LAND FOR WILD LIFE AND RECREATION 209 



of browse plants, and starves. No matter whether you upset 

 the balance by taking away the browse plants or the lions, you 

 get the same result. This is a very simple way of stating a compli 

 cated process. Here is an example of what actually happened in. 

 the Southwest. 



In 1905, Uncle Jimmy Owens went into the Kaibab Forest in 

 Arizona as a lion hunter. For each lion killed he received a 

 bounty from a grateful government which wished to be rid of 

 such beasts. In a few years Uncle Jimmy killed several hundred 

 of these animals, chiefly along the North Rim of the Grand 

 Canyon. 11 A few years later the Kaibab was made into a 

 game preserve. The chief result of these two attempts at game 

 control was a huge increase in the number of deer on the 

 Kaibab Forest. Indeed, the deer increased so fast that they soon 

 destroyed 40 per cent of the winter feed. With the winter 

 feed gone, hundreds of deer starved to death. It was simply 

 another case of overgrazing, with all of the bad effects that 

 come with overgrazing in the Southwest. It is estimated that 

 it will take fifty or more years to bring the vegetation back to 

 a healthy state. 12 



Hunters like Uncle Jimmy were commissioned to kill moun' 

 tain lions and grizzly bear not only to protect the deer and 

 elk, but also to save the stock of the ranchers from night raids 

 by these preying beasts. But once the deer and elk were freed 

 from their natural enemies, they multiplied very rapidly. 



With so much of the land which was once winter range for 

 the deer and elk now taken up for feeding beef cattle, there is 

 a shortage of food in the winter for these animals. During 

 severe winters when there is so little to eat in the higher alti' 

 tudes, great herds of deer and elk come down on the lowlands. 

 The stock raisers naturally do not want the deer eating the 



11 Grand Canyon Rational Par\ Bulletin. 



12 Parkins and Whitaker, op. cit., p. 495. 



