I venture to dwell upon these ideas here, knowing that they are shared by a large number of men and women. Amongst our German game-preserving associations we have societies that have rendered great services to the protection of our native wild animals. An extension of these useful efforts to the protection of all our native fauna and flora in general is most certainly called for by the greatly altered conditions of our time. We are gradually coming to a period when every individual wild animal will be registered by specialists and indicated in a list! And we are also gradually approaching in our sporting estates the ideal of extensive, well-kept gardens, in which no touch of wild nature will any longer be left.
I appeal once more to the authority of President Roosevelt. He expresses the opinion that it is now not so much the question of preserving great supplies of any one species as of maintaining the primitive beauty of the forest in its wild life.
I think with pleasure of my youth, when, at a time when my father, in union with other game-preservers, founded the _Jagdschutzverein_ (“Association for the Protection of Game”) of the Rhine Province, I had the opportunity of making myself acquainted with the old state of things in this department. My native district, the Eifel, still sheltered boars, eagle-owls, wild cats, and many other rare animals living in wild freedom. The ear of the boy learned to know and to love every cry of our native fauna. Roosevelt rightly remarks that many of the cries of American animals, such as the hoot of the owl, are _falsely_ described as unpleasant. He who knows them well comes to love them, and would not like to miss them from the general concert of animal sounds. Here in Germany, too, we have evidence of this to a gradually increasing extent.
The German sportsman ought to give a shining example to those of other lands in this matter of the protection of _all_ the dwellers in his hunting grounds. To his care is entrusted _the whole German fauna_ in its widest extent. To secure the preservation of this splendid work of nature here in Germany is an enterprise that will earn the gratitude of every lover of nature, the thanks of millions of men. The German sportsman, as the chosen guardian and keeper of the wild life of his native land, must also become the protecting lord of all its animal and plant life; he should maintain his own estate in its primitive condition to the fullest possible extent. But to his estate, in a wider sense, also belongs the velt of German Africa, still so rich in wild life. Here, too, the German sportsman should take up the position of guardian and protector.