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Fauna Series No. 2
Part I
Fauna of the National Parks
of the United States
PART I
NATIONAL PARKS AND WILDERNESS USE
By BEN H. THOMPSON
In the summer of 1913 Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied by two of his sons, went cougar hunting in the Kaibab Forest on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. There he met Uncle Jim Owen, who guided the party on its 2-weeks' cougar hunt. Uncle Jim has killed more than 600 cougars in the Grand Canyon and the Kaibab.
In the October 4 issue of the Outlook and Independent 1 of that same year, Mr. Roosevelt recounted the big adventures of the trip and true to his sportsmanship, gave a generous account of his guide, Uncle Jim Owen.
Uncle Jim was a Texan, born at San Antonio, and raised in the Panhandle, on the Goodnight ranch. In his youth he had seen the thronging myriads of bison, and taken part in the rough life of the border, the life of the cowmen, the buffalo hunters, and the Indian fighters. He was by instinct a man of the right kind in all relations; and he early hailed with delight the growth of the movement among our people to put a stop to the senseless and wanton destruction of our wildlife. Together with his—and my—friend Buffalo Jones, he had worked for the preservation of the scattered bands of bison; he was keenly interested not only in the preservation of the forests but in the preservation of the game. He had been 2 years buffalo warden in the Yellowstone National Park. Then he had come to the Colorado National Forest Reserve [Kaibab] and the game reserve, where he had been game warden for over 6 years at the time of our trip * * *. One important feature of his work is to keep down the larger beasts and birds of prey, the arch enemies of the deer, mountain sheep, and grouse; and the most formidable among these foes of the harmless wildlife are the cougars. At the time of our visit he owned five hounds, which he had trained especially, as far as his manifold duties gave him the time, to the chase of cougars and bobcats. Coyotes were plentiful, and he shot these wherever the chance offered; but coyotes are best kept down by poison, and poison cannot be used where any man is keeping the hounds with which alone it is possible effectively to handle the cougars.
In this brief account of Uncle Jim Owen, Roosevelt personifies the growth of the wilderness-use idea as it arose naturally, out of the vanishing frontier—from buffalo hunter to cattle man, to game keeper and predatory-animal hunter on a Government game refuge. But to continue with the adventures of the Roosevelt hunting party, after a few days with Uncle Jim's hounds, a cougar was struck. Hounds and men trailed him over the brink of the canyon and "treed" him in a yellow pine on the edge of the red cliffs.
Here the Colonel speaks for himself,2
It was a wild sight. The maddened hounds bayed at the foot of the pine. Above them, in the lower branches, stood the big horse-killing cat, the destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy murder, facing his doom with a heart both craven and cruel. Almost beneath him the vermilion cliffs fell sheer a thousand feet without a break. Behind him lay the Grand Canyon in its awful and desolate majesty.
The boy shot true. With his neck broken, the cougar fell from the tree * * *.
This episode is brought back because it portrays that vivid American ideal which stopped the senseless slaughter of our game and which at the same time contained the seeds of inevitable developments that later so near]y defeated its purpose. There is no thought here to discredit Mr. Roosevelt's work—surely, he would have been the last one to say that nothing more could be learned about wildlife after his time. But unfortunately there are many today whose ideas on wilderness use have not budged an inch since 1913, who are still shooting into the tree where "stood the big horse-killing cat, the destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy murder, facing his doom with a heart both craven and cruel." So, let's go on with the story.
Nearly all of the Kaibab cougars have been killed. At present it is thought by lion hunters familiar with this rough country that perhaps four or five cougars may still remain—hardly sufficient even for breeding stock. It is true that cougars eat deer, as Colonel Roosevelt said. It is also true, as he did not say in his article, that when things which eat deer are removed, deer increase like guinea pigs.
