BY
M AT T H E W
A .
P E A R C E
2 N O . I U H Q
I
V O L .
8 8
Public Grazing Lands and the Progressive Conservation Movement: Reassessing the Gospel of Efficiency
144
If historian Samuel P. Hays defined Progressive conservation as the “rational planning” and “efficient development and use of all natural resources,” in his 1959 book Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, then the lack of a comprehensive range management program on the western public domain throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stands out as one of its greatest failures.1 This failure is stunning when compared to the achievements of the period in regards to water development under the reclamation movement and management of the nation’s forests, national parks, and national monuments. Such achievements had profound consequences for subsequent historiography, which became compartmentalized according to specific bureaucracies (the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the National Park Service, for example) or to particular natural resources such as trees, water, or scenery. Nowhere are these political and historiographical divisions clearer than on the western range. Today, most low-elevation arid rangelands in the Intermountain West are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), while the region’s lush mountain meadows are managed by the Forest Service. Livestock graze both landscapes, and many ranchers utilize both to ensure the economic success and sustainability of their operations. Yet public lands historians have traditionally treated BLM and Forest Service rangelands, as well as the animals and people who use them, as independent of each other.2 National forest and BLM rangelands are unique landscapes, but their use by livestock during different seasons (a process known as transhumance) and their immense scale (approximately 316 million acres in the Intermountain West) requires historians to look at both.3 To that end, this essay examines the work of botanist Frederick V. Coville, who was among a growing group of federal officials during the Progressive Era who investigated the issue of livestock grazing on all public lands in the Intermountain
UHQ 88_2 Text.indd 144
4/6/20 8:56 AM
