Wildlife and Land Use Patterns

Excerpts from the report Conclusion: The three centuries that have passed while the American frontier moved westward have brought us finally to the necessity of a profound readjustment in our earlier national thinking. During those three hundred years it seemed as though the resources of this vast country were limitless, that expansion of the frontier would always serve to furnish us with new and virgin land. Today we no longer live in a territorially or agriculturally expanding nation. We now realize that our future security depends upon our ability to conserve, to use wisely, that which we may not already have squandered. The numerous complex problems involved in the conservation of our land resources can never be solved independently. The old piecemeal solutions, tried so often, have signally failed. These are problems so closely related and interdependent that a final solution of one is impossible without a thorough understanding of all. To many, the problems of wildlife conservation have seemed to require particular solution separate and apart from other conservation problems. But wildlife conservation is coming to be understood as only one aspect of the larger question of land use, depending for its successful accomplishment upon the proper use of other land resources. Where agriculture is out of balance, planning for wildlife will not be fruitful. But where measures for the conservation of wildlife are properly integrated with successful land management, wildlife will thrive.