Determination of Grazing Values of Native Vegetation on Southern Pine Forest Ranges

Abstract

The range ecologist in the Deep South must determine the true forage values of the native forest vegetation. Furthermore, he must work out systems of grazing compatible with timber growing in conjunction with good farm practice. and rural welfare. A large proportion of the cattle, sheep, and hogs in the South graze on forest range at least part of the year. However, range management generally is primitive, and livestock production is low. More than a million owners of small farms in the Deep South alone are customers for results of studies in range ecology aimed at a better understanding of native forage growth and its best use in effective livestock production. The opportunity of combining cattle raising and tree growing in the longleaf pine type was brought out in the pioneer work of Wahlenberg, Greene, and Reed ('39) in southern Mississippi. Further studies were initiated in Georgia and North Carolina in 1939, by the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, and in Louisiana in 1943, by the Southern Forest Experiment Station. These range studies involve close coordination with forestry and with animal husbandry and improved pasture work handled in cooperation with the Bureaus of Animal Industry and Plant Industry, of the U. S. D. A., and the respective state agricultural experiment stations. Four broad types of forest range are recognized in the southern coastal plain region by Campbell and Biswell ('45). They are the wiregrass type, found mainly in the longleaf-slash pine flatwoods of the Southeast; the bottomland hardwoods type along the river valleys; the switch cane or reed type, occuring as stringers along stream edges, and in large areas in the Atlantic Coastal Plain; and the bluestem or broomsedge type characteristic of the longleaf and shortleaf-loblolly pinehardwoods forests of Mississippi, Louisiana, East Texas, and southern Arkansas. This paper is concerned primarily with results of investigations of range forage values in the bluestem type in central Louisiana in 1944 and 1945. It illustrates the application of ecological methods in the study of range and cattle manage-