GRAZING SHEEP IN NATIONAL FORESTS 73-2 HEARING BEFORE THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION OF WILD LIFE RESOURCES UNITED STATES SENATE SEVENTY-THIRD CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON GRAZING OF SHEEP ON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN 50342 JANUARY 27, 1934 Printed for the use of the Special Committee on Conservation of Wild Life Resources UNITED STATES WASHINGTON: 1934 GRAZING SHEEP IN NATIONAL FORESTS SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1934 UNITED STATES SENATE, SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION OF WILD LIFE RESOURCES, The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call of the chairman, in the caucus room of the Senate Office Building, Senator Frederic C. Walcott (chairman) presiding. Present also was Carl D. Shoemaker, secretary of the committee. The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, it is good to see you all. I feel as if this is a kind of celebration meeting. Most of us have been together the greater part of this week and I think have won a great victory for conservation. This morning's meeting is quite a different story, however. It is a complicated question. I think it fairly divides itself into two organizations or two points of view: One, the cattle and sheep man's point of view; the other, the conservationist's point of view, the point of view of the man interested in the preservation of our wild-life resources. Both involve the forest men, and in order to get the problem before you clearly, I am going to ask Mr. Harry McGuire to make a statement, and then I am going to ask Mr. Rachford to make a statement; one, as you know, representing the outdoor man and the other forestry. Then the meeting will be entirely in your hands and entirely informal for any discussion you wish to bring out. The Public Lands Committee of the Senate is very vitally interested in this problem and is expected to have some hearings a little later with the stock raisers present in large numbers. We want all sides of this question considered this morning, however, and the meeting is in your hands. Mr. McGuire, if you will tell us something of your point of view we will appreciate it. STATEMENT OF HARRY MCGUIRE, EDITOR, OUTDOOR LIFE Mr. MCGUIRE. I am reading this statement, Senator Walcott, because it will save time, I believe. Mr. Chairman, I represent, in addition to Outdoor Life, officially, the newly organized American Society for Bear Protection, the American Bison Society, the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund, and the Northern Michigan Sportsmen's Association. In a sense my statement before the committee is a collaboration. Over a period of about 41⁄2 years I have published in Outdoor Life a large volume of material on the relationship between grazing on public domain and national forests and the wild life of those regions. During that period we have published articles by Forest Service officials, scientists, and ordinary sportsmen on the various issues involved and naturally what I have to say today is a summing up of this testimony. It includes not only my own investigations on the question but the observations of Arthur H. Carhart, a former member of the Forest Service, whom I employed as a special investigator on this matter, and I ought here to acknowledge, as well, my indebtedness to some 2,000 sportsmen who, during the past 41⁄2 years, have written me to give me the benefit of their ideas and personal observations. If I seem to take up therefore more than my share of the time of the committee, I trust I may be forgiven for the reason that our offices have been more or less headquarters for clearing information on this subject, and our agitation in favor of further regulation of grazing has resulted in my personally having to assemble the sportsmen's arguments and bring them to you today as their representative. Because of the great mass of data to be presented to you, I will try to confine myself to facts and in many cases leave you to draw the inferences from those facts. To begin with I believe it can be accepted without question that the new economic deal sponsored by the present administration and backed by almost all American citizens calls for more leisure time for the average citizen. Even without considering the normal growth in our sportsmen population there is going to be an enormously greater demand for hunting and fishing facilities to take up the free recreation time which is an essential part of the new economic deal. In this discussion I am confining myself to considering that part of our population which will turn to big-game hunting and allied recreation, largely in the national forests of the West. To expand game resources, particularly to expand them with some assurance that the average hunter may hunt that game, instead of having the increased game benefit only privately controlled shooting clubs, we must have a great block of publicly owned game range. It is evident that no such publicly owned major game range areas exist in the more thickly settled, intensely cultivated Eastern States. Even in such States as New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where there has been an increase in game, there is no great public area that can serve as public hunting grounds; and other land uses, concentration of population and private ownership of lands are inevitably limiting factors. Certainly there are no such public game ranges South or in the Midwest. But in the eleven "public land States" of the West there is a vast empire, publicly owned, which contains most of our famous old game ranges. Here is the future big-game hunting of the entire Nation. In Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming there is a total of 753,420,800 acres. Over half of that, approximately 420,000,000 acres, is still owned by the United States of America. Years ago the best homesteads were entered and patented; what remains is rough, mostly untillable, and should it ever be transferred to private ownership, inevitably it would come back, through tax sale, depleted and impoverished. But the very roughness of it makes it potential game range. This area is great in magnitude. It is about 22 times the gross area of Maine and it is nearly the gross acreage of Ontario and British Columbia. This "land" is in several classifications. First, there are 176,075,914 acres of unfenced, unregulated, overgrazed, badly misused "public domain"-which, may I say in passing, should come under Forest Service control if the present abuse of it is to be corrected. There are 60,000,000 acres withdrawn for power sites, stock driveways, and similar purposes. Definitely "reserved" lands contain 6,503,296 acres in national parks where hunting is prohibited and game finds sanctuary, 636,568 acres in wild life refuges, and 326,491 acres in range reserves. Most important of all western public lands for wild life are the national forests, totaling, in these Western States a little over 130,000,000 acres. I believe it is an accepted fact that most of the big game of the country is on these national forests, and they are the key to the whole new deal we are asking for big game. I believe we can all accept Robert Marshall's brief summing up of the prime purposes for which national forests were founded-and not only the reasons for which they were founded, but the reasons which intelligent men today consider the primary considerations in their future managenient. Marshall asks, "What are the major values of the forests?" And he gives three. First, the forests are important as a source of raw material; second, they are an essential for the conservation of our soil and water resources; and third, they are for many people the most precious environment for recreation. I take it for granted that we are concerned today chiefly with the third major value-the recreational value of our forests-but I think it also necessary that we touch upon the second major value, the conservation of our soil and water resources, considering both in their relationship to sheep grazing. It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the recreational uses of our forests are becoming more important as a national asset. From 1917, when counts were first made, to 1927 the number of visitors to national forests increased from a little over 3 million to 181⁄2 million. Between 1927 and 1933 that 18%1⁄2 million was raised to nearly 36 million. In that brief period of about 15 years there has been nearly a 1,000 percent increase in the number of visitors to national forests. That this increase will continue and that national forests will play a greater and greater part in the happiness of the American people seems to me an indisputable fact. The last report of the Forest Service takes cognizance of this matter in the following words: Each year adds increased emphasis to the fact that public use of the national forests for a wide variety of forms of outdoor recreation is a major use and service, for which adequate provision should be made in all plans of administration and management. The social values and beneficial consequences of such use are incalculable. I advance it as the major plank in our platform that the recreational uses of our forests have become so important to the well-being of our citizenry that we can no longer afford to subject them to the commercial exploitation of sheep grazing. Though this statement is subject to correction by members of the Forest Service who are present, I believe it can be accepted as a fact that grazing by domestic sheep was not considered by the founders of the Forest Service, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, to be |