The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 89, July 1985 - April, 1986 Page: 442

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

missioner," the official state conservation officer, and he received addi-
tional powers to work for the effective management of bird and mam-
mal populations.'"
However, the desire to "improve" the land through woodland clear-
ance, wetland drainage and reclamation, and the establishment of per-
manent cropland continued to destroy wildlife habitat. Introduction of
domestic stock continued to mean that new, protected animals com-
peted with indigenous species for forage. Native animals that stood in
the way of the expansion of agriculture and settlement, or that were
unable to adapt to the tempo and character of environmental change,
continued to disappear. Predatory mammals and birds were seen as im-
pediments to development, as was the now extinct Carolina parakeet,
which earned a reputation for pilfering corn and fruits. The ivory-
billed woodpecker had more specialized habitat needs, inimical to mod-
ern forestry, and, therefore, it fell into the category of a nonadaptable
organism. It is extinct in Texas and probably in the United States.4'
Such indirect impacts on plants and animals remain the most serious
issue in wildlife conservation today. The era of the callous hunter or so-
called game hog has ended, but it has been replaced by an era in which
animals must adapt to often sudden, long-lasting, and drastic changes
in habitat. The obligation is upon us to seek to retain as much of the
biological complexity and fecundity of aboriginal Texas as possible, and
the challenge is to make this a reality for the twenty-first century.
40Doughty, Wildlife and Man, 96-124, 176; Schmidly, Texas Mammals, 25-26; Texas Game,
Fish and Oyster Commission, Prnnczpal Game Birds, 15-33, 91-104.
41 U.S., Fish and Wildlife Service, Biological Services Program, Selected Vertebrate Endangered
Species of the Seacoast of the United States-Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, FWS/OBS-8o/o .8 (Washing-
ton, D.C., 1980), 2; Oberholser, Bird Life of Texas, I, 430-431, 527-529.

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