THE NATUKE OF RANGELANDS 

 By E. J. Dyksterhuis 



The general public appreciates, I believe, that croplands, timberlands, 

 and bodies of water contribute to their welfare. But the word rangeland is 

 not even in their vocabulary. The overwhelining mass of people still view 

 rangeland as undeveloped land, wasteland, or desert. They little realize, 

 that except for the conversion of range vegetation by grazing animals to 

 proteins for human food , this largest part of the earth's land surface would 

 contribute little food. As it is, it now contributes most of the earth's 

 red meat, milk, leather, wool, mohair, and animal by-products. Nor do they 

 know that range use is the highest agricultural use that can be sustained on 

 almost all remaining range land. 



When I retired from field operations in range conservation, I took a 

 professorship. For a few years my wife and I were in the receiving line for 

 the President's Reception of new faculty at Texas A & M University. Each 

 September about ^00 new faculty members passed by; each with a close look at 

 my lapel card which read RANGE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT in big letters. Later we 

 receptionists visited at small tables, with as many as possible, to answer 

 questions and to make them feel welcome. Almost without exception they would 

 ask me what "range science" dealt with. They were engineers, biologists, 

 math, English, chemistry, and various other kinds of professors. 



I soon learned that there was only one quick way to explain. This was; 

 to begin with the familiar cropland and its agronomic science, forestland 

 and forest science and then to point out that most of the land in our western 

 states is not capable of producing cultivated crops or commercial forest; 

 that it is best used as rangeland; natural pasture for grazing animals; that 

 range science deals with such lands; that there is more of it on earth today, 

 than timberlands and croplands combined. Only then did their faces light up 

 with new knowledge. This was in Texas, not at an eastern university. When 

 I then mentioned that some 14 western universities offered work to the Ph.D. 

 degree in range science, they were duly impressed. Incidentally, it has bo- 

 thered me for over 25 years that there is no range science or range manage- 

 ment department in Montana, the Dakotas or Nebraska. One more example tells 

 a lot. I was riding up in an elevator in Austin, Texas to address a conven- 



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