Series consists of administrative and operational files which relate to a wide range of Canadian Wildlife Service activities and were filed in a central registry. The administrative material includes reports, receipts, and correspondence on such topics as expenses, equipment, and liaison with conferences and associations. Among the operational records are files concerning such CWS responsibilities as ornithology (waterfowl population, crop damage by birds, permits, pollution, game officers), bird sanctuaries (by location), enforcement (by province) of wildlife laws, acts and legislation (migratory birds and game acts, federally and provincially), and shooting grounds (by province), mammals, fish, and reptiles (by species), and wildlife management. Also included is one file of wildlife poetry and correspondence with poets (see Vol. 2, File W.L.U. 139).
The Canadian Wildlife Service was a part of the National Parks Branch until 1966, and these central registry files were numbered as part of the Parks Branch file classification system. Because the CWS files were always maintained in various Wildlife Service units quite separate from the main Parks Branch registry office, they have been placed in a separate record group and not with the other registry files of the Parks Branch.
The photographs in this series were transferred to the National Archives without information as to which specific Canadian Wildlife Service program they document. However the majority of the photographs are well captioned to the point of having place names, dates and in some cases subject matter identified. The photographs consist of aerial tracking of caribou herds (1948; 1953) in northern Manitoba and the Yukon; bird sanctuaries in Prince Edward Island and Quebec (particularly the Saguenay region); fishing as a leisure activity; photos of fox farming and muskrat ranching; various images of wildlife and their habitats. There are also seven prints by wildlife photographer Lorene Squire taken in national parks. Squire was commissioned in the 1930's by the Hudson's Bay Company serial The Beaver to provide photographs of wildlife. Also included are photographs from exhibitions and publications, including the 1950 book by Robert I Bowman titled A Study of Bird and Mammal Populations in Orchards of the Okanagan Valley BC with Special Reference to the Effects of Orchard Sprays Upon Them.