JUNE, 1917 
247 
FOREST AND STREAM 
GAME IN THE NATIONAL PARKS 
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR PRACTICAL CONSERVATION, IF 
STATE AND FEDERAL AUTHORITIES WORK IN HARMONY 
By E. W. NELSON, Chief of the Biological Survey.* 
L ONG after the increasing population 
of the eastern United States had 
forced the elk and the bison across 
the Mississippi, the boundless open plains 
and forested mountains of the West 
swarmed with a primeval abundance of 
game. All are familiar with accounts of 
the millions of bison, antelope, elk and deer 
which ranged the great plains and the 
Rocky Mountain region within half a cent¬ 
ury, and a writer traveling through the 
San Joaquin Valley, California, in 1850, 
records seeing “bands of elk, deer and 
antelope in such numbers they actually 
darkened the plains for miles and looked 
in the distance like great herds of cattle.” 
The resistless westward ad¬ 
vance of settlement continued 
and now the agricultural lands 
from the Atlantic to the Pa¬ 
cific are peopled, and where 
crops cannot be grown the 
watering places are held for 
the use of multiplying herds 
of cattle and sheep. Under 
these conditions not less than 
ninety per cent of all the big 
game remaining between the 
Mississippi Valley and the 
Pacific Coast has been forced 
to retreat to the mountains 
traversing that vast region. 
There among the rugged peaks 
and forest - covered slopes 
which characterize our re¬ 
maining wilderness are shel¬ 
tered the survivors of the 
wonderful hosts of big game 
animals which once graced so 
large a part of the continent. 
Fortunately the major part of 
these mountain lands, not be¬ 
ing available for agriculture, 
have remained, and are likely 
to continue, a part of the pub¬ 
lic domain. 
At present the situation as 
to game control in the West 
is extremely chaotic. The 
game there is practically all 
concentrated on that part of the public do¬ 
main included in the national forests, na¬ 
tional parks and national monuments. On 
the national forests two Federal game ref¬ 
uges exist, the Grand Canyon and the 
Wichita, where game is protected under 
Federal law. In addition, state game ref¬ 
uges have been made on the national for¬ 
ests in six states. On these state refuges, 
as elsewhere on the national forests, state 
game laws prevail, though the authority 
of the Federal government controls the 
timber and grazing. 
In the sixteen national parks the Federal 
government has full authority to protect 
game in only seven: the Yellowstone, Gla- 
* Courtesy of the American Forestry Association. 
cier, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Platte, 
Hot Springs, and the Hawaiian. The 
states have not ceded jurisdiction for the 
other nine parks, and in the absence of 
Federal legislation the Federal author¬ 
ities can punish poachers there only 
by expelling them from within the park 
limits. Of the 34 national monuments, 
twenty-one are administered by the Na¬ 
tional Park Service, eleven by the Forest 
Service, and two are under the jurisdiction 
of the War Department; but the game on 
them remains subject to state jurisdiction. 
To add to the confusion, the states have 
many varying and conflicting laws which 
often produce unhappy consequences for 
the game. Furthermore, in many of the 
states where the laws appear to give a 
fair degree of protection, through lack of 
funds or for other reasons the protection 
is extremely ineffective. The fact that 
game is steadily decreasing in a large part 
of the West while the number of sports¬ 
men is increasing is indicated by the fact 
that in the regulations under the state laws 
there is from year to year a decrease in 
the number of game animals a hunter is 
permitted to shoot in a season. 
T HROUGHOUT the West where elk, 
antelope and mountain sheep were 
once so widely distributed, elk may 
be legally shot in three states only : moun 
tain sheep in two, and the hunting of 
antelope is generally prohibited. In five 
states west of the Mississippi river deer 
hunting is entirely prohibited.; in eight the 
limit is one deer to the hunter a year; in 
five states the limit is two deer; in two 
states three deer, and in Louisiana the 
limit is five. 
In Arizona, one of the last states where 
frontier conditions prevailed and in which 
there is a great extent of superbly forested 
mountains and plateaus, affording ideal 
conditions for game, the native elk was ex¬ 
terminated nearly twenty years ago, the 
antelope and mountain sheep are so nearly 
gone that there is a permanent closed sea¬ 
son on them, and there is a bag limit of 
one deer a year to the hunter. 
The idea of game conserva¬ 
tion in the West extends back 
less than thirty years, and 
there, as in most comparatively 
new regions, many people long 
retain the feeling that wild 
game belongs to whoever can 
take it, a survival of the point 
of view of more primitive 
times. It has been the history 
of all new regions that the 
pioneers depend on game as a 
source of food supply and kill 
it freely at all seasons. No 
thought is given the future 
until, with the increase of pop¬ 
ulation, the number of animals 
killed so far exceeds the nat¬ 
ural increase that the supply 
is rapidly destroyed. It is evi¬ 
dent from what we know of 
past and existing conditions in 
a large part of the West that, 
although the sentiment for pro¬ 
tection is increasing, game will 
continue to disappear unless 
some wiser and more effective 
method than now exists is put 
into operation, not only for its 
protection, but for its perpetu¬ 
ation and increase. 
The national forests are 
patrolled by rangers of 
the Forest Service of the Department, 
of Agriculture, and the national parks 
by rangers of the National Park Ser¬ 
vice of the Department of the Interior. 
For some years the Forest Service has been 
making a careful survey of game condi¬ 
tions in national forests and is well in¬ 
formed as to the existing situation. It is 
well for the remaining wild life of the 
West that the men in charge of both for¬ 
ests and parks are deeply interested in its 
conservation. 
It is evident that wild game inhabiting 
a national forest is as much a natural as¬ 
set of the forest as the annual crop of 
grazing or of the timber. Up to the pres¬ 
ent time our attitude has been that it is 
Protection and Restocking Would Restore the Muledeer 
