National Forests and the Intermountain Region 



13 



counted. Allowing for this omission, it appears that about one-third 

 the cattle and one-half the sheep in the intermountain region summer 

 upon national forest range (fig. 4). Horses are, of course, very gen- 

 erally kept about ranches, and consequently the national forests sup- 

 port only about 5 per cent of the total. 



The continued prosperity of this tremendous livestock business, 

 which brings into the intermountain region millions of dollars an- 

 nually, can be maintained only by proper management of the stock 

 on the range. Individual initiative and a desire to expand business 

 inevitably lead to the crowding and overstocking of any public 

 ranges the use of which is not regulated. At the time the national 

 forests were created many of the mountain forests of Utah had 

 already reached this condition. Range wars and unregulated com- 

 petition were ruining the range, while innumerable fires "to im- 

 prove the feed " were playing their destructive role. Something had 

 already been done in the way of fire prevention by the Interior 



• 







imp* iZ?8B 



"*T~" ' ^>^^|HhI^H 





FIG. 4. — Sheep grazing within a national forest 



Department; but as soon as the national forests were placed under 

 the administration of the Department of Agriculture, in 1905, steps 

 were everywhere taken to apply a system of management and fire 

 suppression, which aimed to conserve the forage and eventually 

 restore the productivity and stock-carrying capacity of the ranges. 

 The numbers of stock were gradually reduced where there were too 

 many, the ranges were divided into different allotments for differ- 

 ent owners, and the whole summer stock-raising business was placed 

 upon an orderly basis under Federal control. 



DANGERS OF OVERGRAZING 



Unregulated grazing has a far-reaching effect in this region, for 

 it not only means disaster to the livestock industry itself through 

 the depletion of the very range necessary to its prosperity, but also 

 threatens the agricultural prosperity of the valleys through the 

 destruction of the watershed cover (Fig. 5). Furthermore, over- 



