Elkhart ? Farmers and ranchers still trying to recover from the effects of last year’s drought around the Cimarron National Grasslands in Morton County say they may not survive another dry summer.

“We haven’t even started to recover from last year,” said Don Soupiset, whose family started putting cattle on the grassland a few years after grazing was allowed in 1943. “If it would continue to stay this dry, the economic end of it would hurt the whole county.”

During last year’s drought, U.S. Forest service officials ordered the 100 ranchers who are members of the Morton County Grazing Assn., which has the grazing rights to the grasslands, to remove their cattle from the parched pastures.

This year, the government agency already has cut the number of cattle grazing on the grasslands by 30 percent because of poor pasture conditions, with some areas not grazed at all. Cattle also are going to pasture 15 days later.

Soupiset said he’s staying upbeat but acknowledges that he’s never seen the area this dry.

“I’m 57 years old and lived here all my life,” he said. “They say it is the worst drought in over 100 years. Even in the ’30s it rained a little bit in this country. If it turns dry as it did last summer, we won’t last the month.”

Nancy Brewer, the grasslands’ rangeland management specialist, drives around the 108,175-acre national grassland in southwest Kansas, checking on pasture conditions. She said recent rains have helped, but subsoil moisture still is low.

She helped make the decision last year to take cattle off after only 56 days, the earliest they had ever been removed from the grasslands. It was a hard decision, she said, knowing some residents’ livelihoods depended on having cattle grazing the grassland.

“It hurt the association,” she said. “The community didn’t get anything from the farmers and ranchers, they didn’t have the money to spend in town.”

This year, she decided to put only 3,500 head of cattle on the pasture, down more than 1,500.

The Morton County Grazing Assn. was formed 60 years ago by 16 members who wanted to improve the land. Now, some wonder whether the association can last through another year of drought.

“Having only 3,500 head — that is the bare minimum for them,” Brewer said. “We’ve been in two to possibly three years of drought conditions. (Another year) could be the whole driving force to have them fold up.”