By 1919, deer of the forest had increased until they were beginning to consume more forage than the range could produce. The Forest Service reported the situation, but the Kaibab was so far away that no one could believe it. Deer kept increasing, forage kept diminishing, cattle and sheep were reduced to alleviate range pressure, the forest officials called loudly, the stock owners called just as loudly; a few people in the country pricked up their ears and said "There is nothing to it." By 1924, deer had increased until more than seventeen hundred were counted in one meadow in one evening. Winter came, deer died, and those that lived ate every leaf and twig till the whole country looked as though a swarm of locusts had swept through it, leaving the range (except for the taller shrubs and trees) torn, gray, stripped, and dying. Conservationists of the country at large heard the noise of the fray and got in a first-class tangle which effectively prohibited anything from being done. Cattle and sheep contributed materially to the destruction; the combined factors hastened and augmented the catastrophe. Finally, the area was thrown open to hunting, and by 1930 the deer had been greatly reduced. By 1934, parts of the winter range still look almost as they did 10 years ago, and it will probably take 50 years of careful management completely to cover the scars of the fiasco. It was a conservation fiasco and it opened our eyes to the necessity of wildlife (not game) management.
Figure 17. – By 1934,
parts of the winter range still look almost as they did 10 years ago
and it will probably take 50 years of careful management to
completely cover the scars . . .
(Photograph taken March 10, 1934,
Kaibab Plateau. Wildlife Division No.
3738.)
It is not being maintained here that the killing of cougars was the sole factor which brought about tile Kaibab disaster. Other factors entered into the problem, such as overstocking the range with domestic stock. Then too, coyotes, bobcats, and eagles were killed as well as cougars. But it is thought that the cougar-deer relationship traced here was the main factor in the whole complex problem.
This paper started with the title, "National Parks and Wilderness Use". Where do the national parks come into the picture as portrayed thus far? It comes about in this way:
Wild animals know nothing about the arbitrary boundaries which man draws on maps to indicate areas set aside for his different types of wilderness use. Animals wander back and forth, as seasons and quest for food dictate, across refuge or hunting ground, park or forest, as the case may be. What affects the deer or cougars in the environs will also affect them in the game sanctuary itself.
Grand Canyon National Park adjoins the Kaibab National Forest. When cougars were killed and deer consumed the range in the Kaibab, cougars became scarce in the adjacent national park and deer destroyed large areas of forage there, too. When national parks were set aside as inviolate wildlife sanctuaries, to preserve representative portions of the American frontier heritage, it was assumed that the wildlife of these parks would find suitable refuge within them regardless of what happened outside. But when deer were shot in the Kaibab National Forest, there were fewer deer to return each spring to Grand Canyon National Park.
It became evident that in order to make our national parks effective wildlife refuges we must cope with the conditions which affect wildlife outside of the parks as well as within them.
Particularly was this true at Grand Canyon, because hunting is not permissible in national parks. An appropriate aside here is that the necessity of complete protection for all forms of wildlife within the national parks is evident, if we are to preserve these relatively small areas of American wilderness in front of a steam-roller civilization. Therefore hunting to reduce the abnormal population of deer on the Kaibab had to be done outside of Grand Canyon National Park.
For several years the recovery program at the Kaibab has been under way. Its objective is to determine the carrying capacity of the range in its present impoverished condition, to reduce the deer herd to within this range-carrying capacity—domestic stock has already been reduced to 1,800 head of cattle and 2,400 head of sheep—and to keep the deer herd commensurate with range production until the range can once more attain normal production. In other words, the deer herd will increase in size as forage production increases.
Toward this end a cooperative range reconnaissance and deer census is made in February and March annually, with members of the Forest Service, National Park Service, and State game commission participating. Forage conditions of the winter range are noted carefully as day after day we ride the ridges and valleys of this frontier. All deer seen are counted by the parties interspersed in the field at such distances as to avoid duplication of count. As the range recovers the census may become impossible, but under the present overbrowsed condition deer can be seen readily. The census is only a working figure; inspection of the range is the important factor.
A second and more scientific method is the construction of fenced range quadrates. This is really simple. In its barest form, a representative plot of range is selected and fenced against deer and stock. The plants inside the fence cannot be eaten; consequently they have a normal growth. Each year the new growth inside the fence is measured and compared with the measured remnants of new growth left on plants outside the fence. And thus we learn just what percentage of plant utilization the range is receiving and whether the range is deteriorating or improving. Of course, this type of study has more complex ramifications but the case just given illustrates the method.
This method is also being employed in national parks where elk and deer winter ranges are endangered.
