09
Waste Land: a Wild-Life Preserve
Once upon a time there were thousands of beautiful birds called passenger pigeons. Now they are gone. Herds of graceful antelope used to roam the prairies of the West. They are disappearing. Mr. Hawkes has told us that the beaver is in danger. In this story Mr. Rutledge tells us how we can help save these wild children of Nature.
Mr. Farmer, don't keep your place too clean. Leave that patch of scrub growing over yonder by the creek; leave that fence row filled with briars. Your best friend of the great bird kingdom, bob-white, can't live with you if you take away all his cover. Keep most fields clean, if you like, but leave some places untidy for the sake of those who will leave you if you clean away their shelters.
Wild creatures will take what we leave. They will rejoice to live on our waste lands. There is no place so impossible for the home of man that it cannot be made into a home for wild life. It looks, then, as if in the years to come, man will take all the choice lands for himself. Then he will set aside waste lands for the wild children of the woods and the waters and the air.
There is a valley in southern Pennsylvania which shows that whatever man gives up wild life takes. In this valley, some eighteen miles long and two miles wide, almost all the land up to the foot of the mountain, was years ago cultivated. But one after another the hillside farms and the creek-bottom pastures have been deserted. People have moved to the towns. In this whole valley now there are not more than eight or ten homes. Nature, in her quiet, joyous way, has re-taken land that in pioneer days was taken from her and from the Indians.
Wild things have helped to recapture their home of pioneer days. Here in a deserted orchard, where a few apple trees still are bearing, deer munch the fallen fruit. In this old upland field where some volunteer buckwheat has sprung up, wild turkeys feed. Beside a pathway leading from a deserted mountain home down to the spring, ruffed grouse can be seen. Along the creek in the shellbark hickory trees which farm boys used to raid for nuts, gray squirrels now gather their winter supply of food. In the creek itself wade migrating ducks on their way to the South for the winter.
All that wild life seems to want is a bare chance. They cannot occupy and increase in the face of rifles, traps, and shotguns; neither could man. But they are swift and brave, and will return when the chance of getting killed is lessened, even slightly.
What has happened in this wild valley of Pennsylvania would lead us to believe that there should be no such thing as waste land. Whatever places man is too proud or too lazy to occupy, wild creatures will humbly rejoice in.
It frequently happens that a place which is attractive to wild life can be made even more attractive by a little intelligentplanning on the part of the land-owner. Such a place is a duck preserve near Oakley, South Carolina, some thirty miles up the Cooper River. On both sides of the river are waste rice fields, long since abandoned. Those fields, now grown to marsh and duck oats instead of to rice, are thronged by thousands of wild ducks who joyously feast there. They tip up in the warm shallow water, and hail all passing flocks with the glad tidingsthat the true paradise for wild fowl has at last been discovered. In these days of hunters and improved firearms such a sight is amazing.
"Three things have done it," the owner of the place said."These fields, you see, were worthless to me for planting purposes. But ducks have always come here. At a small expense, I arranged to have the fields hold water when once the water had flowed over them. A duck isn't going to light on dry land, not if there's water within reach of his wings. The third thing was the matter of feed. I went to Washington, D. C., and spent two or three days at the Department of Agriculture finding out just what wild food would grow here, things that the ducks liked best. They recommended to me duck oats, water lilies, and the American lotus. This last is probably the most successful food I have tried. The bloom has a seed-holding disk like a sun-flower. The seeds themselves are like hard black acorns, and the ducks are very fond of them.
"Yes, these old fields were worthless, but in these days there is no such thing as waste land if a man will turn over to wild things those parts of his lands which he cannot use himself. And if he will encourage the wild life just a little, he will have it coming in abundance. Reasonable quiet and protection, water, food—get these three things in this part of the country, and you will have all the ducks you want."
The setting aside of lands where wild life is protected always has the same effect; that is, the immediate increase in wild life. But the effect is much more far reaching than might be imagined. There are huge tracts of wild country in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in Maryland, and in the Carolinas, which ten years ago were practically dead so far as game birds and animals were concerned. Now they are alive again. Such tracts of waste land provide a wonderful home for wild life.
Very simple, indeed, is the requirement for having beautiful wild life on any place. Don't kill it and don't clean away every trace of that wild home that Nature provides for all wild things. We must not rob them of their homes.
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
1. Below are four statements. Which one best answers the question,"Why did Mr. Rutledge write this story?"
(a) To tell us about the habits of wild animals and birds.
(b) To get us never to kill wild animals.
(c) To save wild animals and birds by giving them homes.
(d) To tell us how useful wild animals and birds are.
2. The title of this story is "Waste Land: A Wild-Life Preserve."Think of another name for the story that would be just as good, or better.
3. What three things do wild animals need if they are to stay with us?
4. Make a list of all the birds and animals that are found near your home.