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Book/Printed Material Our vanishing wild life : its extermination and preservation

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Title

  • Our vanishing wild life : its extermination and preservation

Summary

  • William Temple Hornaday was the Director of the New York Zoological Society and the nation's leading advocate of wildlife conservation in this era. This unsparing manifesto was written to accompany Hornaday's launching of the Permanent Wildlife Protection Fund; it is thus (in the words of the historian Stephen Fox) both "a campaign tract" and "one of the first books wholly devoted to endangered wild animals" (John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981], p. 149). It is also a landmark of conservation history which had a profound effect on the thought of Aldo Leopold, among others. The book surveys the history and causes of wildlife destruction in America and elsewhere, and sets forth a lengthy program to ensure the protection of remaining wildlife for the future, often in militant and moralistic terms. The work also throws light on some of the complexities inherent in the conservation movement at this time: for example, Hornaday accepts the classification of certain bird and mammalian predators as "noxious" or "vermin" and appropriate for destruction (pp. 77-81); there is no criticism here of the massive campaign for the extermination of wolves and coyotes being sponsored at the time by the Bureau of Biological Survey. On a more general level, Hornaday's fulminations against Italian immigrants as incorrigible bird-killers suggest a connection between nativism and conservationism, while his excoriations of market hunters set forth a deeply-rooted class bias shared by many leading conservationists. American Memory.

Names

  • Hornaday, William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937
  • Theodore Roosevelt Hunting Library (Library of Congress)

Created / Published

  • New York : C. Scribner's Sons, 1913.

Headings

  • -  Wildlife conservation--United States
  • -  Game laws--United States

Notes

  • -  Also available in digital form.
  • -  LAC nsk 2019-02-04 update (1 card)
  • -  LAC rwp 2019-02-15 review
  • -  LC Review of LAC Completed/Approved 2019-02-19

Medium

  • xv, [1], 411 p. : incl. front., illus., ports., maps ; 23 cm.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • SK353 .H6

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 13001670

Online Format

  • online text
  • image
  • pdf

Additional Metadata Formats

IIIF Presentation Manifest

Rights & Access

The books in this collection are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse.

Credit Line: Library of Congress

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Hornaday, William T, and Theodore Roosevelt Hunting Library. Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1913. Pdf. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/13001670/.

APA citation style:

Hornaday, W. T. & Theodore Roosevelt Hunting Library. (1913) Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation. New York: C. Scribner's Sons. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/13001670/.

MLA citation style:

Hornaday, William T, and Theodore Roosevelt Hunting Library. Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1913. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <aj.sunback.homes/item/13001670/>.