Biol. find cattle grazing good

[Nemont]

Ithaca,
You stated on another thread that you could never find anywhere on the web that promotes grazing. Just thought I would share some with your from time to time. Here is the first

Biologists find cows make good company for some rare critters

Tuesday, February 17, 2004
By Juliana Barbassa, Associated Press


GALT, Calif. — Fairy shrimp, the rare tiger salamander, the solitary bee — rare critters who live in seasonal rainwater pools in California's grasslands — may actually benefit from having large, heavy-footed cattle grazing around their habitat.

Several biologists looking closely at what happens in these vernal pools say the diversity of the ephemeral fauna and flora in the water increases when cows keep weedy nonnative grasses under control.

"The plants and the shrimp are very delicate, but it works," said Jaymee Marty, an ecologist at the Cosumnes River Preserve, which was created to prevent further development along the only undammed river that flows from the Sierra Nevada into California's Central Valley.

When cows munch on the invasive Mediterranean grasses that blanket the surrounding hills, vernal pool natives like the frothy white Meadowfoam and the tiny yellow Goldfields are more likely to bloom, Marty said.

She surrounded 72 pools with electrified wire and alternated periods of grazing for three years. In cow-free areas, a thick tangle of grass grew five feet tall, obscuring the ground. "The only thing that can grow in this situation is more grass," Marty said.

The 40,000-acre preserve just south of Sacramento is operated by the Nature Conservancy together with other environmental groups such as Ducks Unlimited as well as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the California Department of Fish and Game. Its mission is to preserve the streamside habitat and restore wetlands while demonstrating the compatibility of human uses, including ranching, with wildlife.

Marty's observations, which she plans to submit to peer-reviewed journals, suggest that a partnership of ranchers and environmentalists — of cows and fairy shrimp — might be just what's needed to protect such seasonal pools.

Similar evidence has been gathered by Joe Silveira, a wildlife biologist working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex in Willows. When cattle there were removed to manage water routes, the diversity of fauna found in a twice-monthly count went down.

And it wasn't just the little guys — the tadpole shrimp and the salamanders — who disappeared. The removal rippled all the way up the food chain. Silveira found fewer ducks, sandhill cranes, and Canada geese. And less waterfowl also meant fewer bald eagles.

The rare creatures found in the short-lived ponds are adapted to a unique regimen. The area floods completely in the winter, sprouting seeds, hatching salamander eggs, and opening the cysts that hold the shrimp's eggs.

The shallow water then becomes a site of frenzied activity: The animals grow and mate and the plants quickly flourish and bloom, surrounding the pools with splashes of fresh flowers that often attract visitors.

Marty found that cattle prefer eating imported grass over lower-lying native vegetation, clearing space for the native plants to sprout and preserving the water. Fast-growing grasses can suck up water like straws, drying up pools too quickly for the tiger salamander, an endangered animal that needs at least 90 days in a deep pool to lay its eggs and prepare for the dry season.

Ponds in grazed areas lasted an average of 105 days, Marty found. Those in areas where cattle were removed only lasted about 45 days.

Some experts hesitate to endorse these findings until they've been reviewed by other researchers. There's scant scientific literature on the topic; few studies have focused on the tiny plants that grow in vernal pools. One 1965 study determined that cattle in open ranges seemed to prefer eating native plants, but a 1996 article seemed to point out that vernal pool natives benefit from having cattle around.

Researchers estimate that only 10 percent of California's vernal pools remain — and most of them are in privately owned ranchland. More intensive agriculture and urban development continue to threaten what's left.

Nemont

 

[Ithaca 37]

Nemont, I think that one has been posted in SI before, but thank you. I'm looking forward to learning more about the benefits of grazing to other species.

 

[Nemont]

Grazing and Waterfowl

 

[Nemont]

Cattle grazing and riparian zones can coexist, says OSU study (1/12/01)
UNION - Results from studies conducted over the past four years offer strong evidence that properly managed cattle grazing can be compatible with healthy streams (riparian areas), according to Tim DelCurto, an Oregon State University range beef cattle scientist.

DelCurto heads an interdisciplinary team of scientists from two Pacific Northwest universities and the U.S. Forest Service who are studying the impacts of managed livestock grazing during summer months on stream ecosystems in eastern Oregon.

"Over the last few years the research team has focused on mapping livestock distribution in a grazing area that includes a stream in order to find out where cattle migrate in the area during the day," DelCurto said.

