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REMEDIAL MEASURES. 
Two extreme remedies have been proposed for the present unstable 
and unsatisfactory system—namely, on the one side the total exclusion 
of sheep and on the other the abolition of the reserve. 
EXCLUSION OF SHEEP FROM THE RESERVE. 
Assuming that the Interior Department adopts and puts into execu- 
tion the policy of exclusion, the evils incident to overgrazing would, of 
course, be prevented. But what would be the effect on the forest fires? 
Would they cease? If they would, and if exclusion were the only rem- 
edy that would bring this about, no question could fairly be raised 
against it. But from the facts that destructive fires occurred in the 
Cascades long before they were used as a Sheep range, that destructive 
fires have occurred in parts of the reserve in which sheep have never 
grazed, and that destructive fires are to-day occurring from a variety 
of causes that have no connection with sheep grazing, it can not be 
maintained that exclusion of sheep would wholly stop the forest fires. 
DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN SHEEPMEN AND RANCHERS. 
One common and persistent source of opposition to the grazing of 
sheep in the reserve is the ranchers who live along the routes over which 
the sheep customarily pass as they are driven to and from the moun- 
tains. These ranchers own plots, comparatively small in most cases, of 
fenced arable land, taken up for the most part under the homestead 
act and commonly, therefore, containing 160 acres. The fenced areais 
not sufficiently large, in addition to the land under cultivation, to fur- 
nish pasturage for the few horses and cows required to work the ranch 
and supply milk and butter. Their only pasturage resource, there- 
fore—for under the existing land laws they can neither buy nor lease any 
more land from the Government—is to run their stock upon the outside 
range. Between one rancher and another the customary range of his 
neighbor, though he has no title to it, is respected. But many of the 
sheep herders, not all, in driving their bands toward the mountains in 
spring, when the new grass is in excellent condition, without the slight- 
est consideration for the rancher, and often, doubtless, to pay back a 
score of an earlier year’s quarrel, will drive their sheep up to the very 
fenees, and the grass may be eaten oft so close that for the remainder 
of the season a cow can not get anibble. There is no law, except the 
questionable law of the Winchester, by which the rancher can defend 
his home, and he earnestly supports the demand for exclusion, believ- 
ing that if the sheep are kept out of the mountains the industry would 
be ruined and his own little range left free. The writer is confident, 
however, that this expected result would not be effected by exclusion, 
but that the sheep would be crowded into the lower range and the 
difficulty, except in a few favorably situated places, would be increased. 
