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Show ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC GRAZING LANDS 631 ever growing number of people to travel, to "see America," visit the parks, forests, and historic spots. The country was filling up and recreation experts, conservationists, and sportsmen were stressing the importance of keeping open spaces for the use of future generations. In three acts in 1954, 1959, and 1961 Congress authorized the transfer to the administrative agencies of each state for recreation purposes up to 12,800 acres in each of 3 years and thereafter 6,400 acres annually, in addition to smaller allowances of public lands to minor civil divisions.62 Conservationists of all varieties welcomed the enactment of a measure ("The Multiple-Use Act") on June 12, 1960, declaring that the national forests "shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed and wildlife and fish purposes," supplemental to their original purpose. The act emphasized multiple-use and sustained yield management, making these objectives no longer permissive but required. This represented a great change in public attitude toward natural resources from the situation a decade earlier when it appeared for a time that the rangelands of the national forests and of the grazing districts might be opened to private ownership.63 The declining carrying capacity of the public ranges, the intrusion of harmful weeds and the destruction of the better grasses, gave serious alarm to some land economists; in other quarters these were regarded as temporary evils that good rains would cure. A scientific appraisal of the public lands was needed. This Congress provided for in 1962 and the results are instructive. In 1963 reports were available on three states: Colorado, Montana, and Oregon. 62 Acts of June 4, 1954, Sept. 21, 1959, and Sept. 13, 1960, 68 Stat., Part 1, p. 174; 73 Stat. 571; and 74 Stat. 899. 63 74 Slat. 215; Report of the Chief of the Forest Service, 1960, p. 18. In the San Luis Valley of Colorado the ranges were reported "in poor or very poor vegetation condition and others in a downward trend made up 40 percent of the total acreage." For two counties in Montana the ranges were "in poor or very poor vegetation condition and other ranges with a downward trend make up 34 percent of the total acreage." In Oregon the ranges were "in poor or very poor condition and others with a downward trend made up 70 percent of the total acreage." A cumulative summary showed 1.6 percent of the range excellent, 15 percent good, 53.1 percent fair, 25.8 percent poor, and 4.5 percent bad.64 More alarmist was the opinion of Kenneth B. Pomeroy, chief forester of the American Forestry Association, who said that, despite the efforts of the Bureau of Land Management since 1949 to reduce grazing pressure on the public lands and its modest program of range rehabilitation, it would take more than a century to restore the range.65 During the past decade, he said "the gullies have grown deeper, the soil had deteriorated further, and the vegetation has become sparser ...." Although the users of the public ranges under the Bureau of Land Management naturally preferred to keep their fees at a low level, Congressmen who closely watched income and outgo of administrative agencies were troubled at the differences between the two. Bureau representatives thought that a major factor in the difference between the income from fees and the overall cost of administration, as shown in the table,66 was the multiple purposes which were increasingly inherent in all public land management programs. 84 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1963, pp. 60-62. 65 Hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Lands of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, United States Senate on Review of the Taylor Grazing Act, Part 2, 1963, p. 933. •• Hearings . . . on Review of the Taylor Grazing Act, Part 2, p. 429. |