The inevitable train of events now has brought us to the place where we can look back critically upon the cougar hunt of 1913. It was done then with the idea that proper wilderness utilization would consist of killing the bloodthirsty animals so that people could enjoy the gentle ones. But we have seen what happened to the gentle deer of the Kaibab and Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, the Kaibab was only the type case; the same thing has happened in many places throughout the West in both national parks and national forests where deer and elk have been protected and their enemies destroyed. The whole difficulty arises because we have learned to appreciate only a few wilderness aspects.
By now you are ready to say that the whole Kaibab fiasco would never have happened if we had hunted both cougars and deer moderately. I am willing to say that that would have been infinitely better wilderness utilization than we got, but I suspect that "moderate hunting" at that time would have meant 50 deer, 50 cougars. Undeniably, cougar hunting had as much justification as deer hunting. It is real sport. After reading Roosevelt's account of his 1913 cougar hunt, no one can doubt that the Colonel, Uncle Jim, and the boys had a whale of a good time. Furthermore, cougar hunting—like deer hunting—is an economic asset to the community. It is reported that one lion hunter who guided parties into the Kaibab during 1928 and 1929, when his parties bagged nearly 50 cougars, reaped some $9,000 from his hunting in those 2 years. It looks as though the remaining four or five cougars of the region will have to grow a lot of kittens before another $9,000 can be harvested.
Deer and cougar lived together for countless thousands of years before white man came along to protect the helpless deer. How much part the cougar played in developing the deer into an animal with its particular type of fleetness, grace, alertness, and cunning—the very characteristics which make the deer a deer and not a cow and hence desirable for recreation and game—we can only conjecture. We do know this, however, that in areas where deer have had the predatory menace entirely removed, they have largely lost both the game and the aesthetic values. Now, if any hunter or game expert thinks he can step into the cougar's role and supply all of the evolutionary factors which we suspect the cougar has supplied, he is welcome to do so, but I would rather not see him do it in or near a national park, where we should like to maintain a semblance of the primitive.
Slowly permeating through the maze of events at the Kaibab was this concept of the organic character of the wilderness. That is, things could not be done in the Kaibab without affecting Grand Canyon, and vice versa; cougars could not be killed without directly affecting the character, habits, and numbers of deer and indirectly affecting range; range plants could not disappear without affecting ground-dwelling birds and small mammals, and so on.
It is this very thing, the organic character of wilderness life, which makes it impossible for any national park or other wildlife refuge to stand alone, unharmed by factors outside of it.
To put my case briefly, I want to see a sustained yield of all forms of native wildlife and of wilderness recreation, particularly in the regions surrounding the national parks. Not only do I believe that such wilderness use is the inevitable, solution of the Kaibab type of difficulty, but further, that it is the only possible utilization of the wilderness areas surrounding the national parks which can make it possible for us to preserve the wilderness aspects of the national parks themselves.
In view of the organic character of the wilderness, it now becomes evident that to attempt to compute the recreational or game value of a wild animal on the basis of the number of times it may be seen by visitors, or upon the number of its kind which may be viewed or shot, is a childish and futile approach. The wilderness is much too complicated to be dealt with in any such crude butter-and-eggs way. And the psychology of recreation is equally much too complicated for any such rule-of-thumb hedonics.
To put it another way, we cannot stress, the value of one animal at the expense of another, for if we do our lopsided vision is reflected in poor management which wrecks the whole organic wilderness. Moreover, acquaintance with, or utilization of, the infinite variety of wilderness processes and creatures has far greater recreational potentialities than any sentimental addiction to a few, obviously harmless, pretty creatures. And equally important is this business of numbers. Perhaps the greatest deer spectacle on earth is not the seventeen hundred deer eating up the meadow in the Kaibab but one perfectly healthy buck bounding through the forest.
Had these principles been applied in managing the Kaibab from the time it was first made a national forest, I believe that the fiasco would never have occurred. This is not an attempt to say that all wilderness areas should be managed according to national parks' principles—most certainly not. There are and should be many different types of wilderness utilization, and the purposes of one type do not need to coincide with the purposes of another type. For example, Grand Canyon National Park was set aside for its scenic beauty, for its recreational and educational possibilities, and for scientific study. Immediately north of Grand Canyon National Park lies the Kaibab National Forest, a great hunting ground and one-time cattle range. Immediately to the south of Grand Canyon lies the Tusayan National Forest, wherein there is lumbering and stock grazing. And south of that lies the public domain with its unfortunate everything. Here then is a typical example of the dove-tailing of our various wilderness-use purposes. But the point is that there are certain biological principles which all wilderness administrations will have to adopt or else none can be successful.
