So, the question is, should volunteer hunters be allowed to thin the burgeoning elk herd in the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

It's a very complicated situation. There is no easy answer.

There are currently between 750 and 900 elk in the south unit of TRNP. Naturalists reckon that the park can really only sustain fewer than half that many elk. What to do? The national park is right in the middle of a careful and deliberative assessment of options. The process is intelligent, scientific and cautious. It's in everyone's interest to let that process find its way to an enlightened solution.

The historic method of dealing with overpopulation in the parks has been to round up excessive numbers and relocate them. Two hundred and twenty elk were removed from TRNP in 1993; 198 more in the year 2000. That is not possible in this situation, because fear of the spread of chronic wasting disease has led to a moratorium on relocating elk and other cervid populations. So unless national game management protocols change - and soon - the surplus elk in TRNP are going to have to be destroyed. It is at least possible that if the TRNP population are tested and certified as disease-free, the surplus elk could be relocated. But the test (lethal) would have to be conducted on several hundred elk to pass muster.

There will be killing either way.

The question is: how, by whom, using what methods? And what, if any, role should volunteer hunters play?

One of the core traditions of America's national park system - the glory and envy of the world - is that hunting is prohibited within its boundaries. National parks are places of special serenity, even solemnity. They are, as Theodore Roosevelt liked to say, America's cathedrals - equal in majesty to Chartres or St. Peter's of Rome, and deserving of equally reverent care. They are sanctuaries for game-places where elk, buffalo and deer, coyotes, badgers and the lowly prairie dog are protected from the rifle and the trap. They are places where we go to refresh our spirits, to commune with the earth in a deliberately untrammeled state. The essential idea of the national parks is to invite humans inside, but with the lightest possible human footprint. As the historian Joseph Sax puts it, we sojourn in these wild places not to employ the same protocols that man uses to dominate the rest of the planet (what would be the good of that?), but rather - for a short interlude-deliberately to restrain our technological superiority in order to reconnect with our basic selves and with the rest of creation. In a curious and ironic way, Sax says, we become more human as we lower our technological advantage. That's why fly-fishing is spiritually superior to throwing a stick of dynamite into the Gallatin River.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, though it may not have mountain-grinding glaciers or sublime waterfalls, is no different from any other national park in this regard, and it deserves to be treated with the same sacramental tenderness. We Dakotans have historically undervalued TRNP. It's our Yosemite, and we ought to treat it with that level of respect.

The no-hunting rule in national parks is so deeply engrained into our national consciousness (not to mention American law) that to permit it now would be like allowing 10 men on a professional baseball team, or redefining the marathon as a 42-mile race.

Everyone I have talked to in national park circles insists upon two things. First, it would be nearly impossible to find or craft a loophole in park system law to permit hunting in this one situation and not others. In other words, what we do in North Dakota would create a dramatic precedent for the world's most successful national park system - successful, in large part, because it has prohibited the kinds of human activity that characterize the rest of the continent. Second, permitting hunting in any of the 58 full-bore national parks would effectively change the mission of the whole system. This is a decision not to be entered into lightly.

Nor is this debate merely about hunting. Ever since the creation of the national park system in 1872 (Yellowstone), there have been gigantic pressures to open the national parks to mining, oil and natural gas development, powered sports, commercialized tourism for the rich, asphalt access to the outback, and other activities fundamentally at odds with the very idea of a national park. Though the park system has an imperfect record, it has been at its best when it has resisted such exploitative activities.

On the other hand …

Randy Kreil, the chief of wildlife for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, believes that game management problems of this sort are going to proliferate in the national parks in the 21st century, and that it is inevitable that hunting will be reintroduced at some point. Kreil's arguments are hard to dismiss. One of the purposes of the national parks, he says, was to provide refuge for the recovery of American game species that had been hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century. "That mission has been accomplished. That was the first hundred years. In the next hundred years we are going to have to make tough decisions about how we intend to manage the recovered species." Because the elk in TRNP have no animal predators (grizzlies and wolves), they have succeeded beyond the point of sustainability. In other words, it's silly to talk about the national parks as if they were intact or pristine ecosystems. Humans have distorted the natural rhythms of the West. Whether we like it or not, we have management responsibilities. Hunting by carefully regulated volunteers should be one of our management tools, Kreil says.

Of course there is a certain appeal to the idea that citizen volunteers might take care of this problem in a way that gives them the satisfaction of an elk hunt, while reducing the herd to a manageable size. It sounds so Tocquevillean. A problem exists. Volunteers line up to solve the problem at their own expense, no fuss no muss. Instead of hiring game assassins to do the job, we transform the herd culling from slaughter to the poetry of the hunt. It's indisputable, I think, that we all feel a sickening twinge at the idea of bringing in sharpshooters for whom elk-killing is just a disagreeable job to be done, rather than permitting amateur hunters to quest for one of the satisfactions of life in a vast and open place.

I agree with Kreil that we need a thoughtful national conversation about game management in the national parks in the 21st century. Just as we have volunteer docents and volunteer campground attendants, perhaps it would be possible to have a rigorous certification program for tightly-supervised volunteer hunters on foot or horseback (I say on foot). In the long run, perhaps a volunteer "Roosevelt Brigade" of national park hunters, who have spent months or years studying the history, ecology, geology, literature and philosophy of the national parks, could be permitted, under exceedingly careful supervision, to play a role in the future game management of the entire system.

But routine hunting? No way.

In the short term, my favorite option would be for TRNP to work with the governor, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the U.S. Forest Service and the State Game and Fish Department to build a consortium of landowners on the northern and western perimeters of the park who would permit hunters to enter their property (for a reasonable fee). This sounds like a serious burden, but we have a growing problem on our hands, and there may be ways to sweeten the deal so that landowners would really welcome the hunt. If that could be worked out, the TRNP perimeter fences could be lowered or breached; elk could be driven beyond the boundaries of the park; and then hunters could play a legitimate role in culling the herds.

If this is not feasible, I would favor a quiet roundup followed by the least painful and dramatic slaughter of the surplus elk population, coupled with a thoroughgoing CWD-testing regimen.

Meanwhile, no hunting in our national parks.

(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Jenkinson at Jeffysage@;aol.com.)