Have we forgotten what happened at Kaibab??

from Clay Cooper wrote 3 years 2 weeks ago

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve on the Kaibab Plateau. His intention was to protect the mule deer from overhunting by humans and predation by natural enemies. He knew that human activities had depleted wildlife species throughout the country, and only a few locations in the West still contained the numbers that had flourished a few decades earlier. Roosevelt hoped that future generations of wildlife enthusiasts would be able to visit the Kaibab Plateau to witness an abundance of wildlife not remaining elsewhere.

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The plateau is about 60 miles from north to south and approximately 45 miles wide. It is bordered by the Grand Canyon on the south and east, by Kanab Canyon on the west, and high desert on the north. These vast natural boundaries isolate the plateau (Figure 1). An estimated 4,000 deer lived in this area when Roosevelt established the preserve, and he hoped that protection would increase their numbers significantly.

The United States Forest Service administered the new preserve as it had the surrounding forest lands since the 1890s. Ranchers grazed fewer domestic animals there for a combination of reasons, including degraded forage conditions and reduced permits from the Forest Service. The mandate of the preserve prohibited all deer hunting on the plateau and at the same time exterminated "varmints" such as mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, and wolves. Bounty hunters diligently tracked and killed mountain lions, which they viewed as the most significant enemy of the deer. Wolves were already rare by 1900, having been almost completely exterminated by ranchers before the turn of the century. Although local ranchers may not have favored the establishment of a game preserve on lands where they formerly grazed large numbers of livestock, they certainly supported the removal of predatory animals that constantly threatened their cattle, sheep, and horses on surrounding lands.

Each year, local Forest Service officials estimated that there were more deer on the plateau than in the previous year. These estimates served to provide evidence of foresters' success in increasing the deer herd more than they reflect actual increases. According to Forest Supervisor Walter Mann, previous foresters based their estimates on very limited actual counts, since the rugged country on and around the plateau made complete censuses practically impossible (Mann, 1941).

In 1913, Roosevelt visited the plateau himself to hunt mountain lions and noted the abundance of deer (Roosevelt, 1913). The Forest Service report for that year chronicled Roosevelt's suggestion that some deer hunting be allowed. Hunting would require a significant change in policy, however, since the proclamation that created the preserve prohibited hunting, and no single individual or agency felt sufficiently confident of the situation to change the mandate of the preserve at that time (Mann, 1941).

When the newly-formed National Park Service dedicated Grand Canyon National Park in 1919, jurisdiction of lands immediately north of the canyon rim went to the Park Service. This divided the preserve between Forest Service and National Park Service administration. The boundary between the two extended across the plateau from east to west about 15 miles from the canyon. No barrier prevented the deer moving from park land to forest land within the preserve, and it soon became evident that differing management philosophies would lead to interagency conflict over the deer.

At about the same time this change in jurisdiction took place, forest officials began to report potentially serious problems for the future of the deer. They suggested that the abundant deer might eventually deplete the plateau of edible vegetation, but neither the Forest Service nor the Park Service took any corrective action for a number of reasons.

The primary reason for delay in preventing further population increase was quite simply that no one knew what action would be appropriate. The situation did not appear disastrous in 1920, and foresters had no way of predicting how rapidly the deer herd was growing or even if the number of deer was still increasing. Moreover, officials in the Park Service were continually engineering new campaigns to entice more tourists to the Grand Canyon and hoped the deer on the North Rim would become a major attraction in their own right. It seemed foolish to do anything until the scientists or wildlife experts understood the situation more fully.

Even if the federal government reached some agreement on how deer within the preserve ought to be managed, any action that involved actually killing deer faced numerous obstacles. Those who favored hunting needed to establish the legality of hunting in the preserve. More crucially, National Park Service policy strictly forbid hunting on its lands. In addition, state game departments held jurisdiction over hunting on all public and private land. Arizona became a state in 1912, and in the early 1920s the state government favored tourism around the Grand Canyon over hunting (Foster, 1970). The Forest Service in particular recognized that its legal right to kill deer was questionable, at best. Hunting on the Kaibab became legal only after years of legal suits following the arrest of unlicensed Forest Service hunters by state game wardens.

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Government officials surveyed the preserve repeatedly to assess the situation. Beginning in 1922, scientists from the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey agreed that the deer population required dramatic reduction. Other scientists who visited the plateau and surrounding lands remained uncertain, and some argued that there was no reason to consider reducing the deer herd because the vegetation on much of the plateau was still in excellent condition. At the request of Forest Service officials, the Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture commissioned a study of the plateau. This established the Kaibab Investigating Committee composed of biologists, foresters, conservationists, and hunters.

In the summer of 1924, the committee visited the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve to assess the condition of the deer and their food supply. Many officials hoped the findings of this group would lead to a new policy for the preserve. Those who hoped the situation could be resolved quickly were disappointed when the experts did not reach agreement on a number of key issues. Their estimates of the number of deer ranged from 50,000 up to 100,000. Some reported that the food supply remained good; others assessed it as fair; and still others thought it was poor. They could not agree on any single solution to the problem. They suggested a range of options, from taking no action, to trapping and shipping deer elsewhere, to killing half the herd outright.

In the fall of 1924, the Forest Service chose a combination of all three options, starting with hunting. They opened the plateau to hunters without the permission of the state of Arizona - leading to a series of arrests - and without even notifying the National Park Service of their intentions. The Forest Service tried its second option by organizing an effort to drive some of the deer off the plateau, into the Grand Canyon, across the Colorado River, and up to the South Rim.

Zane Grey, the famous western writer, promoted and participated in this drive. Despite the assistance of local ranchers and Native Americans, the attempt failed completely. Deer, as many experienced ranchers and naturalists well knew, do not congregate and move in large groups like cattle or sheep.

This flurry of activity on the Kaibab Plateau brought unprecedented fame to the emerging controversy there. Popular articles appeared in many of the nature and sporting magazines of the time. The involvement of a famous author, heads of several federal agencies, and numerous well-known biologists captured the public's interest.

Because action to reduce the deer had been too little and too late, many scientists and Forest Service officials predicted that deer would starve by the thousands. While few carcasses of starved or frozen deer were actually found, most visitors to the area the following spring reported seeing fewer deer than in previous years. Many supposed that undernourished deer became easy prey for coyotes or died in rough terrain where no one ever found them. From this indirect and generally unreliable evidence, the deer herd's ruin became established.

Last updated: October 10, 2001; Created: 20 April 2001.

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from Alex Pernice th... wrote 3 years 2 weeks ago