International Wildlife

The retrogression of the European fauna has no doubt been due in the first place to the widespread clearing of forests and their replacement by lands devoted to habitations, transportation systems, crops, or grazing. Hunting, however, has constituted the most important part of the direct human pressure upon the wild animals. While this sort of pressure began to be felt ages ago, it was primarily the invention and improvement of firearms that enabled man to proceed with ever-increasing rapidity on his course of extermination. Species of comparatively large size, furnishing valuable meat and hides, have been the prinicipal sufferers. Thus four of the six extinct European mammals are members of the cattle family (Bovidae). 

     In Europe, as contrasted with the United States, there is a far greater proportion of closely guarded private estates, and hunting of large game is chiefly restricted to the wealthy few. This condition of affairs has resulted in a much slower rate of extermination than in the United States, despite the large number of national parks and wild-life refuges in this country. Furthermore, the European attitude appears much more tolerant toward such predatory animals as Wolves and Brown Bears, which have been able to survive so far in such countries as Spain, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic States, Russia, and Scandinavia. Americans have been more ruthless in exterminating, or attempting to exterminate, any predatory animal conflicting, or presumed to conflict, with human interests. Unfortunately, the American method of dealing with predators by means of poison has attained a certain vogue in Bulgaria.

    A few of the more important vanishing mammals of Europe may be mentioned here. The Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) and the Wolf (Canis lupus) are probably doomed to disappear almost entirely from Western Europe, although they will long survive in Russia and Siberia. The European Wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) has become extremely scarce in general; perhaps its greatest danger lies in extinction by dilution through interbreeding with feral Domestic Cats. The insular Wildcats (Cretan, Sardinian, Corsican, and British — Felis agrius, F. sarda, F. reyi, and F. silvestris grampia) are probably endangered in like manner.

    The European Beaver (Castor fiber), persecuted for its fur, remains in only a few isolated colonies. There is some doubt as to whether any representatives of the Finland Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus fennicus) and the Novaya Zemlya Reindeer (R. t. pearsoni) still survive; the animal of Novaya Zemlya. has fallen victim to visiting ships’ crews and to Samoyed immigrants. While the stock of the Lithuanian Bison (Bison bonasus bonasus) is greatly reduced, and while there has been considerable mixture in captivity with the Caucasian Bison (B. b. caucasicus) and with the American Bison (Bison bison bison), energetic protection in sanctuaries assured its survival up to 1939, at least. Two of the four races of the Spanish Ibex (Capra pyrenaica) have been exterminated by excessive hunting, and the fate of those remaining has become uncertain during recent events in Spain. The Cyprian Mouflon (Ovis ophion ophion) has become reduced to a precariously small stock. The British Isles have long since lost the Brown Bear, the Wolf, the Beaver, the Wild Boar (Sus scrofa), and the Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). No doubt insularity has here played a part in the early disappearance of these mammals.

AFRICA

As long as the African Continent was occupied by primitive savages, without modern weapons, animal life was, in a large sense, in a virtual state of equilibrium. When European settlement began, and firearms were introduced, the death knell of a very considerable proportion of the population of large mammals was sounded. Thus the Atlas Bear (Ursus crowtheri), the Barbary and the Cape Lions (Leo leo leo and L. l. melanochaitus), the Quagga (Hippotigris quagga), Burchell’s Zebra (Hippotigris burchellii burchellii), the Bubal Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus), the Rufous Gazelle (Gazella rufina), and the Blaauwbok (Hippotragus leucophaeus) have departed finally and completely from the African scene. The typical subspecies of the Cape Hartebeest (Alcelaphus caama) may also be extinct, but imperfect knowledge of its distribution precludes a definite statement. A long time previously the Algerian Wild Ass (Asinus atlanticus) became extinct, from unknown causes. These losses by extinction are divided almost equally between South Africa — the region most thoroughly settled by Europeans — and the Barbary States, where the well-armed Moors long held sway.

    A century ago the Boer hide-hunters decimated the remarkable antelope and zebra fauna of South Africa. In the last half-century, firearms in the hands of improvident and short-sighted natives have wrought extremely serious havoc among the dwindling herds of African game in general. As intertribal warfare has practically ceased, and as the benefits of modern medicine and sanitation have penetrated far into the jungles and deserts, the native populations have increased, and their demands for a meat diet have decimated the game. Encircling fires, a method of hunting practiced on a fairly large scale in the savanna regions, have been extremely destructive, even in the absence of firearms. Professional hunters in the employ of great industrial enterprises, as in various parts of the Belgian Congo, have simply wiped out the antelopes over large areas. Hasty and probably ill-considered campaigns for the control of the tsetse fly have too often resulted in hecatombs of the large game mammals. In recent years the animals of the desert, such as Oryx and Gazelles, have become subject to attack from motor cars.

    In South Africa the Bontebok (Damaliscus dorcas), the Blesbok (Damaliscus phillipsi), and the White-tailed Gnu (Connochaetes gnou) no longer roam the free veldt, but have become restricted to enclosed farms and preserves. A remnant of the Cape Mountain Zebra (Hippotigris zebra zebra) was preserved at the eleventh hour.

   Among other vanishing or threatened African mammals, the following may be mentioned in particular:

This record shows a steadily accelerated rate of extinction in each of the last three half-century periods. About 38 percent of the losses have been sustained since 1900. This indicates how difficult is the task of preserving native faunas in the present era of intensive modern invention and industrial expansion.

THE RECORD OF EXTINCTION BY FAMILIES

The following record indicates how these losses by extinction are divided among the various mammalian families: