Ungulate Management in National Parks of the United States and Canada

Demarais, S.; Cornicelli, L.; Kahn, R.; Merrill, E.; Miller, C.; Peek, J.; Porter, W.; Sargeant, G.

Enabling legislation—that which gives appropriate officials the authority to implement or enforce the law—impacts management of ungulates in national parks of Canada and the United States (U.S.). The initial focus of such legislation in both countries centered on preserving natural and culturally significant areas for posterity. Although this objective remains primary, philosophies and practices have changed. A Canadian vision for ungulate management emerged during the latter half of the 20th century to protect and maintain or restore the ecological integrity of representative samples of the country’s 39 distinct landscapes, and to include provisions for traditional hunting and fishing practices representative of past cultural impacts on the environment. The current ungulate management approach in the U.S. relies on natural (ecological) processes, as long as normal conditions are promoted and there is no impairment of natural resources. Emphasizing natural processes as the basis has been a challenge because ecosystem dynamics are complex and management is multi-jurisdictional. Additionally, natural regulation typically will not prevent ungulates from reaching and sustaining densities that are incompatible with preservation or restoration of native flora and fauna, natural processes, or historical landscapes. Concern about ungulate impacts on woody vegetation and cascading effects on other flora and fauna has caused much deliberation over how active management is conducted. Management alternatives typically considered during park planning include no action, animal removal, fertility control, redistribution, and predator reintroduction. Problems such as human-conditioned animals, incomplete ecosystems, reductions in natural processes like wildfire, and loss of predators have implications that preclude a system-wide no-action approach to ungulate management in national parks. Removals of ungulates from national parks have been controversial, and much of the debate has revolved around methods of removal. Disease issues limit the use of translocations as temporary solutions to abundance problems. Most ungulate removals from U.S. national parks have been accomplished by shooting. Public involvement in shooting has been controversial and limited by National Park Service (NPS) policies that do not allow hunting of native wildlife in national parks per se. Costs of shooting programs depend on costs of administration, payments to shooters, logistical challenges, methods of carcass disposal, and the degree of supervision by park management. Shooting programs modeled after public hunting programs (i.e., volunteers pay a modest fee, are not directly supervised, and retain carcasses for personal use) have been successful in the few instances where attempted. Removal management can be successful only where a superintendent is interested in building a program based on science, is able to garner the resources to do the planning, and is willing to take political risks to achieve management goals. Fertility control has limited field application because of insufficient duration of effectiveness and the number of doses required, although recent increases in immunogenic capability (i.e., ability to stimulate antibody production) have improved these characteristics. Restoration of extant mammalian predators is limited by the small size of parks and complicated ecological and social issues. Range expansion or redistribution is only a short-term solution to overpopulation and has limited application. Internal and external reviews of ungulate management in national parks during the 1980s and 1990s identified several problems. The management needs that were identified included clear statements of management goals and objectives; use of explicit measures to objectively evaluate degradation of cultural or natural resources, including data on ungulate populations and vegetative communities; monitoring programs to measure change as management programs.