uncontrolled trapping of them.153 As for the otter, though it may be that habitat loss played a role, since the rivers and bays that were their habitat were directly adjacent to the first areas to be selected for settlement and clearance, it is more likely that trapping was, as it was for the marten, the reason for their decline and extinction, and in fact we have evidence from Stewart in 1806 that suggests that even in the early years when the number of European settlers was still low, trapping was bringing ab0ut a decline in the otter population‘s“. And hunting for their furs may have also contributed to the disappearance of the lynx and the bear, though for these animals the additional incentive of a bounty must have played a more important role, as we shall now see.

The island’s predatory fauna as pests or nuisances - Virtually all of the island’s mammalian predators were viewed as pests by most of the recorders. Their principal ’evil’, to use a word that Stewart (1806) applied to the bear, was the taking of livestock or poultry - a practice encouraged by the fact that in the pioneer settlements of the island, livestock were allowed to roam freely in the surrounding woods. As we have seen, the bear was accused, and it would seem on sound evidence, of killing cattle, sheep and pigs; the lynx, of killing sheep, and sometimes cattle (presumably calves); the fox of taking poultry, and also by one recorder of taking lambs; while the otter, the mink and the weasel had at least one accusation against each of them that they took poultry. As well, the bear was viewed, though on less certain ground, as a potential danger to people, and mink and muskrats were also reported to cause damage to mill-dams through burrowing. Only for the marten is there no negative comment in the written records.

The smaller of these predators were viewed simply as a nuisance'ss, and there would presumably have been simple practical ways of reducing the loss of poultry and young livestock to them. However, for the lynx and the bear more drastic and costly

‘53 All reports indicate that the marten is a notoriously easy animal to trap (eg, Hamilton & Whitaker 1979).

15‘ It is the use of the past tense and the word ‘still' in Stewart's comment that indicates the effect of the trapping: “[otters] have been very plenty on the Island and are still caught in considerable numbers”. Twenty—two years later John MacGregor’s (1828) comment that “the wild beasts and game having become scarce the Indians are subjected to a precarious subsistence", provides further evidence that the native fauna in general was in decline.

155

Several authors treat the matter lightly, e.g. Bagster (1861) and MacGregor (1828) (both referring to the fox).

257

measures were deemed necessary, and as we have seen, a government-sanctioned program of control involving the payment of a bounty for every lynx and bear killed, was instituted, with the explicit aim of exterminating both species. This seems to have been viewed by the whole European population as a desirable objective, the benefits contributed by either species — to the island's food—supply or to the fur trade — being seen as far out-weighed by their ’mischief’."56 As Bagster (1861) put it: "the sooner the last [lynx] is killed the better”, and as for the bear, ”there is no one that is not glad to hear of poor Bruin’s destruction”. And the bounty did achieve its objectives: the lynx was exterminated before 1890, while the last bear was killed in 1927.

The extirpation of the island's predatory fauna and the attitudes to their conservation — Of the island’s terrestrial mammalian fauna, six species are no longer extant. As we have seen, the wolf was last recorded in 1721, the caribou in 1765 (though it may have disappeared earlier, perhaps even in the 17403), and the lynx disappeared sometime before 1890. The marten may have survived to the end of the nineteenth century, and the otter just possibly into the first half of the twentieth century.157 The bear — surprisingly, given its size and the general antipathy towards it — survived into the third decade of the twentieth century. And among the avian fauna we have lost the passenger pigeon, and if it ever occurred, the spruce grouse.158

From hindsight we may question whether all of these extinctions were inevitable, or indeed necessary. Granted that with the large-scale destruction of the island's forests to make way for farmland there would have been considerable loss of habitat, and a resulting decline in the total numbers of all of the mammalian predators. Even so, excepting the caribou and the wolf (both of which are likely to have required a greater area of

156

Had the wolf not disappeared from the island in the 17205, forty years before the British period, without even a memory of its past presence on the island having been passed on to the new British settlers, it undoubtedly would have been subject to a similar bounty — as is evident from Stewart’s (1806) comment that the “mischief" of the bear on the island was trifling in comparison with the “ravages" of the wolf in the new settlements on the continent.

In fact, wolves in New Brunswick had bounties on their heads from 1792 (Lohr & Ballard 1996).

157 See footnote 77.

153 The pileated woodpecker (Dendrocopus pileatus) was also seemingly extirpated in the late nineteenth century, but it has since returned to a few of the island’s more mature hardwood forests - compare Godfrey (1954) with Erskine (1992).