Henry Wood Elliott (1846-1930) was a renowned naturalist and an accomplished artist. In 1872, he was sent to the Alaska territory by the U.S. Treasury department to report on the fur-seal harvest on the Pribilof Islands. He lived on one of the islands and conducted his own study of the animals. Keenly observant and with an artist's eye, he recorded what he saw in both his journals and his artwork. Elliott was appalled by the rapidly declining fur seal population and the wholesale slaughter taking place each summer. The Seal Islands of Alaska is Henry W. Elliott's groundbreaking report as it was published in 1884. He recommended managed hunting to preserve both the species and the industry. He was a tireless wild life advocate and may have saved the fur seal from extinction.