RESTORING ELK TO THE FORESTS 



67T 



long-term sales is to establish a price 

 which will be fair to both sides. No 

 one can foresee future conditions well 

 enough to know what stumpage will be 

 worth ten, fifteen, or twenty years 

 hence. 



"Consequently the terms of sale pro- 

 vide for the readjustment of stumpage 

 prices every five years. The basis for 

 fixing the prices will be, in each case, 

 the prices of manufactured lumber in 

 the markets where the timber is sold 

 during the preceding two years. 



"For several years the Forest Service 

 has been selling in the neighborhood of 

 a million dollars' worth of National 

 Forest stumpage per year, but this com- 

 bined with what is cut for free use is 



only about one-eighth of what might be 

 cut without reducing the permanent 

 stock of the Forests. The supply will 

 be kept up through growth. By making 

 long-term sales it will be possible great- 

 ly to increase the amount available for 

 present needs of the timber consuming 

 public, without endangering future sup- 

 plies through overcutting. It will al- 

 ways remain true, however, that vastly 

 the greater part of our timber sales will 

 be to small purchasers, who are favored 

 wherever possible. Monopoly is im- 

 possible as long as the door is kept open 

 for such purchasers. Out of over 5,600 

 sales made in the fiscal year 1911, about 

 forty were for over $5,000 worth of 

 timber to a single purchaser." 



RESTORING ELK TO THE FORESTS 



NT to the forests of ma, besought the Washington chiefs of 



Rocky mountain region of at the allied services for a small herd, 



a portion of the great herds Eight were sent him in 1909, and the 



of elk which formerly roamed the Wichita herd now numbers twelve, 



mountain sides all the way from north- It is the present intention of the 



ern Canada to the Mexican line, is a biological survey to fill out each and 



project which the biological survey of every request of the forest supervisors 



the Department of Agriculture in con- wherever favorable opportunity offers, 



junction with the United States Forest So long as the slender money supply 



Service has taken up. available lasts these transfers of e\k 



Contrary to the accepted belief that from their present habitat to the newer 



the elk of the United States suffered sections of the distant west will be 



decimation and practical extinction effected. 



through slaughter by hunters, white The transportation of the elk is an 



and red, the Forest Service explains interesting as well as an exciting 



that starvation occasioned by the con- process. The younger elk, that is, 



sumption of the herbage by the cattle, bucks and does, ranging in age from 



and, more particularly, by the sheep on seven to eight months up to two years, 



the ranges, has been the chief cause of are tempted into fixed corrals and 



the dying out of the elk. trapped. After the trapping they are 



In Yellowstone Park, however, there roped and tied. In the instance of the 



have been all along several fine herds recent transfer from the Yellowstone 



of elk ; also in the regions of Wyoming region to the Sun Dance forest reserve, 



surrounding Jackson Hole there is a the journey was made for a consi_<ler- 



superb herd. ahle portion of the way by sleds. The 



" In the summer of 1911 Supervisor animals, in separate frame cages, were 



Knowles obtained a shipment of elk for laced on the sleds and drawn by sturdy 



the Sun Dance National Forest. The mules mile after mile across the hills 



Wichita Forester, in western Oklaho- and prairies to the railway. 



