(f) Game control in other parks. – In 1961-62, excluding Yellowstone elk, there were approximately 870 native animals transplanted and 827 killed on 18 national parks and monuments. Additionally, about 2,500 feral goats, pigs and burros were removed from three areas. Animal control in the park system as a whole is still a small operation. It should be emphasized, however, that removal programs have not in the past been adequate to control ungulates in many of the parks. Future removals will have to be larger and in many cases repeated annually. Better management of wildlife habitat will naturally produce larger annual surpluses. But the scope of this phase of park operation will never be such as to constitute a large facet of management. On the whole, reductions will be small in relation to game harvests outside the parks. For example, from 50 to 200 deer a year are removed from a problem area in Sequoia National Park; the deer kill in California is 75,000 and should be much larger. In Rocky Mountain National Park 59 elk were removed in 1961-62 and the trim should perhaps be 100 per year in the future; Colorado kills over 10,000 elk per year on open hunting ranges. In part, this relates to the small area of the national park system, which constitutes only 3.9 per cent of the public domain; hunting ranges under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management make up approximately 70 per cent.
In summary, control of animal populations in the national parks would appear to us to be an integral part of park management, best handled by the National Park Service itself. In this manner excess ungulates have been controlled in the national parks of Canada since 1943, and the same principle is being applied in the parks of many African countries. Selection of personnel to do the shooting likewise is a function of the Park Service. In most small operations this would logically mean skilled rangers. In larger removal programs, there might be included additional personnel, selected from the general public, hired and deputized by the Service or otherwise engaged, but with a view to accomplishing a task, under strict supervision and solely for the protection of park values. Examples of some potentially large removal programs where expanded crews may be needed are mule deer populations on plateaus fringing Dinosaur National Monument and Zion National Park (west side), and white-tailed deer in Acadia National Park.
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