The study is located at the OSU Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center's Hall Ranch east of Union.

The team found that cattle tend to graze in areas a good distance away from the stream during the early morning hours. The cattle then search for water in late morning and finally seek shade, or graze less intensively during hot afternoon hours. Also, cattle tended to spend the afternoon in the same areas as they drank, then move away from the water source in the evening.

The researchers assessed strategies for improving livestock distribution by luring cattle away from streams, DelCurto said.

"We found that providing sources of water - called off-stream water - and salt in grazing areas will draw cattle away from a stream, usually in the afternoon hours," he said.

In the study, the distribution of cattle that had the stream as the only water source was compared to the distribution of cattle with access to off-stream water and salt. Cattle with the stream as the only water source were, on average, 150 to 200 feet away from the stream from 3 to 9 p.m.

By comparison, cattle in the off-stream water group tended to be, on average, 350 to 400 feet away from the stream during those same hours.

"This isn't necessarily a new finding," said DelCurto. "We've known for years that providing off-stream water and salt draws cattle away from streams as they graze. "The difference here is that we're quantifying what the cattle actually do as they graze, how far they go from the stream and how long they stay away.

"Careful, accurate measurement of these behaviors hasn't been done before," he added.

This type of carefully detailed research is important because livestock managers have always said "this or that" grazing strategy works, DelCurto pointed out.

"The response from critics has been, 'how do you know it works'," DelCurto said. "What's lacking in the debate is hard data and that's what we're generating with the study."

Research team members are Mike McInnis, range scientist, and John Tanaka, range economist, Oregon State University; Patrick Momont, beef cattle nutritionist, and Neal Rimbey, range economist, University of Idaho; and James McIver, forestry specialist, USDA Forest Service.

The study also focused on timing of grazing and biological indicators in and near the riparian zone.

"Timing of grazing is a measurement of grazing time versus resting time along with consideration of where cattle move as they graze on a day-to-day and seasonal basis," DelCurto said. "This information will help our understanding of what cattle do, depending on time of season and weather conditions, when a stream or creek lies within their grazing range."

The study of biological indicators includes what DelCurto calls "green line stability," or the condition of stream banks. In the study researchers classified stream banks as covered (with vegetation) and stable (not broken down by the weight of livestock trampling); or uncovered (vegetation removed by grazing) and unstable (broken down by trampling).

Researchers compared a non-grazed control area with grazing areas where cattle had access to off-stream water sources and grazing areas with a stream as the only source of water for cattle. The research team found that the amount of uncovered/unstable streambank increased due to grazing in both experimental treatments, but increased less (3.5 percent) in grazing areas with off-stream water.

Uncovered/unstable streambank increased 8.6 percent in grazing areas with a stream as the only water source.

"Our research results support the conclusion that streams in grazing areas with off-stream water and salt have better stream bank stability and retain more vegetative cover than streams in grazing areas with no off-stream water or salt," said DelCurto. "This finding supports the contention that application of strategies to improve livestock distribution can reduce livestock impacts on riparian areas."

Ultimately, DelCurto said, the researchers hope their studies will find that careful management of livestock to insure uniform distribution throughout grazing areas is a better solution for protecting riparian areas than fencing streams or excluding grazing altogether.

Over the previous four years, this research received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency Agriculture in Concert with the Environment program, the Blue Mountain Natural Resource Institute, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program.

Current research is focused on animal factors, such as age, lactation, stage of lactation and breed, that may influence distribution patterns and resource use, DelCurto said.

If this study was publised prior to George Bush being in office that means this study was funded by that great defender of the enviroment Bill Clinton.

Of course there aren't any pro grazing areas on the internet.
Nemont

 

[Ithaca 37]

Here's the problem, "Researchers compared a non-grazed control area with grazing areas where cattle had access to off-stream water sources and grazing areas with a stream as the only source of water for cattle. The research team found that the amount of uncovered/unstable streambank increased due to grazing in both experimental treatments, but increased less (3.5 percent) in grazing areas with off-stream water.

Uncovered/unstable streambank increased 8.6 percent in grazing areas with a stream as the only water source."

So they can only reduce the damage from 8.6% to 3.5%! That proves grazing should be banned in riparian areas!

 

[Nemont]

So they can only reduce the damage from 8.6% to 3.5%! That proves grazing should be banned in riparian areas

I don't disagree with you there. I was pointing out that there are many pro grazing articles and websites on the internet and they take very little effort to find. Mr. Marvel doesn't have the only server available to quote from.

