Page 359 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVES AND REFUGES 337
Pumas 100 Gray Wolves none Coyotes 400 Pelicans
The actual count of 49 wild bison in the Park, 10 of which are calves of 1912, will be to all friends of the bison a dehghtful surprise. Here- tofore the little band had seemed to be stationary, which if true would soon mean a decline.
The history of the wild game of the Yellowstone Park is blackened by two occurrences, and one existing fact. The fact is : the town of Gardiner is situated on the northern boundary of the Park, in the State of Montana. In Gardiner there are a number of men, armed with rifles, who toward game have the gray-wolf quality of mercy.
The first stain is the massacre of the 270 wild bison for their heads and robes, already noted. The second blot is the equally savage slaughter in the early winter of 1911, by some of the people of Gardiner, reinforced by so-called sportsmen from other parts of the state, of all the park elk they could kill,—bulls, cows and calves,—because a large band wandered across the line into the shambles of Gardiner, on Buffalo Flats.
If the people of Gardiner can not refrain from slaughtering the game of the Park—the very animals annually seen by 20,000 visitors to the Park,—then it is time for the American people to summon the town of Gardiner before the bar of public opinion, to show cause why the town should not be wiped off the map.
The 35,000 elk that summer in the Park are compelled in winter to migrate to lower altitudes in order to find grass that is not under two feet of snow. In the winter of 1911-12, possibly 5,000 went south, into Jackson Hole, and 3,000 went northward into Montana. The sheep- grazing north of the Park, and the general settlement by ranchmen of Jackson Hole, have deprived the elk herds of those regions of their natural food. For several years past, up to and including the winter of 1910-11, some thousands of weak and immature elk have perished in theJacksonHolecountry,fromstarvationandexposure. Theranchmen of that region have had terrible times,—in witnessing the sufferings of thousands of elk tamed by hunger, and begging in piteous dumb show for the small and all-too-few haystacks of the ranchmen.
The people of Jackson Hole, headed by S. N. Leek, the famous pho- tographer and lecturer on those elk herds, have done all that they could dointhepremises. Thespiritmanifestedbythemhasbeentheexact reverseofthatmanifestedinGardiner. Totheireverlastingcredit,they have kept domestic sheep out of the Jackson Valley,—by giving the owners of invading herds "hours" in which to get their sheep "all out, and over the western range."
In 1909, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk $.5,000 In 1911, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk ."),000
1,000