76 ANNUAL EEPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



tion, should constitute separate and distinct units, which might be 

 called national ranges. The experience and judgment of the local 

 livestock growers themselves will ordinarily afford the best index to 

 the necessity either for the addition of grazing lands to the national 

 forests or for the creation of separate national ranges. The problem 

 involves enormous areas and a considerable variety in the local con- 

 ditions and circumstances to be considered. It would not be wise to 

 attempt its solution by blanket legislation applying simultaneously 

 to all lands of the character described. It would be the wiser course 

 to define a national policy, leaving its application to develop area by 

 area and region by region and recognizing the principle of locjil 

 option on the part of the livestock growers directly affected. 



RANGE MANAGEMENT AN AGRICULTURAL PROBLEM. 



The administration of the western ranges for the production of 

 livestock is essentially an agricultural activity. Its effective de- 

 velopment requires much in the way of research to determine how 

 depleted ranges can be restored, how the more nutritious forage 

 plants can be brought back, to what extent artificial seeding can be 

 profitably employed, what is the carrying capacity of many different 

 types of pasturage and browse, and how intensive use of this forage 

 can be so adjusted, by seasons and otherwise, as to maintain and 

 build up the productivity of the resource. The results of such re- 

 search must be applied in the actual administration of grazing as 

 rapidly as may be possible without serious injury to the economic in- 

 terests dependent upon the range. These are all problems of sci- 

 entific agriculture; and they are problems upon which the various 

 bureaus of this department have done a vast amount of work in con- 

 nection with the administration of the national forests and other 

 activities in the Western States. 



During the past 18 years, furthermore, the Department of Agri- 

 culture has developed public-range administration on 100,000,000 

 acres of forage-bearing land in the national forests. It has per- 

 fected an organization for this purpose, in both its technical and 

 administrative phases, which now has many years of practical ex- 

 perience behind it and is recognized for leadership in open-range 

 grazing. The work to be done on the unreserved public grazing lands 



