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NATURAL RESOURCES 



MONTANA STATE LIBRARY 



S 333.7 N7m2 C.I Todd 

 Grasslands. 



S, Forest Service 



STATE DOCUMENTS COLLECT 3N 



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"Of all the things that live and 

 grow upon this earth, grass is the 

 most important. Should its harvest 

 fail for a single year, famine would 

 depopulate the earth." 



—John James Ingalls 



From the high plateaus of the Absaroka Range and the windswept Bighorn Mountains, to 

 the sandy prairies of eastern Montana, grasses grow that are well adapted to their environ- 

 ments. Montana has 60 million acres of the remaining 700 million acres of grasslands in the 

 nation. Of this acreage, 58 percent of the land area is rangeland, and 12 percent is woodland 

 that can be grazed. The grazing lands provide forage for tens of thousands of beef cattle, 

 thousands of sheep and horses, and many wild grazing animals; the other 30 percent of 

 grassland provides timber, recreation, and watersheds. 



The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation thanks 

 the University of Washington Press for the use of drawings by Hitchcock 

 from its publication, "Grasses of the Pacific Northwest." 



