4-i() journal of forestry 



The Yellowstone Elk Situation 



In the New York Bvcnimj Post of February 5 there appeared an 

 article on the elk situation by Emerson Hough in which was a scurrilous 

 attack on the Forest Service and its officers. The following letter to 

 the Editor of the Evening Post by former Forester H. S. Graves was 

 written in answer to Mr. Hough : 



"In your issue of Saturday, February 5. you published a contribution 

 from Mr. Emerson Hough regarding the Yellowstone elk situation con- 

 taining implications so grossly unjust to the Forest Service that they 

 should not be permitted to stand unchallenged. 



"Mr. Hough bolsters up his position by imputing motives. With the 

 main issues involved I shall not now concern myself. Mr. Hough has 

 a right to form and express his own opinions about them. But against 

 his atrocious impeachment of the whole-souled loyalty and devotion 

 with which the men in the Forest Service serve the public interest, 

 often at large pecuniary sacrifice, I register most emphatic protest. 



" 'Friends of the wild game of America,' says Mr. Hough, 'get no 

 pay. All they make is the enmity of men on Government payrolls 

 who have jobs to defend and records to explain. There are some other 

 men who have no jobs to defend, but only a country to defend the best 

 they know how.' 



"Will Mr. Hough say that he has received no pay for his articles 

 regarding the elk which have been published in the various magazines 

 at different times ? And by what right does he arrogate to himself and 

 those who agree with him a monopoly of patriotism? 



" 'The spreading of the truth,' he says, 'is the only thing which really 

 can help the remnants of the Yellowstone Park herd.' True. Is he 

 then rendering them a service, or the contrary, when he adds such a 

 sentence as this? 



" 'It is a grievous situation when any citizen comes to feel that he 

 and his country have been betrayed by that country's own friends, 

 robbed by its own servants, and sold out by its own hired men.' 



"These are 'wild and whirling words.' No man has a right to use 

 them causelessly without rebuke. Abuse of public officials is as cheap 

 as it is censurable; for those unjustifiably assailed are not in position 

 to reply without restraint, while the effect is to impair their usefulness 

 by undermining the confidence of the public in them. 



"I have no job to defend, and can speak certainly with an authority 

 equal to Mr. Hough's as to the spirit in which the men of the Forest 

 Service work. As their chief for ten years, I am able to say with 

 some confidence that they are as far from being job holders as it is 

 possible to conceive. They are doing a work of immense difficulty, for 

 far less pay than they are worth and could get if they chose to seek it, 



