Sheep Depredations in Eastern Oregon

Forestry committee, alftiding to these in- terests, says: "Great flocks are wintered in the sheltered canyons of Snake river, and then, spreading through eastern Oregon, 8 have destroyed the herbage of tlie valleys and threatened the forests on its mountain ranges. Sheep raised in eastern Oregon anil Washington are driven every summer across Idaho and Wyoming to markets in Nebraska and Dakota, eating bare as they go and carrying ruin in their path. In every western state and territory nomadic sheep men are dreaded and despised. Year after year, however, they continue their depredations. The actual loss this industry in- flicts on the country annually, in thousands of acres of burnt timber anil in ruined pasture lands, is undoubtedly large, although insignificant in comparison with its effects on the future of mountain forests, the flow of streams and the agricultural possibilities of their valleys." This extract contains the chief points of the committee's conclusions. This business of marketing sheep from west of the Kockies is in the hands of middle-men, who pay for any accommodations tliey receive from residents of the country they cross. The picture of destruction is wholly imaginary, both as to the'threatening of the forests and the ruin of pastures. I here insert an extract from a letter received from Commissioner Dosch, who has recently visited the Snake river canyons. He says: "As you know, I have just returned from a trip to Montana and incidentally paid a visit to friends in Utah, Idaho, and Oregon, along the Snake river, examining many commercial and private orchards all under irrigation. I luive come to the conclusion, not with standing the fearful heat, for it ranged from IOH� to 111� in the shade to i:i:5� in the sun in the orchards, agriculture and horticulture is much more satisfactory where one controls the water than to depend on the heavens for it, coming, iis it does, at unseasonable times, which is not the case in irrigated districts. I have not seen finer kept orchards, nor more thrifty growing trees, nor laden with finer, larger peaches, pears, prunes and apples, than those very orchards along Snake river, which were but a few years ago barren wastes covered with sage brush and jackrabbits. The grain fields are simplj' immense, and as to alfalfa for hay it ia beyond belief three to four cuttings per year, averaging seven tons for the year. If our southern Oregon friends would take lessons from these Snake river people, they would simply have a paradise." In a more recent letter Mr. Dosch tells me of one firm near Ontario who had 2!bOO tons of alfalfa hay, who had just given an order for 'i,!)) calves to be purchased in the Willamette valley at $8.2.1 per head. Any reasonable business man knows that this transmountain trade in cattle and sheep is 9 one of advantage to breeder, middleman and feed-seller; and so far as the sheep are concerned they are not "hoofed locusts" but the g^olden hoofed bearers of the golden fleece, eating a greater variety of the bitter weeds of the hot plain, and by their owners carrying gold to the owners of hay in the Snake river and other canyons, when their welfare demands such purchase. They do not eat coniferous trees at anj' stage of growth, and they lessen the danger of forest fires where they feed. This is the statement of unprejudiced men, from central California, to northern British Columbia on the Pacific coast. In the consular reports from Australia, which tell of sheep being destroyed in fires of dry grass and timber combined, there is not a single charge made against sheep keepers as incendiaries. Among those who have been here this past summer to estimate the reasons for the people of Oregon desiring the reduction of the Cascade forest reserve, wa.s Mr. B. E. Fernow, to whom allusions have been made. If his remarks relative to the Cascade reserve were correctlj- reported in the Oregonian of September 9th, it ought not to be hard to convince him the people of Oregon are right in their desire for its re. duction. They, like the people of many other states, are very willing to have some of the most interesting mountains included in reserve parks. He ascended the bases of Mt. Hood and Mt. Jetferson and made an estimate of the reserves as a timber resource. To reach the latter mountain he passed through a community of a larger number of citizens than constitutes the American Forestry Association, whose families are supported by lumbering interests inside the reservation. He is reported as saying: "There is not much, although some, good marketable material on the Cascade and Bull Run reserves, but the larger part of the great reserve, I am inclined to think, comprises Alpine forest of hemlock and firs, which does not furnish material at present marketable, or else is burnt up. Although the reserved area appears large, its useful contents are but scanty. You may safely halve the area as far as serviceable timber is concerned." This is a remarkably good estimate of the eastern half of it, but Mr. F. was deceived as to the west half by seeing only the high ridge, whereon the timberis always thin and inferior from natural causes--foremost of which is lack of moisture at its roots; next, the injurious influence of the wind. Mr. F. proceeds: "I have not heard a single good reason against the reserve. The reasons usually can be sifted down to some small speculative interest, that is supposedly -- 10 sacrificed to the ifreater coiiimnn;il interest. The poor man -- who has taken up a homestead in tlie woods not to make a home, but to speculate with the timber on the 160 acres feels injured because his speculation may not pan out; tlie sheep herder feels injured l)ecause he loses the free ranjj;^e to which he had hardly an3- riolit before, and which he did his best to destroy liy his reckless manner of using- it; a third class is formed by those who consider the reservation policy one imposed ujjon western communities l)y eastern cranks, iynorant of western conditions. Tliese are to be pitied for their lack of perception that this is one countr3- with one interest, knowinjj no east and no west." In this, Mr. Fernow charii^es bad faith and low motives to the "poor man;" selfish, reckless incendiarism against the sheep herder, and narrow, sectional jealousy against those who oppose the reserve policy. This is "one countrj-," but there are supposed to be alxjut seventy millions