Well . I didnt mean bumbling government bureaucracy. Or poachers or illegal wildlife traders.
Animal decimation is a pretty fascinating topic. Since it predates film and documentation, we are left to our imaginations to conjure of pictures of the 'fish in a barrel' type mentality that surely ran rife at that time.
With the prospect of natures bounty prey to mans fancy with his newly invented hunting instrument, and a much less people populated planet, we can just imagine the sense of jaw dropping wonder at continents literally teeming with wildlife.
What a freekin world that must have been, forgetting about how harsh it was without so-called modern convenience for a second, there must have at least been a sense, the same sense we have today: that things were getting better and improving, with each new small advance and modernity which we would otherwise no doubt smirk at today for its quaintness, doubtlessly at the time its no different from similarly held reactions today...no difference in way of response from each small improvement we see in this century and new millennium in the news all the time...a sense of wonder and pleasingness, but for them back then each new small thing introduced was the wonder of its day, and same as today anything beyond that , merely fanciful.
The first Wildlife Sanctuary in human history still exists in Srilanka
I mean have not hunters been the caretakers of our wild all the time? Heres a great link I found that supports this thesis:
http://relivearth.com/blog/archives/709And some dude who shot a bunch of tigers and then changed his mind about his hobby. These are the trailblazers, gentlemen. We often see them with crusty snow white hairgrowth but surprisingly enough it appears that trailblazers did at one point experience that thing we commonly refer to as youth. We can guess it went by very quickly for at a time when time seemed to have gone by slowly, fascinating to me anyway...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbet ... rvationist