The Forest Habitat of the University of Kansas Natural History Reservation

he area was leased to a farmer and was again heavily overgrazed. In this period there was some tree-cutting by the University's Department of Buildings and Grounds and by farmers, but this cutting was not on a commercial scale and was mainly for firewood and fence posts. One of the chief results of fencing off the wooded hillsides was that shrubs and young trees, formerly held in check by livestock, were allowed to flourish. Understory thickets sprang up throughout most of the woodland, and especially in edge situations.

Late in 1948, after the area had been made a Reservation, livestock were excluded. In the years following, the parts of the closely grazed pastures adjacent to woodland passed through stages similar to those that had occurred 10 to 12 years earlier in the parts protected by fences. Young trees and shrubs sprang up in thickets, the numbers and kinds depending on amount of shade, seed sources, soil, moisture, and various other factors.

Although most of the tree-cutting was done pr