ities, grazing by livestock has been the most wide- 

 spread and prolonged use and has had the most pro- 

 found effect upon the Nation's ranges. 



Most of the Nation's forests and rangelands have 

 been grazed by livestock for well over 100 years — 

 some for over 450 years. Ponce de Leon is believed to 

 have introduced livestock to Florida in 1519. Live- 

 stock first trod the arid and semiarid rangeland of the 

 Southwest in 1540 when the Spanish captain general 

 Coronado took with him "1,000 horses and 500 of 

 our cows and more than 5.000 rams and ewes" on his 

 march through Colorado and Kansas in his quest for 

 the fabled seven golden cities of Cibola.' 



In the eastern States, livestock grazing was an early 

 and important use of the forest land. By 1614, James- 

 town Colony, Virginia, was ". . . furnished with two 

 hundred neate cattell, as many goates, infinite hogges 

 in heards all over the wood . . .".'" By the middle of 

 the 1600's and early 1700's, herds of wild cattle and 

 horses were considered as troublesome problems in 

 the forested areas of the East Coast." 



As settlement of the New World occurred, livestock 

 were moved eastward and northward from the South- 

 west and westward from the East Coast for the 'next 

 200 to 300 years until virtually all rangelands and 

 most of the forest lands that produced forage in the 

 48 States were being grazed at the beginning of the 

 twentieth century. 



Range condition defined. — Range condition is an 

 estimate of the degree to which the present vegetation 

 and ground cover depart from that which is presumed 

 to be the natural potential (or climax) for the site. 

 The natural or ecological potential of a site is consid- 

 ered to be the amount and kinds of vegetation that 

 would exist on the site under the existing climate, 

 physiography, and soils if the effects of man and his 

 agents were removed and natural catastrophes had 

 not occurred. The less the departure in terms of plant 

 species composition, production, and ground cover, 

 the better the condition; the greater the departure in 

 composition or ground cover and the less the produc- 

 tion relative to the potential for the site, the lower the 

 range condition. The rating is ecological and provides 

 an effective way to evaluate changes as the result of 

 past or present use. 



Some rangelands have been seeded to improved 

 forage grasses and legumes, but are managed as if the 

 vegetation were native and agricultural practices such 



as cultivation, fertilization, irrigation, etc., are not 

 routinely employed. Condition of such ranges is 

 based upon comparing present production and 

 ground cover with that expected for the site. The 

 more closely present production and cover are to 

 potential for the site, the better the condition. 



Classification — For this Assessment, rangelands 

 were rated into four condition classes — good, fair, 

 poor, and very poor — depending upon the degree of 

 departure of the present vegetation from the ecologi- 

 cal potential of the site.'- Good condition rangelands 

 are those on which the present vegetation and soils 

 are between 61 to 100 percent of the potential for the 

 site. Fair condition rangelands are 41 to 60 percent of 

 potential; poor, 21 to 40 percent; and very poor 20 

 percent or less. 



Geographic variation in condition. — More than 

 one-half of the rangelands in the 50 States are judged 

 to be in fair to good condition (table 5.1). However, if 

 the 48 contiguous States are considered separately, 

 only 46 percent of the rangelands are in fair or good 

 condition. 



There is a consistent gradient in condition of range- 

 lands in the western States with conditions being 

 judged lowest in the southernmost States and highest 

 in the northernmost. Although no detailed studies 

 have been made, it is reasonable to associate the 

 lower rangeland conditions of the southwestern 

 States with their arid climate, prolonged grazing sea- 

 sons, and the long history, 400 years, of sustained 

 grazing by livestock. Less than 40 percent of the 

 rangelands in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and 

 Texas are in good or fair condition. In the northern 

 States of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and 

 North and South Dakota, more than 50 percent of 

 the rangelands are fair or better. The rest of the west- 

 ern States have from 40 to 50 percent of their range- 

 lands in fair or good condition. 



'Barnes, Will C, The story of the range. U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture. 60 p. 1926. 



'" Hamer, Ralph. A true discourse of the present estate of Vir- 

 ginia. Reprinted from the London edition, 1615 with an intro- 

 duction bv A. L. Rowse, Virginia State Library, 1957. Publ. No. 3. 

 1615. 



" Barnes. 1926. op. cit. 



'2 The philosophical base forjudging condition, i.e., rating the 

 present community against the ecological potential, is quite uni- 

 form among Forest Service, Soil Conservation Service, and the 

 Bureau of Land Management. There is, however, some variation 

 among these agencies with respect to the number of condition 

 classes and class limits used. For many years, the Forest Service 

 has rated rangelands into five condition classes — excellent, good, 

 fair, poor, and very poor — using 20 percent class limits. The Soil 

 Conservation Service and the Bureau of Land Management have 

 used four condition classes — excellent, good, fair, and poor — 

 with 25 percent class limits. In order to use existing Forest Service 

 data in this Assessment, the five condition classes were reduced to 

 four by combining the excellent and good classes into the good 

 class. The resulting four classes are considered to be essentially 

 equivalent to the four classes used by the Soil Conservation Service 

 and the Bureau of Land Management. 



158 



