All men including Aboriginals put pressure on wildlife populations.........the difference was prior to 5000 years ago when judeo/christian 1 god ideology took hold, people saw wild animals as fellow beings that were admired for their beauty, speed, and utility.............we need the most variety of plants and animals possible to optimize our time here on Earth............Who is to say what new medicines, foodstuffs and other discoveries might come from the widest arrary of plant and animal gene pool...............Leopold said it: :Keep all the cogs, a sign of intelligent tinkering"!

Wildlife encounters by Lewis and Clark: a spatial analysis of interactions between native Americans and wildlife.(Biology in History)
BioScience| October 01, 2003 | Laliberte, Andrea S.; Ripple, William J.

The Lewis and Clark journals contain some of the earliest and most detailed written descriptions of a large part of the United States before Euro-American settlement. We used the journal entries to assess the influence of humans on wildlife distribution and abundance. Areas with denser human population, such as the Columbia Basin and the Pacific Coast, had lower species diversity and a lower abundance of large mammals. The opposite effect was observed on the Plains. We believe that overhunting before Euro-American contact and the introduction of the horse, which heightened the effects of hunting, may have been major contributors to the historical absence of some species that are present in the archaeological record. The results show considerable human influence on wildlife even under relatively low human population densities. This finding has major implications for conservation biology and ecological restoration, as human influence is often underestimated when considering presettlement conditions.

Historical reference conditions are often used as a baseline for comparison with current and future natural resource management regimes (Aronson et al. 1995). There may be much debate about which point in time, what area, and what spatial extent should be used as a reference condition (Wagner et al. 2000), but understanding the past is undeniably important to the proper management of present and future ecosystem conditions. First-hand explorer journals offer one way to assess the past. The journals of Lewis and Clark's 1804 1806 expedition provide the earliest and most detailed written descriptions of a large part of the United States before Euro-American settlement, as well as geographic coordinates of daily campsites.

Human influence on North American ecosystems before European settlement has to be considered, because indigenous peoples brought about changes to the environment long before the arrival of the first Europeans. Native people used fire, modified vegetation, and influenced animal populations, with the result that North America was not a pristine wilderness (White and Cronon 1998). It is well known that Lewis and Clark found an abundance of wildlife in the Plains but encountered little game in parts of the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia Basin, where they often had to rely on dogs and horses for sustenance (Cutright 1969, Ronda 1984). On the basis of those observations, we hypothesized that predation attributable to humans was at least in part responsible for the observed wildlife distribution and abundance. This hypothesis leads to the prediction that wildlife would be more abundant farther from human settlements. In this article, we assess the role of humans and other underlying causes for the observed wildlife distribution and abundance along the Lewis and Clark trail.

Prey can escape predators in the relative safety of a refugium, where prey populations can increase (Taylor 1984). Applied to human hunters, the theory is that wildlife may be able to escape predation in such an area, where the human population density and predation risk are low. Several examples exist in which wildlife has been observed to be more abundant in so-called buffer zones, areas with low numbers of mammalian or human predators. In a declining population of white-tailed deer, survivors were found almost exclusively along the edges of wolf territories; wolves avoided those zones to reduce encounters with the neighboring packs (Mech 1977). Researchers studying trophic cascades hypothesized that wolves could positively influence plant growth through a predation-risk effect by changing elk movement and browsing patterns (Ripple and Larsen 2000, Ripple et al. 2001).

Similar observations have been made with humans as predators. In a buffer zone between the Chippewa and Sioux Indians in Minnesota, deer were plentiful in the area between the warring tribes; however, once a truce had been established, the buffer ceased to exist. Deer were hunted extensively again, their numbers declined rapidly, and a famine ensued (Hickerson 1965). Another example of an ecological buffer zone is the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Numerous plant and animal species that were previously considered extirpated, endangered, or threatened thrive in this heavily fortified 4-kilometer (km) by 250-km-long corridor, although they are absent on either side (Kim 1997). Areas between territories of warring native groups, which served as animal preserves, existed on the central plains of North America in the 1820s and 1830s. Different tribes hunted in these areas, but none was strong enough to control them. Therefore, most of those areas were not occupied year-round, and animals sought them out as refuges. With the disappearance of these "neutral zones," the bison decreased in numbers (West 1995).

Disease is another factor in creating ecological buffer zones. Epidemics have often been followed by periods of wildlife abundance, which may have resulted from reduced native human populations. Following the 1837 smallpox epidemic, the trader Pierre Chouteau remarked that bison had never been so abundant, since no Indians were around to kill them (Sundstrom 1997). On 29 August 1806, Captain Clark noted, "I have observed that in the country between the nations which are at war with each other the greatest numbers of wild animals are to be found" (Moulton 1986-1996, vol. 8, p. 328).

The Lewis and Clark expedition was the brainchild of President Thomas Jefferson. On 20 June 1803, Jefferson gave Captain Lewis specific instructions for the expedition. Its main mission was to find a waterway connecting the Missouri River with the Pacific Ocean: "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan [sic], Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce" (Jackson 1978, p. 61).

However, Jefferson was also interested in "other objects worthy of notice": "You will therefore endeavor to make yourself acquainted, as far as a diligent pursuit of your journey shall admit, with the names of the nations & their numbers; ... the soil & face of the country, it's [sic] growth & vegetable productions, the animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S.; the remains and accounts of any which may be deemed rare or extinct" (Jackson 1978, p. 63). Other objectives of the expedition included recording geography, mineral productions, and climate. Those specific objectives explain the detailed notes that Lewis and Clark took on their journey, notes that can help to paint a picture of the ecological conditions that existed 200 years ago.
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Were Native People Keystone Predators? A Continuous-Time Analysis
of Wildlife Observations Made by Lewis and Clark in 1804-1806
CHARLES E. KAY
Department of Political Science, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-0725 USA
Kay, Charles E. 2007. Were native people keystone predators? A continuous-time analysis of wildlife observations made by
Lewis and Clark in 1804-1806. Canadian Field-Naturalist 121(1): 1–16.
It has long been claimed that native people were conservationists who had little or no impact on wildlife populations. More
recently, though, it has been suggested that native people were keystone predators, who lacked any effective conservation
strategies and instead routinely overexploited large mammal populations.

To test these hypotheses, I performed a continuous time analysis of wildlife observations made by Lewis and Clark because their journals are often cited as an example of how
western North America teemed with wildlife before that area was despoiled by advancing European civilization.

This included Bison, Elk, Mule Deer, Whitetailed Deer, Blacktailed Deer, Moose, Pronghorn Antelope, Bighorn Sheep, Grizzly
Bears, Black Bears, and Grey Wolves. I also recorded all occasions on which Lewis and Clark met native peoples.

Those data show a strong inverse relationship between native people and wildlife. The only places Lewis and Clark reported an
abundance of game were in aboriginal buffer zones between tribes at war, but even there, wildlife populations were predator,
not food-limited. Bison, Grizzly Bears, Bighorn Sheep, Mule Deer, and Grey Wolves were seldom seen except in aboriginal
buffer zones.

Moose were most susceptible to aboriginal hunting followed by Bison and then Elk, while Whitetailed Deer had
a more effective escape strategy. If it had not been for aboriginal buffer zones, Lewis and Clark would have found little wildlife
anywhere in the West.

Moreover, prior to the 1780 smallpox and other earlier epidemics that decimated native populations
in advance of European contact, there were more aboriginal people and even less wildlife. The patterns observed by Lewis
and Clark are consistent with optimal foraging theory and other evolutionary ecology predictions.