GRAZING AND FORESTRY. 

 L. H. Douglas '11. 



The grazing of domestic livestock on the National Forests is 

 highly compatible with the practice of Forestry. Yet this was 

 not appreciated when the Government first undertook the ad- 

 ministration of these public resources a number of years ago. 

 At that time there were two opinions regarding the use of these 

 areas for summer livestock grazing, to which use they had been 

 put for years previous. Both were based on the idea that 

 grazing was not compatible with the practice of Forestry. The 

 one opinion was that grazing could ultimately have no place in 

 the administration of the National Forests, and the other held 

 that in spite of the incompatibility of grazing stock and growing 

 trees on the same area the livestock industry compared too 

 favorably in importance with the lumber industry to sacrifice the 

 former for the latter. Slowly, however, observation made it 

 necessary that these two opinions give way to a new one, namely, 

 that regulated summer grazing must continue on the Forests 

 not only because of the importance of the livestock industry but 

 because the grazing of livestock aids in the administration of 

 the Forests and in the practice of Forestry. 



Grazing plays an important part in the prevention and sup- 

 pression of forest fires. Fire protection was from the first, and 

 is today, the main problem in the administration of the Forests. 

 Early fires that swept the mountains left in their wake tangled 

 masses of fallen timber. This down timber makes the fire danger 

 much greater than in the case of a normally clean stand, but add 

 to it the inflammable accumulation of dead herbaceous vegeta- 

 tion, and the problem of fire control becomes considerably more 

 serious. To reduce the amount of this accumulation of dead her- 

 baceous vegetation, then, is to tend to simplify the problem. And 

 here grazing becomes an important factor. The annual removal of 

 the herbaceous crop by grazing livestock serves to prevent accu- 

 mulation, and thus to reduce the danger of the starting of fires and 

 the difficulty of suppressing them w r hen once started. 



Further, grazing has another effect on the fire control problem, 

 which is brought to mind by the tangled masses of down timber 

 already referred to. The question of patrol work in fire pre- 



