Range and Pasture Land Condition

Even though spring brought a lot of moisture to many of the country’s areas plagued by drought, pasture and rangeland is suffering, mainly west of the Mississippi as USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey explains.

Rippey: “Thirty-two percent of the nation’s range and pasture land were in good to excellent condition, but slightly more 36 percent rated poor to very poor.”

Fortunately, most of Pacific Northwest’s range and pasture land is in better condition than many parts of the country as Washington had 60 percent rated good to excellent, 35 fair and only 5 percent poor to very poor. Oregon had half of its range and pasture rated 50 percent good to excellent, 30 percent fair and 20 percent poor to very poor. Idaho had the majority of its pasture and range land, 56 percent rated fair, with 25 percent in good to excellent and 19 percent poor to very poor.

Rippey compares that with where we were a year ago

Rippey: “It is still a dire situation with nearly half of the country remaining covered by drought, virtually all of that is in the western and central U.S. Another comparison to where we were this time last year, if you remember last year at this time we weren’t really even talking about drought yet. We had a pretty good range and pasture land situation we had 54 percent rated good to excellent this time last year as pastures had just started to dry out and to fade with only 17 percent poor to very poor.”?