Elk

Welcome to the National Zoo, Elk.


 * //**The year was 1887. A great day in yellowstone, starting off the same for our elk herd; the Lamar Valley was tranquil and beautiful. Our fellow bison were roaming the fields, beavers at work in the river, eagles soaring over the sky. Then came the Americans....they rounded up our friends, and collected them like possessions. They were brought all the way to the nation's capital, for an exhibit behind the Smithsonian's "castle" building.**//


 * The man behind this was [|William Temple Hornaday], an imaginative man with a vision of a huge "zoo" to showcase all kinds of animals. This was his little tryout, and the exhibits became very popular. Like Teddy Roosevelt, he was a [|conservationist], far different from a preservationist. Throughout his life, Hornaday influenced legislation which resultesd in the protection of birds, game, and animals like the bison. After 5 years of lobbying, President Cleveland established the natonal Zoo in Washington D.C.


 * Americans in the 19th century had experienced wild animals through the __zoological garden__, a menagerie of caged animals gathered in a small section. They were designed for recreation and entertainment. Such an example is the __Central Park Zoo__, established in 1856. They were mere additions to urban life, where the animals were secondary, a peaceful kingdom which gives the family something to do on sunday.
 * Hornaday was against this: he "envisioned a Zoological Park that would give visitors a real sense of an animal's behavior and natural habitat" . Hornaday had two right hand men: __Samuel Langley__ and __Fredrick Olmsted__, who was the premier landscape architect of the time. Hornaday himself was conscious about preserving us animals, especially the bison. He wanted the zoo to serve as a refuge for wildlife that was disappearing from the frontier. Langley was the visionary behind this city of refuge; he said that no longer would animals be killed or shipped away to zoos in philadelphia or new york. He continued Hornaday's vision, pushed Congress for an area called Rock Creek to house the animals.But __Frank Baker__, who became superintendent in 1893, began to take over the project. And he wanted a place "that would please the public immediately". He wanted a traditional zoological garden, just like the others. Lanley's dream of a naturalistic place for refuge slowly died away

Langley Rock Creek; Langley's vision of a wildlife refuge --Planned zoological garden, Baker's Vision


 * Although elk were not as popular in the zoos as the bison, beaver, tigers, and lions imported from other continents, they were still captured and shipped from Yellowstone to zoos in Philadelphia and New York in the 1850s and 1860s.


 * In the 1880s elk, bison, and other animals were decreasing in numbers. It was a result of the westward expansion, building of raliroads and roads, increased tourism and hunting, and intrusion of our habitat. __The National Zoological Park__ was created with the vision of restoring our numbers. But in the first few decades of its existence, the park focused principally on exhibiting one or two representatives of as many species as possible, so no species was really protected.

 Gilded Age industrialization & business consolidation
 * This time period was the Gilded Age, a time of rapid industrialization and consolidation of business, spurred on by the second industrial revolution and advancement in transportation and communication form the 1800s. Politics were becoming a mass spectacle, and forms of mass entertainment like world fairs, circuses, theme parks, and zoos were being created to supplement urban life (such include the New York & Phildelphia Zoos, mentioned above).




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 * With increasing conservation and military protection, elk numbers increased from the slaughters and decreases in the 1870s/1880s. Such included the 1894 preservation act for the animals of yellowstone, and the 1896 Permanent Wildlife Protective Association, and 1905 American Bison Society which was founded by William T. Hornaday and Teddy Roosevelt.
 * But by the 1920s, with the decrease of the wolf (elk's #1 predator), some thought there were **too many** elk! In 1924, a new congressional act was passed stating that "Secretary of the Interior is authorized to give surplus elk, buffalo, bear, beaver, and predatory animals inhabiting Yellowstone National Park to Federal, State, county, and municipal authorities for preserves, zoos, zoological gardens, and parks." All of the above mentioned, including us elk, were being shipped to zoos all over the country as a way to control our population!