57 6 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



sheep. Except for one small, isolated 

 herd, the native elk had been extermi- 

 nated. Protection alone could not be 

 depended upon to restore their num- 

 bers. An attempt was made therefore 

 to reestablish them by importing ani- 

 mals. From 1912 to 1915, 155 elk from 

 the Jackson Hole and northern Yellow- 

 stone herds were released in 6 locali- 

 ties. Sportsmen, ranchers, and other 

 interested persons paid the costs of 

 handling and shipping them. 



The imported elk multiplied rap- 

 idly so fruitful were they in their new 

 homes that conflicts with the private 

 property owners soon arose. By 1921 

 the legislature had to authorize the 

 game commissioner to kill elk that were 

 damaging farms or other property. 



OVERPOPULATION soon occurred. 

 The herds of elk had grown by 1925 

 to the extent that some of the suitable 

 areas were fully stocked, and compe- 

 tition with the domestic livestock on 

 private and public lands was reported. 

 The problem no longer could be solved 

 by killing a few marauding elk. 



Game wardens and forest officers 

 learned from field investigations that 

 the summer range in some places was 

 fully stocked and that the winter ranges 

 were being seriously over-browsed by 

 too many big-game animals. 



Surveys in winter disclosed hundreds 

 of deer and elk in some localities, but 

 townspeople, unimpressed, questioned 

 the accuracy of the investigators and 

 branded as heresy any suggestion of a 

 change in the laws that, within a gen- 

 eration, had helped to restore the ani- 

 mals to the ranges. To sportsmen, any 

 game official who made such a pro- 

 posal was guilty of violating a sacred 

 trust. The general public refused to 

 believe that there actually could be too 

 many big-game animals. 



Thus the job of the game admin- 

 istrators was complex. It was one thing 

 to recognize that overpopulations of 

 big game did exist, and quite another 

 to try to take corrective action with- 

 out adequate authority. 



The problem of administration was 



complicated also by the competition 

 between big game and domestic live- 

 stock for forage on the ranges. The so- 

 called "public-land States" in the West 

 have a comparatively small amount of 

 cultivated land but large areas of range 

 land. Some of the range is privately 

 owned, but most is administered by 

 Federal and State agencies. Utah, for 

 example, has 52,700,000 acres of land, 

 of which only 3.2 percent is cultivated. 

 Nearly all of the rest has economic 

 value as either summer or winter graz- 

 ing lands for domestic livestock. In 

 truth, the only lands not grazed by 

 livestock are certain barren or inacces- 

 sible sections, a comparatively small 

 area of national parks, and some small 

 tracts protected as city watersheds. Of 

 the grazing land, 5,000,000 acres are 

 in private ownership; 9,000,000 are 

 national forests; 25,000,000 are ad- 

 ministered by the Bureau of Land 

 Management; 1,740,000 are Indian 

 reservations; and 3,650,000 are owned 

 by the State and counties. 



As a rule, therefore, wherever big- 

 game animals are present one also finds 

 domestic livestock. Both depend on 

 native plants. Competition for forage 

 (sometimes real, at other times imagi- 

 nary) is a factor that must be con- 

 sidered in any big-game-management 

 program in the West. 



