published in 1913. Content of this Bulletin was 

 based largely on his experiments in the Wallowa 

 National Forest in the Blue Mountains. The 

 Forest Service grazing studies in Oregon had 

 been undertaken in 1907 as cooperative proj- 

 ects with the Bureau of Plant Industry. 



The literature of early range research fre- 

 quently repeats several questions: When is 

 rangeland ready for grazing in the spring? How 

 intensively should forage be grazed? When 

 should grazing on mountain range stop in the 

 fall? What species provide best nutrition for 

 various classes of animals? How can we evaluate 

 present condition of a range area? How can we 

 tell whether a given area is improving or be- 

 coming further depleted? And many others. 

 These questions were constantly in Sampson's 

 mind and in the minds of his colleagues and 

 successors. 



Sampson's studies pointed the way toward 

 answers to these questions, and his Bulletin on 

 plant succession enunciated many useful prin- 

 ciples. Forsling carried many of Sampson's in- 

 quiries further, but he inclined to test per- 

 formance of individual species and different 

 systems of grazing under actual field conditions 

 rather than by the precise measurements that 

 could be made in the laboratory, greenhouse, 

 and nursery. 



In 1938, Lincoln Ellison came to Inter- 

 mountain Station and embarked on numerous 

 and varied studies. The variety may be ac- 

 counted for partly by the catholicity of his in- 

 tellectual interests, partly by the fact that he 

 regarded the range complex as an integrated 

 whole. 



Ellison was remarkably aware of the com- 

 plexity of the range, of the problems incidental 

 to its use, and of the numerous and contra- 

 dictory opinions of persons who had studied 

 them. One of his early publications at Inter- 

 mountain Station (Ellison and Croft 1944) rec- 

 ognized existence of numerous contrary 

 opinions about range and its use : 



With the great divergences in opinion that 

 exist at present, it is unlikely that the en- 

 tire task of judging range condition and 

 trend can be revolutionized overnight. 

 Yet it is reasonable to believe that a care- 

 ful appraisal of the elements making up 

 mountain range, and an analysis of the sig- 



nificance of the indicators commonly 

 used in judging range condition and trend, 

 will provide a basis in fact which will be 

 one step toward more uniform agreement 

 among range managers. 



Ellison viewed range-watershed as a com- 

 plex total comprised of biotic community, soil, 

 climate, and topography — plus their interrela- 

 tions; in short, he conceived the total as being 

 something more than merely the sum of its 

 parts, and an important constituent in this dif- 

 ference was what he called "balance," an ele- 

 ment equated with the health of the range. He 

 considered orderly successional change to be a 

 normal condition of the range complex. This 

 concept of balance of elements and health of 

 range is implicit in the following statement of 

 objective of range management (Ellison and 

 Croft 1944, page 22): 



The basic purpose in range management is 

 to maintain the resource in such a condi- 

 tion that it will supply man with a maxi- 

 mum of the products and services he 

 needs, or if the resource is already de- 

 pleted, to restore it to that condition. The 

 products for which satisfactory condition 

 is to be attained are primarily water and 

 forage, and in certain places there may be 

 additional demands for timber or compli- 

 ance with certain esthetic standards, de- 

 pending on the use being made of the 

 land. The purposes of range management, 

 whatever they may be, require a combina- 

 tion of effective plant cover and stabi- 

 lized, productive soil, and this combina- 

 tion must be sustained. 



Beyond this, he believed that the best condi- 

 tion attainable for mountain range was likely to 

 be much different from the optimum condition 

 of range in a valley or plains area. He accepted 

 the general principle of plant succession set 

 forth by Sampson, Clements, and others; 

 namely, that soil and vegetation develop con- 

 currently. He strongly believed that condition 

 of the soil was the basic consideration for 

 judging condition of a range rather than the 

 state of the soil's vegetal cover. For him, the 

 fundamental objective of range management 

 was achieving a condition of balance between 



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