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Status: Complete

Collector: Grinnell - 1925
Location: Mt. Lassen
Date: August 2
Page Number: 2542

ground squirrel shows preference for (1) open slopes, for (2)
rocky or log-strewn ones, for such (3) that are adjacent
to meadow edges, ravine bottoms, or chaparral patches.
This statement rules out: meadows, solid chaparral, and thick
woods.

Again I deplore the presence of cattle, which are even, as yet,
inside the Lassen National Park. We saw them, stragglers
or small herds, at the little meadows in the ravines
up the steep slope to fully 8300 feet, a little
below (this side of) Lake Helen. They strip the terrane (?)
of every edible herb aside from grasses, leaving by
selection an unnatural flora; they thus open up to
desiccation by sun and wind every tract of damp
drown-seepage (?) places, where originate the streams
lower down; they cut up the ground by trampling,
increasing the surface area from which, in
absence of shade from (removed) vegetation, there is
increased water loss; they traverse the ridges,
leaving trails which, in times of rapidly melting
snow or heavy rain, wash and become gullies
cutting in to the steep slopes and hastening
subsequent torrential run-off; they foul the
water of seepage places which are nearly always
the sources of the lower streamlets, and they
befoul and trample and open up to evaporation the
streams themselves. That this latter point is
recognized as shown by the ruling of the
Forest Service that salt logs are to be placed

Notes and Questions

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Nathani

I changed unknown 1 (Forest Service that [unknown1] logs are to be placed) to "salt". Salt blocks are often put out for cattle to lick and these would attract the cattle away from the lower areas. I've never seen a salt log but I did find a site that showed logs made by saltwater evaporation.