In the year of grace, 1912, I think we may justly regard New York as the banner state of all America in the protection of game and wild life in general.  This proud position has been achieved partly through the influence of a great conservation Governor, John A. Dix, and the State Conservation Commission proposed and created by his efforts.  In these days of game destruction, when our country from Nome to Key West is reeking with the blood of slaughtered wild creatures, it is a privilege and a pleasure to be a citizen of a state which has thoroughly cleaned house, and done well nigh the utmost that any state can do to clear her bad record, and give all her wild creatures a fair chance to survive.  The people of the Empire State literally can point with pride to the list of things accomplished in the discharge of good-citizenship toward the remnant of wild life, and toward the future generations of New Yorkers.  That we of to-day have borne our share of the burden of bringing about the conditions of 1912, will be a source of satisfaction, especially when the sword and shield hang useless upon the walls of Old Age.

New York began to protect her deer in 1705 and her heath hens in 1708.  In 1912 she stopped the killing of female deer, and of bucks having horns less than three inches in length.  Spring shooting was stopped in 1903.  A comprehensive law protecting non-game birds was enacted in 1862.  New York’s first law against the sale of certain game during close seasons was enacted in 1837.

In 1911 New York enacted, with only one adverse vote, a law prohibiting the sale of all native wild game throughout the state, no matter where killed, and providing liberally for the encouragement of game-breeding, and the sale of preserve-bred game.

In 1912 a new codification of the state game laws went into effect, through the initiative of Governor Dix and Conservation Commissioners Van Kennen, Moore and Fleming, assisted (as special counsel) by Marshall McLean, George A. Lawyer and John B. Burnham.  This code contains many important new provisions, one of the most valuable of which is a clause giving the Conservation Commission power, at its discretion, to shorten or to close any open season on any species of game in any locality wherein that species seems to be threatened with extermination.  This very valuable principle should be enacted into law in every state!

In 1910, William Dutcher and T. Gilbert Pearson and the National Association of Audubon Societies won, after a struggle lasting five years, the passage of the “Shea plumage bill,” prohibiting the sale of aigrettes or other plumage of wild birds belonging to the same families as the birds of New York (Chap. 256).  This law should be duplicated in every state.

Two things remain to be done in the state of New York.

  All the shore birds, quail and gray squirrels of the state should be
  given five-year close seasons, by the action of the State
  Conservation Commission.