Factors Influencing Wild Life in California, Past and Present

Abstract

In order properly to indicate the ecologic factors affecting wild life which are and have been operative in California, it will be necessary briefly to indicate the conditions which existed before American occupation. No adequate descriptive account of the native animal life and its ecologic relations is available for that period, but by taking fragments from the accounts of early travellers and by projecting backward knowledge gained after I850, some appreciation of the original conditions may be had. All early accounts agree as to the abundance of wild life. To mention only a few conspicuous species, the plains of the Great Valley were inhabited by tule elk, American antelope, grizzly bears, coyotes, ground squirrels and jack-rabbits; beaver were numerous in the streams; and water fowl abounded during the winter months. The foothills were populated by black-tailed and mule deer and valley quail; Roosevelt elk and black-tailed deer were present in the humid coast belt, while antelope, sage-hen and jack-rabbits tenanted the Great Basin. The deserts were populated mostly by small species.