Fast Facts About Rangelands

* Rangeland is the most common land use in the world.

* Almost one-half of the earth’s land surface is classified as rangeland.

* Rangelands occur on all continents (except Antarctica) and in most countries.

* Approximately one-third of the United States is rangeland, one-third is forestland, and one-third is cropland, urban areas, water bodies, and other land uses.

* In the United States, rangelands occur as natural grasslands, shrublands, savannas, deserts, tundra, alpine, marshes, wet meadows, riparian areas, and some areas dominated by introduced plants.

* Examples of rangeland vegetation types in the United States include annual grasslands and chaparral types of California, sagebrush/bunchgrass type of the Great Basin, hot-desert shrublands of New Mexico, plains grasslands of mid-America, the oak savanna of Texas, wet grasslands of Florida, and tundra of Alaska.

* Of the 770 million acres of rangelands in the United States, 36% is administered by the federal government (primarily Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service) and 64% is in private, local government, and state government ownership.

* Rangeland area in the United States declined by 2.5% between 1982 and 1992 due to conversion to cropland, developed pasture, and urban areas.
* States with the highest percentage of land classified as rangeland are Nevada, Wyoming, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Texas, and Utah. Together, these eight states account for 45% of the nation’s rangeland base.

* Rangeland provides the major source of nutrition for the world’s livestock population.

* Approximately two-thirds of America’s forestland and rangeland are grazed by livestock. Over 90% of the range grazed by livestock is located in the 17 western states. Texas, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada are the states with the greatest amount of range grazed by livestock.