532 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The woodland type, consisting mainly of juniper in the North, of 

 pinon-juniper in the central and southern Rocky Mountain States, 

 and of digger pine and juniper in California, occurs at lower eleva- 

 tions than the commercial timber types. On the plateaus and rolling 

 lands of the central and southern Rockies there is usually a fair 

 ground cover of grass, often grama, beneath the open stand of trees. 

 In spite of the naturally sparse forage coyer, which in many instances 

 has been seriously depleted by overgrazing, the woodland type is an 

 important part of the western forage resource. In the California 

 woodlands bitterbrush, bluebrush, and birchleaf mountain mahogany 

 are often important. Repeated burns in this type of extreme fire 

 hazard tend to replace the palatable browse plants with worthless 

 brush and inferior annual grasses and weeds. 



The mountain brushlands, at the lower elevations of the central 

 Rockies and in the Southwest, consist principally of low-value oak 

 brush. At the higher elevations of the Rockies cherry, plum, and 

 willows are important. It appears that the oak brush areas were 

 once good range lands with moderately palatable grasses occupying 

 a large proportion of the vegetative stand, but the grass has been so 

 depleted by overgrazing and the low-value brush species have 

 spread to such an extent that at present it furnishes satisfactory 

 forage only on a relatively small part of the type. In California and 

 Oregon there are thousands of acres of mountain brushlands which 

 have practically no grazing value because of the dense stands of 

 snowbrush and manzanita which have largely become established 

 following fires. 



FOREST RANGE CONDITIONS 



Few areas of forest range are still in a virgin condition. The fact 

 that most commercial and many of the noncommercial forest areas 

 were fairly well watered and had a cool climate, together with the 

 good feed that was present, gradually attracted livestock owners to 

 the forest lands. As a result of the keen competition for open range 

 at the lower elevations, settlers in increasing numbers either located 

 openings in the forest or pushed their flocks back into the extensive 

 forest areas. With free range, an apparent abundance of feed, and 

 a prospect for quick profits, money poured into the western livestock 

 business in the eighties and excessive overstocking became general 

 followed by depletion of forage. Accentuated by periodic droughts, 

 the destruction of the forage plants, especially in the openings, 

 almost reached denudation on many areas. Fertile top soils were 

 washed away, slopes and valleys were cut by gullies, and farm lands, 

 irrigation works, and other improvements suffered excessive damage 

 from floods and erosion debris. Timber reproduction was devoured 

 by the hungry animals. Fires set in an effort to open up brush areas, 

 or with the belief they would improve range conditions, not only in 

 many cases seriously injured soil and range values but destroyed 

 valuable timber as well and made its reestablishment more difficult. 



Creation of national forests, their protection from fire, and the 

 regulation of grazing on them tended to stop deterioration and restore 

 to some extent the forage on that part of the western forest ranges. 

 For example, the high mountain forest ranges of Utah, according to 

 stockmen, were practically dust beds in the late nineties. Study by 

 the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station on one area 



