Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/471

Rh

HE public press has recently engaged in a spirited discussion of the affairs of the fur seals of Bering Sea which is remarkable for the popular misapprehension it discloses of the real facts of this problem, which has been before the public as a national and international issue for a quarter of a century. The recent discussion was precipitated by certain criticisms, by the Camp Fire Club of New York, made against an order of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for the killing of the annual quota of young male seals during the current season. The order of the secretary was not a new or unusual one. A similar order has been given each season for the forty years in which the herd of the Pribilof Islands has been in the control of the United States, and was in vogue for the half century or more of Russian control.

This order called for the killing of 8,000 of the superfluous young males to secure their skins. It is the way in which the government harvests the product of its fur seal herd. The order is exactly analogous to one which the owner of a herd of 100,000 cattle might give to his agents to drive up and slaughter for market 8,000 young steers. Other analogies might be found in the methods of handling sheep, poultry or any other of our domestic animals from which we derive food or raw material of value and utility.

The fur. seal is a polygamous animal, a fact which the Camp Fire Club seems to overlook. Actual enumeration shows that 29 out of every 30 males born are superfluous for breeding purposes. A reasonable proportion of these 29 may be killed for commercial uses without injury to the herd and their withdrawal will have no more effect on the life of the herd than the killing of a like number of steers would have on a herd of cattle.

Moreover, it is not merely feasible and safe to take these animals, but it is beneficial to the herd that they should be removed. To let these young males grow up to adult age would precipitate a condition of fighting and struggle on the rookeries which would be injurious in a high degree to the welfare of the herd. To illustrate by another analogy, the condition which their exemption from killing would produce on the fur-seal rookeries would be exactly like that which would exist on the cattle range if all the young male calves and colts were