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

PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC SETTING
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or failure of a given group of hunters today proves
that the game is present or absent. The key
information is the positive evidence provided by
those who saw animals. There were many such
people in Yellowstone, and they left many reports
of abundant elk and other wildlife.
CONCLUSIONS
Yellowstone's long-term climatic record
suggests that the native plant and animal communities
are dynamic and respond to changing environmental
conditions. The paleontological, archeological,
and historical records, though they have
important limitations that must be recognized,
combine to suggest that these plant and animal
communities, though they have been affected by
these changes in climate, are quite resilient.
Relatively few species, in fact, very few, are
elintinated by the variations that the park area has
experienced over the past 10,000 years. The
region's biodiversity, then, seems to hold up well,
but specific biodiversity issues will be discussed
later in this report.
The paleontological, archeological, and
historical evidence provides a picture of pre-I 872
Yellowstone as a place continuously inhabited by
essentially the same wildlife community as today.
These three lines of evidence provide abundant
proof that today's native ungulates and their
predators were common residents of the park area
for thousands of years, and provide equally strong
proof that humans were an active part of this
setting for nearly as long.
It is again important to point out, however,
that the paleontological, archeological, and
historical evidence does not pennit us to make
precise estimates of wildlife population sizes.
Though the historical record suggests that large
animals were common, we cannot yet use this
material to prove that they were more common, as
common, or less common than today. In fact, they
may have been less common then than now, simply
because of different environmental conditions.
The period 1800-1872 represented the end (and the
most severe years) of an extended cold and wet
period (circa 1500-1850) known as the Little Ice
Age. If the Little Ice Age resulted in deeper snows
and harsher winters, then there were almost
certainly fewer ungulates and predators wintering
there then than now. Moreover, computer models
suggest that the northern elk population size might
be reduced from 8 to 20 percent when wolves are
restored (Boyce 1990, 1993, 1995a; Garton et a!.
1990; Mack and Singer 1992a, 1992b, 1993a,
1993b); wolves were present prior to 1872, and
presumably played an important role in elk
population size then. Environmental conditions,
including the influences of Native Americans,
change over time; there is no specific date or
period in the past that can serve us as a model for
how the Yellowstone landscape should look today.
The highest value of the prehistoric and early
historical record of Yellowstone may be in showing
us the range of past variations in that landscape.