The lawmakers of Colorado have tried hard to provide adequate statutes for the protection of the wild life of the state.  In fact, I think that no state has put forth greater or more elaborate efforts in that direction.  For example, in 1899, under the leadership of Judge D.C.  Beaman of Denver, Colorado initiated the “more game movement,” by enacting a very elaborate law providing for the establishment of private game preserves and farms for the breeding of game under state license, and the tagging and sale of preserve-bred game under state supervision.

[Illustration:  BAND-TAILED PIGEON Often Mistaken for the Passenger Pigeon.  The rapid Slaughter of this Species has Alarmed the Ornithologists of California, who now fear its Extinction]

The history of game destruction in Colorado is a repetition of the old, old story,—­plenty of laws, but a hundred times too many hunters, killing the game both according to law and contrary to it, and doing it five times as fast as the game could breed.  That combination can safely be warranted to wipe out the wild life of any country in the world, and accomplish it right swiftly.

As a big-game country, Colorado is distinctly out of the running.  Her people are too lawless, and her frontiersmen are, in the main, far too selfish to look upon plenteous game without going after it.  Some of these days, a new call of the wild will arise in Colorado, demanding an open season on mountain sheep.  Those who demand it will say, “What harm will it do to kill a few surplus bucks?  It will improve the breed, and make the herds increase faster!”

By all means, have an “open season” on the Colorado big-horn and the British Columbia elk.  It will “do them good.”  The excitement of ram slaughter will be good for the females, will it not?  Of course, they will breed faster after that,—­with all the big rams dead.  Any “surplus” wild life is a public nuisance, and should promptly be shot to pieces.

In Colorado there is some desire that Estes Park should be acquired as a national park, and maintained by the government; but the strong reasons for this have not yet appeared.  As yet we have not heard any reason why the State of Colorado should not herself take it and make of it a state park and game preserve.  If done, it could be offered as a partial atonement for her wastefulness in throwing away her inheritance of grand game.

Colorado has work to do in the preservation of her remnant of bird life.  In several respects she is behind the times.  The present is no time to hesitate, or to ask the gunners what they wish to have done about new laws for the saving of the remnant of game.  The dictates of common sense are plain, and inexorable.  Let the lawmakers do their whole duty by the remnant of wild life, whether the game killers like it or not.