Naturally Sustained Yield in a Farm Fur Crop in Mississippi

Abstract

Game Policy (3), under the chairmanship of Professor Aldo Leopold, defined game management as the art of growing game crops for recreational use. In 1933 Leopold (2) gave this definition in terms of sustained annual crops. The United States Forest Service, advocate of sustained yield in timber production since its establishment, is now putting big game production in the National Forests on the same basis. The sustained yield idea is still a recent concept in American wildlife circles, but its logic is so apparent that it is rapidly being accepted as axiomatic. Innis (1) and others have shown that the Hudson's Bay Company, during a considerable part of the last century, actually achieved a relatively constant yield of furs. This was not a definite objective but a result due to circumstance instead of management. In reality, furs, especially beaver, were exterminated in places, and only the vast wilderness area apportioned between a limited number of hunters made possible a form of sustained annual yield. More recently but on a much smaller scale, numerous fur farms through some system of artificial management are producing sustained annual fur crops while still maintaining the breeding stock. But the possibilities of sustained yield cropping of the fur resources under natural conditions are not generally appreciated by land owners. Some by chance are harvesting an annual crop of furs and at the same time leaving an adequate number of breeding animals, whereas others are practicing or permitting destructive cropping methods.