Nemont

 

[Tom]

The NRCS down here has a program going where they pay landowners to fence off riparian areas that are upstream from most everyone, so the plants can get some deep roots and repair it.

Lots of people here use cattle to eat off the grasses, so that more forbes will come up for wildlife, mainly whitetail deer. I could find some references for that, should I?

Elk and cattle both eat grass though, e.g.
http://uvalde.tamu.edu/jrm/remote/auesursf.htm
so, that can generate overstocking problems.
How much grass does an elk eat every day? Seasonally?

 

[Ten Bears]

So, IT, for the benefit of 3.5% of the stream bank

So they can only reduce the damage from 8.6% to 3.5%! That proves grazing should be banned in riparian areas!

You would do away with:

The rare creatures found in the short-lived ponds are adapted to a unique regimen. The area floods completely in the winter, sprouting seeds, hatching salamander eggs, and opening the cysts that hold the shrimp's eggs.

The shallow water then becomes a site of frenzied activity: The animals grow and mate and the plants quickly flourish and bloom, surrounding the pools with splashes of fresh flowers that often attract visitors.

Or is it you just don't like cows at any cost (or benefit)?????

 

[Nemont]

The Ranching "Subsidy"
N fiscal year 1998 the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service together spent at least $75 million on the federal grazing program, and took in only about $20 million in grazing fees. This deficit does not mean, however, that ranchers underpay. Setting aside for the moment the questions of whether ranchers should bear the full cost of the range program and whether taxpayers benefit from it, the fact is that 90 percent of ranchers with grazing allotments have paid full value for their leases, though the money didn't go to the federal government.

The value of a ranch is based on the number of cows it can support, so a grazing allotment attached to a ranch adds significant value to the deeded land. The buyer of a ranch has no choice but to pay for this added market value. Although courts have ruled that grazing permits are not private commodities to be traded, federal agencies customarily transfer them to the buyers of private land to which they are attached. Banks recognize them as a commodity by financing their purchase, and the government recognizes their private-property value by taxing it.

Only the approximately 10 percent of public-lands ranchers who are still on their families' original homesteads are receiving a subsidy, in that they did not have to pay for their ranches or their allotments. These subsidies were legislated because grazing on the public range was a necessity if the West was to be settled. The Homestead Act granted pioneers only 160 acres in country where that much land might support just one or two cows; the land's aridity and ruggedness make it useless for most other forms of agriculture. Both the allotments and the homesteads were given as incentives to build communities in the West, and fees were set low to encourage private investment to improve these public lands.

Such incentives are of course obsolete today, when the West is growing faster than any other part of the country. But when all the costs of private and public forage are compared, it becomes clear that in many cases ranchers pay more for public range than they do for private. On average, according to some economic studies, it is a wash.
Even so, many ranchers say they would pay more for their permits before they would give up ranching -- if their banks would let them. They've invested money and sometimes the effort of generations in their allotments, and consider these to be part of their ranches. Ranchers say they will pay more if need be even though they are subsidized far less than the average citizen: agricultural landowners get back only twenty-one cents' worth of local public services for every tax dollar they spend, whereas people living in low-density residential areas get a return of $1.36, according to a 1990 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture .

Related link:
Livestock Industry Myths
An argument against grazing, posted by George Wuerthner on the U.S. Forest Service's message board.
When confronted with these facts, many of ranching's harshest critics say that their central concern is not federal spending but the impact of grazing on biodiversity. In their view, all grazing is environmentally destructive, and it is impossible to manage livestock responsibly on the West's fragile, arid public lands. George Wuerthner, an ardent and well-known anti-grazing activist, claims, "Livestock grazing is the single most ecologically damaging activity we engage in."
Yet it is the rancher who monitors land and wildlife conditions that would otherwise be neglected by short-staffed agencies. It is the rancher who enters into agreements with state fish-and-game departments to allow the public to hunt and fish on his ranch, because that is where most of the wildlife is. And it is the rancher who through the winter feeds much of the wildlife the public enjoys watching.

Both ranchers and wildlife would suffer if cattle were entirely removed from the public range. BLM and Forest Service lands together support about four million cattle. If those cattle had to be sold quickly because there was no place to put them, prices would plunge, and the cost of private forage in the West would rise by about 10 percent, destabilizing even ranchers not dependent on grazing allotments. Those public-lands ranchers who did survive would have to graze their private land intensively, regardless of the impact on wildlife. After failed ranches had been sold and divvied up into suburban-style lots with tract houses, dogs, fences, and noxious weeds, it would be difficult at best for wildlife to find what was left of their winter range. When ranchers are forced to sell, we lose precisely what environmentalists say they are fighting for -- wildlife habitat.

