harm than good by recommending certain land treatments without different- 

 iating between lands that could and could not sustain and repay costs of 

 such treatment . 



The term multiple-use is sorotimes used to answer, or to avoid, questions 

 on best primary use of land. The term is useful when describing the situa- 

 tion on lands as varied as found on most National Forests. But, it is of 

 no help in making a decision on the best primary use of a specif ice tract. 

 Moreover, if the term is used to mean primary and the secondary uses of a 

 specific tract, it means little , because then almost all lands have multiple- 

 use. Even the best land of Iowa, obviously best used primarily as cropland, 

 is also used as pasture, for grazing of crop-aftermath, and as wildlife or 

 recreation land, for winter hunting. 



Whether land is best used primarily as native rangeland, timberland, or 

 cultivated cropland is determined by climate, soil, economics and user pre- 

 ference. In that order, except that user preference may be allowed to out- 

 weigh economics. Note that economic considerations are third — after cli- 

 mate and soil. This, because climate and soil are far more stable than ec- 

 onomics. If economics could deal in centuries, there would be no conflict 

 with long-term national welfare, nor with basic ecology. 



This summer I read James A. Michener's No. 1, Best Selling Novel called 

 Centennial; concerning the land and inhabitants of an area near where the 

 states of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado meet. He did a prodigious amount 

 of painstaking historical research. The book would fascinate any of you from 

 the central and northern plains. On page 1081 he wrote, "The old two-part 

 system that prevailed at the end of the 19th century — rancher and irrigator 

 — was now a tripartite cooperation: the rancher used the rougher upland 

 prairie; the irrigation farmer kept to the bottomlands; and the drylands 

 gambler plowed the sweeping fields in between, losing his seed money one 

 year, reaping a fortune the next. ...requiring three different types of men, 

 three different attitudes toward life..,." 



We must perhaps forgive Michener for not considering average annual 

 rainfall — as well as roughness — to indicate rancher country. He also 

 wrote, "How powerful the land was! Continuously men did strange and des- 

 tructive things to it, yet always the land remained." I would add — yes 



16 



