In December, 1900, Viscount Cranborne in the House of Commons reported as follows: 

* * * That regulations for the preservation of wild animals have been in force for some time in the several African Protectorates administered by the Foreign Office as well as in the Sudan.  The obligations imposed by the recent London Convention upon the signatory Powers will not become operative until after the exchange of ratifications, which has not yet taken place.  In anticipation, however, steps have been taken to revise the existing regulations in the British Protectorates so as to bring them into strict harmony with the terms of the convention.  The game reserves now existing in the several Protectorates are:  In (a) British Central Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and the Shirwa reserve; in (b) the East Africa Protectorate, the Kenia District; in (c) Uganda, the Sugota game reserve in the northeast of the Protectorate; in (d) Somaliland, a large district defined by an elaborate boundary line described in the regulations.  The regulations have the force of law in the Protectorates, and offenders are dealt with in the Protectorate Courts.  It is in contemplation to charge special officers of the Administrations with the duty of watching over the proper observance of the regulations.  Under the East African game regulations only the officers permanently stationed at or near the Kenia reserve may be specially authorized to kill game in the reserve.

Other effective measures have been taken in the Soudan district.  Capt.  Stanley Flower, Director of the Gizeh Zoological Gardens, made a very full report, which is quoted in Nature for July 25, 1901, p. 318.

STATE LAWS.

The preservation of even a few of our wild animals is a very large proposition; it is an undertaking the difficulty of which grows in magnitude as one comes to study it in detail and gets on the ground.  The rapidly increasing legislation in the Western States is an indication of rapidly growing sentiment.  A still more encouraging sign is the strong sympathy with the enforcement of the laws which we find around the National Park in Wyoming and Montana especially.  State laws should be encouraged, but I am convinced that while effective in the East, they will not be effective in the West in time, because of the scattered population, the greater areas of country involved, the greater difficulty of watching and controlling the killing, and the actual need of game for food by settlers.

When we study the operation of our State laws on the ground we find that for various reasons they are not fully effective.  A steady and in some cases rapid diminution of animals is going on so far as I have observed in Colorado and Wyoming; either the wardens strictly enforce the laws with strangers and wink at the breaking of them by residents, or they draw their salaries and do not enforce the laws at all.[9]