfortunate that the Great War that erupted in 1914 overshadowed their productive work.

The greatest achievement of the Commission was the 1915 Migratory Bird Treaty ratified with the United States ( and expanded to Mexico by 1924). This in addition to the North West Game Act that applied to Crown lands. The “father” of both pieces of legislation, and the hero of our story, was an immigrant, a Canadian - or more correctly - a North American by choice, not by the accident of birth: Dr. Charles Gordon Hewitt. He arrived from England in 1909 in Canada, a lecturer from the University of Manchester, to assume the position of Dominion Entomologist to which was added the position of Consulting Zoologist. A first rate scientist and administrator, he was soon indispensable to the Commission in “getting things done”.

These comments by the chairman of the Committee on Fisheries, Game and Fur-bearing Animals, Dr. Cecil, C. Jones, opening their meeting on November 1st 1915 are instructive of what the committee faced and of its attitude. “We have all felt, I am sure, that it is rather pathetic that in a country as new as Canada there should be so little wild life, that wild life in Canada, especially bird life, should compare so unfavourably with that of countries in Europe in the same geographical situation but which have been settled for thousands of years. Wildlife is there far more abundant than it is in Canada even at the present time. With the example of the United States before us - a bad example, especially during their early history, and in the western states - the preservation of game and the proper administration of game laws in this Dominion would seem to be one of the very important things to which this Committee might devote its attention....We have all looked with a good deal of interest at the work that is being done at present in the United States towards retrieving the bad management of their early history and the effort now being made towards restoring their game and administrating their game laws properly. We are now looking to the men there to advise us as to methods of best carrying forward the work of preserving game in Canada and of administering our laws properly here.”

And members of the Boone and Crockett Club, as well as of the Campfire Club and others of distinction, rose to the occasion. They cooperated with the Canadian Commission, made formal presentations, maintained a lively correspondence and met to negotiate with delegates of the Commission in the US. Some of these activities are recorded in the proceedings of the Commission. The Boone and Crocket Club’s geographic area of interest as defined in Article 1, Section 1, was not the United States, but North America, and Section 3 defined North America as “All lands of the Americas north of the southern boundary of Mexico.” Requests for changes by US conservationists displayed remarkable precision and knowledge of Canadian conditions. How close these pioneers of North American wildlife conservation were to one another is documented in C. Gordon Hewitt’s book “The Conservation of Wild Life in Canada”. He acknowledges his debt to four Canadians, four Americans and one Englishman. Every one of the four Americans was a member of the Boone and Crockett Club. They were Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History (Regular and Honorary Life Member); E. W. Nelson, Chief of the United States Biological Survey (Professional Member); W. T. Hornaday, Director of the New York Zoological Gardens (Professional Member) and Charles Sheldon (Regular Member). The Englishman acknowledged was none other than Rudyard Kipling.

Hewitt’s book was decorated with paintings of the great Carl Rungius (Professional Member) who had illustrated earlier books by Theodore Roosevelt (Founder & first President), William Hornaday and Charles Sheldon, who had been commissioned by the New York Zoological Society, but who did much of his paintings and studies in Banff, Alberta. Much of Carl Rungius work is now in the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, where a great Rungius exhibition to honour him not only as the premier wildlife painter, but as hunter and naturalist, is currently under preparation (to open this summer). Gordnon Hewitt made reference in his book and reports to the commission to other members of the Boone and Crockett Club, such as the noted zoologist J. A Allan (Professional member) who named the Stone’s sheep and Osborn’s caribou, H. W. Henshaw (Professional Member) Chief of the Biological Survey, the great British Explorer of Arctic Canada Warburton Pike (Professional Member) and the provincial game warden of British Columbia and author Bryan Williams (professional member). Frederick K. Vreeland of the Camp Fire Club of North America, addressed the Commission on wildlife conservation policies. One may also mention as a source of Hewitt’s information Andrew J. Stone of Missoula an able explorer and naturalist after whom J. A. Allan named the Stone’s sheep and who participated with Theodore Roosevelt in writing “The Deer Family”. William T. Hornaday and Gordon Hewitt were close friends and mutual admirers as is evident in their writings. Despite its name “The Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada”, Hewitt’s book was not published Canada, but in New York by Charles Scribner’s Sons. It was an event Charles Gordon Hewitt never experienced. Shortly after presenting a paper on fur-bearers at the meetings of the Commission of Conservation in Montreal on February 19-20th, 1920, he fell ill with the dreaded influenza that killed then so many in their prime in North America. He died of it on February 29th, 1920, six days after his 35th birthday, and a little more than ten years after setting foot in Canada.

We owe much to this able man deprived so soon of life. The Royal Society of Canada payed him great tribute as did his friend William T. Hornaday. Ironically, in his brief biography in The Canadian Encyclopaedia there is little mention of his far reaching engagements on the international stage not only on behalf of wildlife, but also on behalf of agricultural entomology. But then, much of what the founding fathers of wildlife conservation did early in the 20th century is forgotten, barely mentioned - if at all - in our texts of wildlife management. And yet we shall have to revisit, just as they did, the arena of policy debate, for we will be forced to fight for wildlife once again. Our system of wildlife conservation is under attack on both sides of the border. Agricultural bureaucracies are determined to enshrine game farming and re-establish markets in dead wildlife, contemptuous of the fact that such violates every policy that made wildlife conservation here a success. Affluent Americans are working to restrict public access to wildlife by buying or leasing hunting lands. Various urban interest groups are at work on diverse issues, from enshrine animal rights to disarming the public or banning hunting to eliminating wildlife from urban spaces. Alas, Canada is here further along than the United States. The Club’s legacy was to bring to life a highly successful system of wildlife conservation spanning North America. Will we succeed again?