• O'Brien, Donal Francis
  University of Maine Graduate School
  

During the past few years this country has witnessed a distinct trend towards conservation of our natural resources, and with this movement has come a realization that wildlife deserves a better fate than extermination through neglect and exploitation.

As a result of the general concern for the future of our wildlife assets, the people have come to realize that there is a startling deficiency of reasonably accurate information on the lives and habitats of many native animals. It is true that a large amount of scientific study has been devoted to wildlife, but it seems that the greater part of this work has concerned itself with investigations other than the study of ways and means of maintaining and perpetuating individual species. Due to the lack of foresight in this particular, we are now faced with an urgent need for some adequate means of handling wildlife resources, or of reconciling ourselves to their ultimate extinction, the fate of the Passenger Pigeon and the great Auk.