56 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
DETECTION OF OVERGRAZING BY MEANS 
OF INDICATOR PLANTS. 
BY MARK ANDERSON.1 
The primary purpose of our federal forest adminis- 
tration is to protect the forests and watersheds against 
injury, to develop the highest possible use of the forest 
resources consistent with this policy of protection and 
improvement. 
One of the principal forest resources in this region 
is the native forage. For this reason, we have been con- 
cerned mainly with the work of bringing about a proper 
utilization of the forage crop produced each year. If 
grazing is to be permitted at all within the National 
Forests, it must be properly regulated. That grazing 
properly regulated is in harmony with a proper practice 
of forest conservation has been demonstrated beyond 
any doubt. 
Our first responsibility is to determine how the range 
will be grazed. Our second responsibility is to deter- 
mine who shall share in the use of the forest forage. The 
first duty then consists in preventing misuse of the range, 
either in the form of overgrazing or under-utilization. 
The second duty, which consists mainly in maintaining a 
relationship between local agriculture and the forest 
range, or rather in preventing monopoly in the use of 
forest ranges, has very little, or nothing, to do with the 
science of range management, and will therefore be 
neglected in this discussion. 
HOW SHALL THE RANGE BE GRAZED? 
To tell you in detail how ranges should be divided 
between the different classes of stock based upon the 
character of the forage, topography, etc., would consume 
more than twenty minutes in itself. To tell you how the 
grazing periods should be fixed and how detrimental pre- 
mature grazing is to the range would consume at least 
1Grazing Examiner of the U. S. Forest Service, Ogden. 
