National Drought Mitigation Center

Range Health Checklist

Download checklist to fill out and save

Range health checklists help ranchers complete similar appraisals of their rangeland over time. Range heath is probably satisfactory if most of the questions can be answered “yes”. If most of the answers are “no”, then range health is probably at risk or unsatisfactory. Completing these checklists for a site once every few years can provide insight into long-term changes in range health.

One drawback to using checklists is that the questions need to be answered relative to each site’s ecological potential. Inexperienced observers often overestimate the potential productivity of rangelands and, consequently, underestimate range health.