Ongoing drought, which has made rangeland less hospitable, and other factors have reduced the number of cattle and sheep that currently graze in the San Juan National Forest.
The declining numbers will be part of the Weminuche Landscape Grazing Analysis, an Environmental Impact Statement that is evaluating how the U.S. Forest Service can promote sustained livestock grazing on 167,000 acres that stretch from the northern end of Missionary Ridge east through the Weminuche Wilderness to the Pine River.
The study looks at ways to match livestock grazing with on-the-ground conditions, as well as mitigate problems such as trailing flocks near riparian areas. The preferred of four options is "adaptive" management and the closure of vacant allotments, a Feb. 19 Federal Register release said.
Cattle numbers have dropped from a high of 44,453 in 1920 to 15,507 in 2003, the year after the Missionary Ridge Fire, which swept 72,000 acres. The number has rebounded to 19,380 in 2014, which was 76 percent of the permitted use, or 25,358 head.
"Numbers fluctuate," said Mark Tucker, the rangeland management program leader for the Forest Service. "There have been few consistent years in the last 15."
The grazing fee increased this year from $1.35 to $1.69 per animal unit month, defined as one cow and her calf, one horse or five sheep or goats for one month. The rate applies to 26,000 grazing permits on public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in 16 Western states.
The grazing fee uses the $1.23 per animal unit month from 1966 as a base. Current fees are calculated using three factors - private land grazing fees, beef cattle prices and the cost of livestock production.
Although alternative areas were found for grazing operations disrupted by the Missionary Ridge Fire, there was a huge general sell-off in the West of livestock in 2002-03, Tucker said.
Sheep grazing has dropped more precipitously than cattle numbers. In 1930, the national forest had 216,684 sheep in high country meadows. The number plummeted to 73,131 in 1960, then to 35,361 in 1976 and 10,800 in 2004.
Last year, the forest had a seasonal sheep population of 12,223.
Several factors have contributed to the decline in sheep numbers in the national forest, Tucker said. Among them: Synthetic materials began to replace wool, subsidies dried up, flocks from outside the area found grazing closer to home, difficulty in accessing remote meadows and a decline in the consumption of mutton.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report says that per capita consumption of mutton in 1945 was 6.6 pounds a year. The figure dropped to 1.4 pounds in 1980 and 1.1 pounds in 2000. The projection into the 2020s is .7 to .8 pounds per person.
The preferred grazing solution takes into account the effort to separate grazing domestic flocks from bighorn sheep herds to prevent the potential transmission of disease from domestic sheep to their wild cousins.
Among issues to be analyzed in the EIS are the impact of grazing on soil, vegetation, water and wildlife.