Overview

The status of rangelands in the United States has been of continual interest to the Congress and American people since the western states were occupied by Europeans. Until 1854, the issue for the federal government was one of acquisition. A decade later, however, the Homestead Act of 1862 marked the beginning of an era of land disposal. This western expansion for minerals, forage, and timber was considered our country's manifest destiny (Clawson 1983).During the 100 years following the Civil War, U.S. rangelands were almost exclusively used for livestock grazing. During the 1880's, the number of cattle in the 17 western states proliferated almost six-fold from 4.5 million head to nearly 27 million head (Poling 1991). This was the high water mark of the prominent cattle barons financed by European capital (Mitchell and Hart 1987). At the same time, the number of domestic sheep was also multiplying-from less than one million head in 1850 to 20 million head by 1890 (Stoddart and Smith 1943). The first national problem involving rangelands originated from the joint effects of land disposal and rapidly increasing livestock numbers. Large cumulative areas were awarded for railroad expansion and to states when they jointed the Union. Counting Alaska, 17 percent of the total state land area of the 30 states receiving land grants was obtained from the federal government; for the 16 western states (Texas received no land), the figure was more than 91 million acres or almost 10 percent of their cumulative area (Public Land Law Review Commission 1970). The Homestead Act of 1862 was followed by the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 (which allowed settlers to claim 320 acres) and the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 (which provided 640 acres). In total, about 285 million acres were claimed under the Homestead Acts (Ross 1984). All lands containing water and good grazing were occupied during this era. Even a section of land was insufficient for homesteaders to make a living through-out much of the West, however, so grazing started on the public domain (Carpenter 1981). This Range Assessment, like those preceding it, addresses contemporary topics while continuing a baseline appraisal of the central theme for all range assessments: the demand for and supply of forage in the United States. It examines both anticipated supply and future demand from a different perspective, however. The U.S. Department of Agriculture no longer maintains a model system with a 50-year outlook like that used in the previous two rangeland assessments. Therefore, an alternative approach, scenario analysis, was selected to project forage demand, and is described in a separate report (Van Tassell et al. 1999). Supply projections are still tied to land use changes, but increases in rangeland resulting from conservation programs are no longer anticipated (Chapter 2: Extent of Rangelands). Advances in technology are not expected to significantly change the overall forage supply (Chapter 4: Maintenance of Productive Capacity), although this opinion is not unanimous. Van Tassell et al. (1999) concluded that changes in forage production technology would enhance the use of some grazing lands, especially in the South. Four Assessment Regions are used to describe data and other information on U.S. rangelands: the Pacific Coast (PC), Rocky Mountain (RM), Northern (NO), and Southern (SO).

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