REPRODUCTION OF WESTKRN YELLOW PINE 289 



Tusayan National Forests, due probably to the fact that here grazing 

 has for many years been very intensive. This problem has been 

 studied by the writer in connection with permanent sample plots and 

 otherwise since 1908. A more comprehensive study has been made on 

 the Coconino National Forest by the Office of Grazing.** This investi- 

 gation, which covers three years of intensive study over an extensive 

 range of territory, shows that an average of 16 per cent of the pine 

 seedlings are severely injured and 21 per cent moderately injured each 

 year by grazing. On overgrazed areas 35 per cent of the plants are 

 severely injured. Sheep are responsible for by far the greater portion 

 of these injuries. The greatest damage by all classes of stock results 

 when forage is scarce or unpalatable. This condition prevails on 

 overgrazed areas ; on ranges where the predominant forage plants 

 are coarse bunch grasses which are not readily eaten by sheep, and on 

 all types of range during those seasons when the herbaceous forage is 

 dry. A common cause of excessive damage is poor distribution of 

 water, which causes overstocking on areas close to water and un- 

 derstocking on areas remote from water. Grazing damage could be 

 reduced to a negligible quantity by the exclusion of sheep, but a gen- 

 eral application of such a measure is not economically desirable. The 

 remedy appears to lie in control rather than in exclusion. Proper reg- 

 ulation, however, is difficult to apply under present conditions because 

 it involves shifting stock from one part of the forest to another, as cir- 

 cumstances require. Stock cannot be moved about at will, because the 

 range water is developed at private expense, and after a stock-owner 

 has developed water on a particular range he cannot in justice be re- 

 quired to leave this range and the improvements he has put on it. The 

 ultimate solution of this problem lies in Government ownership of 

 water and fences necessary to handle stock in the desired manner. 

 Not until the Government owns the permanent range improvements 

 will it be in a position to control grazing in the interest of the best 

 development of the forest. When it is considered that grazing is one 

 of the few large factors detrimental to forest reproduction which lie 

 within the power of man to control, the urgency of action on this prob- 

 lem must commend itself to ev-ery forester. 



Another side of the grazing' problem deserves mention. P>y keeping 

 down the amount of inflammable material, grazing decreases fire dam- 

 age to reproduction. When the forage crop is not removed, dead grass 



• Hill, Robert R. "Effects of Grazing upon Reproduction on the Coconino 

 National Forest." Report to be published as a Forest Service hullotin. 



