the biota, soil, topography, and climate. Hence 

 the best management for an area of steeply 

 sloping range would be different from best 

 management for gently sloping or flat land. For 

 the steep slope, good management was "far less 

 a question of whether the biotic community is 

 climax or subclimax . . . than it is a question 

 of maintaining a vegetal cover of some kind on 

 the slopes which will keep the soil in place." 



The fundamental objective of range manage- 

 ment, he and Croft (1944) wrote, "is or should 

 be balance, the standard of satisfactory condi- 

 tion a balanced complex." Production of 

 water, streamflow, and forage was a secondary 

 objective. Having thus broadly stated funda- 

 mental objectives of range management, they 

 described means by which the manager could 

 determine the present condition of his range, 

 by which he might determine whether it was 

 better or worse than it had been, and by which 

 from time to time he could tell whether its 

 changing condition showed improvement or 

 deterioration (Ellison and Croft 1944, page 

 26). 



Ideally a manager should have available as 

 basis for comparison some "natural" (i.e., un- 

 grazed) area in pristine or near-pristine condi- 

 tion (Ellison 1949a). With this as a standard for 

 comparison, he could determine how much 

 vegetative cover (including species) and how 

 much soil had been lost as a result of overstock- 

 ing, overgrazing, trampling, and other types of 

 abuse. In judging range condition, the manager 

 should use this comparison as a guide, not as a 

 measure, of an area's potentialities. 



Ellison reiterated his earlier stand on the pri- 

 mary importance of soil: "... a basic criterion 

 of range condition is degree of soil erosion, and 

 a minimal requirement for satisfactory condi- 

 tion is normal soil stability." His second basis 

 for judging range condition was the composi- 

 tion of the forage on that range, but he stated 

 emphatically that soil stability was by far the 

 more important. He exploded the myth that 

 range condition could be attributed to weather. 

 Climate was another matter — essentially, he 

 said, "a constant"; hence its inclusion as one 

 element of the range complex. Hence also his 

 great interest in the climatic records begun at 

 Utah Experiment Station some 30 years earlier 

 and in the climatic studies that had been con- 

 tinuing since then. 



In 1954, Ellison published a monograph in 

 which he summarized the ecological informa- 

 tion related to the subalpine zone of the 

 Wasatch Plateau and reconstructed the charac- 

 ter of the original vegetation there. He used 

 data from some of the meter-square quadrats 

 established by Sampson and charted at inter- 

 vals since then; old photographs, range survey 

 records, and data gleaned from many of his 

 own studies provided additional useful infor- 

 mation. To understand this vegetation it was 

 necessary to work out salient characteristics of 

 soil development and primary succession; con- 

 sequently some of Ellison's conclusions con- 

 flict with those developed earlier by Sampson 

 (1919b). 



Ellison's major change in successional con- 

 cepts was to identify the mixed upland herb 

 association as the original vegetation on level 

 areas and moderate slopes. Sampson had con- 

 sidered the "wheatgrass consociation" to be a 

 serai herbaceous cover which was subclimax to 

 the true spruce-fir climax. Ellison's mixed up- 

 land herb association is characterized by an 

 abundance of tall perennial forbs such as tall 

 bluebells (Mertensia arizonica var. leonardi), 

 sweetanise, and western valerian (Valeriana oc- 

 cidentals); and various grasses such as slender 

 wheatgrass and mountain brome. Because of 

 the heavy and widespread overgrazing, Ellison 

 found very little area covered by this original 

 vegetation. However, he described in detail the 

 various serai communities and their succes- 

 sional patterns. 



A posthumous article by Ellison (1960) 

 brought together all of the known information 

 about the influence of grazing on plant succes- 

 sion on rangelands. It reviewed the effects of 

 grazing and artificial clipping on plant vigor and 

 survival; it also discussed the effects of herbage 

 removal on microclimate, soil moisture, and in- 

 cidence of fire. In conclusion he stated one of 

 the great unsolved problems of range 

 management: 



The fact that, under the apparent handi- 

 cap of millennia of grazing, most of the 

 dominant species of the world 's herblands 

 are palatable plants, not only to buffalo 

 and elk but to domestic livestock, is very 

 impressive indeed. It suggests both that 

 the adaptive process in evolution is ex- 



28 



