Utilization of Winter Browse on Wilderness Big Game Range

Abstract

During the late 1920's and early 1930's, signs of destructive use of big game winter range began to appear along the canyon of the Selway River of northern Idaho. The once-large mule deer herds of that isolated region were beginning to dwindle, and the formerly small elk herds had built up to numbers previously unrecorded. In the ensuing years, interested agencies carried on several studies of this problem. The most recent is Pittman-Robertson Project W-97-R of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Selway Wilderness Game Study, which was begun in the fall of 1950, in cooperation with the United States Forest Service. In June of 1951, the Idaho Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit began active participation when the writer undertook some of the winter range studies. The objectives were investigations of composition of cover, stage of succession, current use, and availability of browse during winter. This paper is a part of a master's thesis entitled: A preliminary study of the