of personal interests covered by its constitution. There are some forty community interests legally formed, which should not be lightly infringed. The citizenship of the fourteen states and territories which have large amounts of public lands within their bounds, and of which they have heretofore been deemed the local guardians under the terms of their admission to the union, preserves a full average share of pride in tlie fact that this is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," which secures to the poorest citizen the ownership of himself, and ma)' be said to invite him, by the homestead la w, to the ownershipof a home. As one of these, the writer claims the right to be heard in regard to this reserve policy, as it bears upon the interests and seems to threaten the liberties of citizens of Oregon, for reasons believed to be erroneously based. With due respect for the members of the Forestry Association and the committee it secured to aid its objects, so far as these are to cultivate a public spirit to foster silvia culture where it is needed and to disseminate information to that end, I yet must (from more than fifty years acquaintance with conditions in Oregon, half of which has been such as to make me familiar with the natural phenomena of the Cascade mountains and the effect of man's usage upon them) dissent almost .in toto from the assumptions of the committee and the derogatory charges made against sheep, their herders or their owners. I owe to the nation to stand for the truth on this subject in all its phases, general as to forests and conservation of water supply, and particular as to sheep husbandry and its influence upon the growth of 11 conifers (the only forest trees of the Cascade range and interior inountains involved in this policy, except a little Cottonwood and aspen.) For two years prior to March 15, 189S, I was in the employ of the United States department of agriculture, to examine and report upon the condittons of sheep husbandry in the states of California, Orej^on and Wnshinoton. The condensed report is published in tlie special report on the sheep industry' of the United States, bureau of industry, 1892. Ten letters of California sheep growers are therein quoted, all protesting against the charges of setting out forest fires by sheep herders. They are samples of scores of letters of the same tenure, from which I gathered that, unless fires were started designedly by the basque herdsmen ( who were really nomadic in their methods and had largely superseded the Americans in southern California) the cliarge was untrue against the sheep industry in that state. It never had a particle of truth in it as to the state of Oregon, so far as I know, nor in Washington. In British Columbia, the most recent government reports contain thirty-seven answers, giving causes of forest fires. Not one mentions the sheep industry as being the cause, yet there, as in western Washington and Oregon, the clearing of thinly set timber lands for homes, in which sheep can be utilized to some extent, is increasing as population increases. Mr. Fernow is quoted as saying that the smoke he found an annoyance in Oregon will deter tourists from visiting this state. Well, Oregon as a community ha-s not yet come down to the show business. The smoke is not the evidence of forest fires by incendiaries. It is in the main evidence of burnt offerings to nature's God by the home builders of western Oregon and Washington, who believe that: "To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife, Is the true patlios, and sublime, Of human life." Sometimes fires get beyond the control of homebuilders, thougli not often. Carelessness of summer vacationists, hunters, berry-pickers, travelers through unsettledmountain timber districts, and road makers, is the most common cause of forest fires. The Hon. D. P. Thompson, who has had great experience in the timber lands of Oregon as a surveyor, believes he has knowledge of two instances where fires occurred spontaneously, probably by the rays of sunlight shining through clear turpentine exudations. This 12 maj' account for some fires on the east slopes of the Cascade range where the yellow pine exudes turpentine very freely. But it must not be forjiotten that the Warm Springs Indian reserve is bounded on the west by the summit, and the Indians have the rights of hunting and grazing their ponies on the entire range, to which many of thein resort everj' season, when (by custom from wliich they see no reason to desist) they renew the old l^erry patches and coarse grasses of the dry lake Ijeds by fires. I would estimate seventy-five per cent, of the smoke obscuring the views of tlie September visitor in Oregon or Washington as the result of land-clearing for homes. The employment bj' the state of five or six active young men from the first of July to tlie last of October of eacli year would soon stop four-fifths of the firea resulting from carelessness west of the suinmit of the Cascade range. They are very rare now on the east side, and though ten years ago they were more fre(|uent, they never were destructive of valuable timber, because the grasses, even when dried into hay, were always light within the timber belts. Pasturage of stock is a protection there, as fifty year's experience has proved that summer grazing prevents dry grass fires in western Oregon and Washington. If it were desirable to conserve the forest growth it could be done by selling the land, or leasing it, on defined conditions, as is done in the Australian colonies, where men of weigfit and influence are not in the habit of making war upon the most important industry pos8il)le in a country closely resemliling these range states; wherein there are yet (although grants, reservations and private ownerships cover nearly all the watercourses) exclusive of Texas, o3-t,0(H),(KK) acres of public lands, of which Oregon has 3o,S92,818 acres. Give the people of those dr^' plains the wise liberal inducements and security in their investments which have lieen made for sheep, cattle or horse breeding in Australia; and in addition to sheep husljandry already established, 40(),()()0,0(l() acres of those dry pasture lands will become a field of production wfiich will feed the looms of the nation, without the necessity of importing a pound of wool, and in addition will supply lamb and mut- ton to the people. Senator Warren, of Wyoming, in a paper in The Illustrated