Special report on range management and wildlife protection in Kings Canyon National Park

Sumner Jr., EL (1941) Special report on range management and wildlife protection in Kings Canyon National Park. Report to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Photographed in Park archives, Three Rivers, CA.

The establishment of Kings Canyon National Park adds the final outstanding unit to the Sierra wilderness system of the National Park service. The new park is not a strictly virgin sanctuary, however. Since 1870 its range lands have been grazed and its wildlife resources depleted and altered – not se drastically as in more accessible regions, but extensively nevertheless.

Sheep have been banned from most of the range lands in recent years, but under inherited grazing permits, a large area in the park still is so closely grazed by cattle that toward fall the traveler can ride all day without finding a place to turn his saddle horse out to feed.

Unlike the Yosemite and the Northern Sierra in general, grazing areas in the high granite country of the Southern Sierra, which includes the Kings, are relatively scarce. Since pack and saddle stock constitute the chief means of transportation, such areas are not only scenically important but vital from a practical standpoint. In addition to the areas which have suffered from commercial grazing, many strategic meadows along the more heavily used recreational trails have suffered severely from overuse by pack and saddle stock.

The present report includes a grazing program designed to:

1. Limit damage to the cattle rand and
2. Reduce or in most cases eliminate the overuse by pack and saddle stock of strategic meadows along recreational trails.