Elk and Bison Management on the Oglala Sioux Game Range

Abstract

The Oglala Sioux Indians in southwest South Dakota instituted in 1970 a range management program involving the production of native game animals for recreation fee hunting. They have two forest-parkland pastures of about 4,000 acres each. These pastures are enclosed by game fences of heavy woven wire, 7.5 feet high. This paper is concerned with these two pastures, referred to as the game range. The Indians also have a 20,000-acre badlands pasture enclosed by natural barriers and a heavy barbed-wire cattle fence. The game range is a land of rugged topography located near Allen, S. Dak. Its plant cover includes ponderosa pine (Pin us po nderosa) forests, open parklands, and savannahs. The steep-sided drainages have good stands of deciduous trees, including bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica), and American elm (Ulmus americana), and deciduous shrubs including