A trickle-down effect from the 1905 murder of Guy Bradley, a Florida game warden working to protect wading birds from plume seekers, was passage of the Migratory Bird Act in 1913. This act declared that birds flying across state lines were interstate commerce and thus subject to federal rather than state regulation. Lax state hunting laws were overturned, uniform game limits were set, and hunting during spring and at night was banned.

The legislation later took a dramatic step forward when, in 1934, duck stamps were required for waterfowl hunters, and a few years later an excise tax was levied on guns and ammunition. The modern era of wildlife management had begun. Ninety-eight percent of these dollars have since gone to wildlife management.

All this effort would be too late for some species, game and otherwise. Most notable, perhaps, was the passenger pigeon, once the most plentiful bird species on the planet. With the death of Martha, in 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo, the species faded into history, the first extinction ever to be witnessed "live." The Pullitzer Prize winning cartoonist J.N. "Ding" Darling, who would later found the National Wildlife Federation, commented on the turbulent times, "The great flocks of wild game which once darkened the skies now cast hardly a shadow."

In the 1920's, along the Grand Canyon's north rim, a game management failure taught some additional hard lessons. Mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes were systematically eliminated from the Kaibab Plateau by a predator control program. The results was an ecological catastrophe, not understood at the time. There was an explosion of the local deer population with subsequent ravaging of natural vegetation. Eventually large numbers of deer began to die of starvation in the winter as nature tried in vain to reset her delicate balance. The conventional view of game management-that setting aside reserves and removing predators would create wildlife havens for hunters-was open for serious debate. But some minds are hard to change.