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Show FORESTS AND GAME (By Benj. Swapp.) Within the state thoro are fourteen game refuges, the creator portion of which lie in I lie national forests of the state. This places a great responsibility responsibil-ity upon the forest service which is that each forest officer is a deputy game warden. It Is up to the forest service to soo that proper correlation is had between be-tween different resources of the forest. There must be timber for the home builder, feed for t he stockman, protection of watersheds wa-tersheds for community health, fish and game for the sportsmen. sports-men. flame within the national forests for-ests are becoming of primary importance, in that it affords recreation to a great many people peo-ple not otherwise users of the forests, and comes in conflict with other uses. Considerable opposition has been experienced in the past with reference to game animals-, damage to ranges and farms, but we need a modification mod-ification of ideas, we must have feed for our livestock, afford protection to watersheds and timber, but at the same time we must make up the vast army that throngs the national forests for-ests each year for hunting, fishing, fish-ing, rest and recreation. The best friends the sportsmen sports-men can have are the farmer, the rancher and the homesteader. homestead-er. This friendship can best be established by the actions of the sportsmen themselves. Farmers can provide food for game birds, and reduce or keep under control con-trol their natural enemies, but when a gunner over-runs and destroys the farmers' property with no care or regard, one cannot can-not expect much cooperation. Therefore, let us start to build up this friendship. We should not hunt or fish on land belonging be-longing to others without first securing the permission of the owner or tenant. If it is something some-thing worth having it Is certainly certain-ly something worth asking for. On the other hand the farmer farm-er should not post his property in such a way as to prevent hunters from enjoying the benefits bene-fits and at the same time go on other property to hunt and later complain of damages done by game birds and animals, to his own property. The national forests are the national haunts of the game animals, without them we would have little game. We must pro- j tect these game covers from fire, for once the ground cover j is removed erosion begins this destroys fish life and places the J area subject to floods, destroys feed for game, and leaves us no place for rest and recrea- I tion. Out of the 1057 fires in region 4. 709 were caused by man; out of 242 fires in Utah 220 were caused by man. Game is the product of the land. To know something of game we must know something of their feeding and breeding j habits. Game, especially deer, I are prolific breeders, twins are the rule rather than the excep- j tion. This accounts for the j rapid increase found within the state the past ten years. Re- : ports from the Utah forests ' show that deer increased from ! 12.000 in 1919 to 45.000 in 1929. This nearly four-fold increase in-crease shows that wkhin the next ten years we will see even greater increases. During the 12 year period on the Dixie game preserve the deer have increas-cd from a scattering few to conservatively con-servatively 13,000 in 1931. From our game survey of 1931 we found that we had a greater number of fawns than breeding stock of all ages that had survived the winter, and from records kept the past season, sea-son, a 130 per cent fawn crop is indicated despite the fact that we have removed more than 5 000 bucks from the preserve in the past five years and using the law of averages we are increasing in-creasing at the rate of from 2000 to 4 000 head annually. Before we can put into effect ef-fect intelligent management plans for the handling of our game resources we must know our present numbers as accurately accu-rately as possible, our rate of increase and what means we have at our disposal for the removal re-moval of this surplus. We must aim to build up our plans upon the basis of ascertained facts, and use the surplus for food and recreation. Before we can do this we need legislative action to permit the proper removal under the law, to permit proper and adequate removal of surpluses, by extending extend-ing the season, increasing the bag limit, or both. If we are removing 1000 head with 1700 hunters, then under the same plans we would remove 2000 head in double the time. |