REVEGETATION BY YEARLONG PROTECTION OF PASTURES 73 



of the palatable vegetation, the grazing capacity drops sharply. 



Yearlong or season-long grazing is the most common pasture 

 practice. Not only is the forage as a whole cropped too early 

 in the season, but it is usually grazed again when the second 

 growth is only partly developed. Continued grazing in this 

 way results, as shown, in the failure of the palatable plants to 

 reproduce. In their place there is usually a conspicuous in- 

 vasion of numerous unpalatable annual and short-lived perennial 

 species. 



To sum up the results of continued season-long grazing:^ 

 " Where there is enough stock to use all the forage each year the 

 requirements of plant growth are seriously interfered with, the 

 forage crop becomes weakened and is materially decreased, 

 little or no seed is produced, reproduction is therefore prevented, 

 and there is a gradual decline in the carrying capacity of the 

 range." 



Revegetation by Yearlong Protection of Pastures. — The funda- 

 mentally wrong practice of yearlong or season-long grazing, so 

 far as it concerns the physiological requirements of vegetation, 

 would appear to be overcome by excluding grazing entirely until 

 a depleted pasture is thoroughly revegetated. At first thought 

 it would seem that such a plan of revegetation might be the best 

 and most expedient way to restore a wornout area. As long ago 

 as 1908 a stockman proposed to the writer the total exclusion 

 of foraging animals from an area during the period required for 

 thorough revegetation. The plan was to shift the yearlong pro- 

 tection scheme from one portion of the range to another until 

 the whole area was reseeded. Although this plan required, first 

 of all, a considerable reduction in the number of stock previously 

 grazed, the experiment was initiated. 



The study showed conclusively that yearlong protection from 

 grazing restores in a few seasons the vigor of the weakened 

 vegetation and increases appreciably the forage production of 

 the plants already in existence. The system proved a dismal 

 failure, however, in the establishment of seedUng plants of the 



^ Sampson, Arthur W., "Range Improvement by Deferred and Rotation Graz- 

 ing." U. S. Dept. of Agr. Bui. 34, p. 9, 1913. 



