Yellowstone's Northern Range - Greater Yellowstone Science ...

THE NORTHERN RANGE
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Figure 1.1.
Photographer
William Henry
Jackson, a member of
the 1872 Hayden
Survey, took this
photograph along the
Yellowstone River in
Yellowstone National
Park about three
miles from the Lower
Falls. It shows
Hayden Survey
hunter Fred Bottler
(center) and
companions with five
freshly killed bull elk.
Until 1883, park
visitors were legally
elltitled to hunt and
kill wildlife for food,
but the industrial
slaughter of market
hunters led to the
prohibition of hunting
in the park. NPS
photo.
Today's natural resource managers and users
are recipients of a rich legacy in national parks.
The legacy includes not only the resources themselves
but also the array of policy, regulations, and
management directions that have grown during the
institutional history of the parks. The National
Park Service's Management Policies (1988) have
summatized this legacy as follows:
The natural resource policies of the
National Park Service are aimed at
providing the American people with the
opportunity to enjoy and benefit from
natural environments evolving through
natural processes minimally influenced
by human actions. The natural resources
and values that the Park Service
protects are described in the 1916 NPS
Organic Act (16 USC I et seq.) and in
the enabling legislation or executive
orders establishing the parks. These
resources and values include plants,
animals, water, air, soils, topographic
features, geologic features, paleontologic
resources, and aesthetic values,
such as scenic vistas, natural quiet, and
clear night skies. Some of these
resources and values are protected both
by NPS authorities and by other
statutory authorities, such as the Clean
Air Act (42 USC 7401 et seq.), the
Clean Water Act (33 USC 1251 et seq.),
the Endangered Species Act (16 USC
1531 et seq.), the National Environmen-
tal Policy Act (42 USC 4321 et seq.),
and the Wilderness Act (16 USC 1131
et seq.).
This generous and ambitious statement of
purpose is the result of more than a century of
experience, struggle, and experimentation in
national park management that began in
Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The park was
created prior to the development of the professions
of wildlife management and range management in
North America, and at a time of great waste of
wildlife and other resources. With little or no
funding and even less specific legislative direction,
early park managers began the park's 125-year
struggle to come to terms with managing this large,
complex wildland.
EARLY MANAGEMENT
From 1872 to
1883, public hunting
was legal in the park,
partly because there
were few services
available to visitors,
who often killed park
wildlife to supplement
their provisions
(Figure 1.1). According
to early regulations,
hunting was
limited to sport or
subsistence killing by
visitors, but the market hunting that swept many
western gamelands in the 1870s and early 1880s
did not miss the large wildlife herds of Yellowstone
(Schullery in press). Market hunting probably
started in the Yellowstone Valley north of the
present park around 1869-1870, and soon was
occurring within the boundaries of the newly
established park. The park's early civilian administrators
(1872-1886), who spent only the brief
tourist season in residence (and some years did not
visit at all), were not equipped or funded to prevent
industrial-scale slaughter of park wildlife, which
usually took place in early spring. This slaughter
began before the park was established, and seemed