From the wildlife management angle, an attempt has been made here to state fairly some of these inescapable principles by tracing briefly the salient events of the Kaibab and analyzing them. Let us go on now to a consideration of the function of national parks in our scheme of wilderness use generally.
Figure 18.
– Perhaps the greatest deer spectacle on earth is not the 1,700
deer eating up the meadow in the Kaibab but one perfectly healthy
buck . . .
(Photograph taken June 16, 1933, Crescent Meadow,
Sequoia. Wildlife Division No.
3349.)
In view of the fact that there are many varieties of wilderness use, as just outlined above, most of which are practices that for one reason or another definitely and permanently modify most of our remaining wilderness heritage, it becomes evident that the national parks have a very definite function to perform in maintaining primitive conditions. This is a thing which the public generally does not understand. There is a constant flow of proposals to the National Park Service to introduce this or that exotic, such as pheasants, Hungarian partridges, even large foreign mammals; to kill predators; to make zoos; to throw the parks open to grazing and lumbering; to provide artificial amusements; and in general to make of the parks just another string of fashionable resorts. These things which can be done better elsewhere should be done elsewhere. Because certain amusement contraptions have been successful at Coney Island, or certain types of exotic game have produced sport on somebody's shooting preserve, is no reason why these things should be transferred to our national parks. As Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead points out, there is need to clarify our concept of that type of recreation which is sought in the wilderness and not introduce the things which could operate much more satisfactorily elsewhere; for instance the amusement contraptions of Coney Island. Conversely, we should determine what attributes are peculiar to each park or wilderness itself and make our developments conducive to the enjoyment of these. We must see the particular function which national parks have in wilderness use generally, then develop our technique of administering them accordingly. And to this technique some of the principles developed earlier in this paper have been found to be essential.
In respect to our Nation's wildlife, the national parks play a quantitative part as well as a qualitative. Many times in the recent past, national parks have operated as reservoirs to replenish sections of the country where game animals had become extinct, for instance, the 3,000 elk transplanted from Yellowstone to various parts of our country and Canada. But above even this function of restocking the country with game animals is the function of pure wildlife conservation. The national parks have already provided sanctuaries and in the future, even more, must provide sanctuaries for many forms of wildlife which can exist nowhere else in the country—for example, grizzly, wolf, wolverine.
As corollary to the above, another function of the national parks is their obligation to forge the way by a unique educational technique toward a more widespread appreciation of all forms of wildlife and all aspects of the wilderness. Often elsewhere in game management there has been the tendency to follow the pleasant road of the "good fellow"; to provide as much as possible of the things to which people were most accustomed, because the accustomed things are the most comfortable; that is, to sentimentalize over the helpless deer, to ascribe deeds of honor and human intelligence to hounds, to transplant the familiar things far and wide and, above all, to produce quantity. These luxuries are quite all right in their place, but if they become the sole mode of recreational wilderness use, I'm afraid there would be a nauseating monotony about it all. Moreover, such practices lead definitely to destruction of many phases of nature, as at the Kaibab.
Thousands of people go to the national parks because they want the things which are peculiar to the primeval wilderness and, what is more, peculiar to a particular wilderness—such as Glacier or Yellowstone or Grand Canyon or some other one. To make possible the great joy to be found in the infinite variety of the wilderness—not to thwart the desire to discover more and more of its ways—and the moral obligation to leave it unimpaired for new discoveries tomorrow, these are functions, of the national parks in our general scheme of wilderness use. Our national parks are a great philosophical venture in which we are attempting to pry open for ourselves the intricate and delicately balanced system of wilderness values essential to full and intelligent enjoyment of the wilderness. The success of the venture is going to hinge largely upon our understanding of the values at stake, our knowledge of recreational psychology, and our ability to meet the biological requirements of wilderness management.
1 A cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Grand Canyon, by Theodore Roosevelt. Outlook, Oct. 4, 1913, pp. 259-266.
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