 

[Nemont]

Cattle were moved off the Fleecer when Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks took over decades ago. It was perfect elk-calving country. Unfortunately, the elk followed the livestock, which put enormous pressure on ranchers’ private lands. Now Maynard Smith’s Six-Bar-S livestock graze the Fleecer for a few weeks in summer to freshen the feed for wildlife. This small bunch of Smith bovines are moving home to Glen, Mont. for the winter. ©C.J. Hadley.
.


Enter Hormay, to whom FWP turned for advice. Hormay helped the agency develop a classic rest-rotation grazing plan for the area. Generally speaking, Hormay’s rest-rotation method calls for landscapes to be divided into three distinct pastures, only two of which are grazed in any given year. Livestock begin grazing in one pasture early in the growing season, when their actions promote broader plant growth and root development. Another pasture is grazed only very late in the growing season, after seed heads have developed on the forbs and grasses.

This grazing facilitates the process of “planting” natural seeds on the rangelands. The final pasture receives rest throughout the year with no cattle grazing at all. This period of total rest, after a year of late-season grazing that promotes better seeding, is essential to rest-rotation’s stimulating effects on long-term vegetative health. The Hormay method follows around in cycles, so that it takes three years for all the lands to receive each of the grazing treatments, with each area getting nearly two years of rest after a full season of livestock use.

Despite its skepticism, the wildlife agency went along with Hormay’s rest-rotation plan at Mt. Haggin. “We caught lots of backlash from sportsmen,” King remembers, “and a lot of curiosity from wildlife agencies in other states.”

Hormay’s prescription worked. It allowed fewer cows on Mt. Haggin than had been grazed in earlier years, but the rest-rotation grazing system proved that livestock can benefit wildlife populations and range conditions at the same time.

Joe Egan agrees with this pro-livestock assessment. In fact, if given a platform and a bullhorn, he’d gladly shout it out with a long explanation until everyone in the West understands how important he knows this to be. Now retired from a lifelong career as a wildlife biologist for FWP, Egan was involved in the agency’s process of learning firsthand the benefits of livestock grazing. As a result, he’s made it his mission to proselytize on the Hormay rest-rotation system and has gone so far as to publish his own brochure on the subject since Hormay’s essential writings are now out of print.

“Some wildlife people think I’ve sold out to cowboys, but they’re wrong,” Egan says emphatically. “There’s no justification for anyone in wildlife or fisheries to oppose grazing under the rest-rotation system.” He is convinced that too many wildlife managers and activists remain “focused on how they remember the old days of continuous grazing” and how the practice of year-round cattle grazing on all landscapes depleted range conditions. “It’s a mistake to get rid of the cows,” he says. “As a matter of fact, it’s better to put the cows back using rest-rotation. If you do that, everything the do-gooders want will be there—you’ll heal the watersheds and eventually all the vegetation that should be there will return,” because of “the right timing for livestock grazing.”

Egan explains that what many people forget when they adopt an all-or-nothing stance on livestock grazing is that “range is never static. It’s either improving or deteriorating. And once you lose even a quarter-inch of topsoil, it will take a long, long time to build back. Livestock grazing is a method of making maximum use of natural, soil-making machinery.” He says that “using livestock in rest-rotation grazing is really the only economic way to stop deterioration and to steadily improve rangelands throughout the West. That’s what cows are, that’s the effect livestock actually have.”

Fred King agrees that the Hormay method was proving itself at the Mt. Haggin Wildlife Area just as his agency was making management decisions for the Fleecer Mountain Wildlife Management Area near Divide, a few miles south of Butte, Mont. Because of Mt. Haggin’s success, he says, the agency’s wildlife managers were receptive to the idea of managing Fleecer in concert with adjacent private and Forest Service rangelands, using the rest-rotation approach. And once again, the method proved that “livestock grazing keeps plants desirable to wildlife when they would otherwise, without that grazing, become unpalatable” over time. It turned out that having livestock in the area was good for elk populations.

All of which helps explain why, in 1982, after 22 years of no livestock, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks brought cattle back to the Wall Creek Wildlife Management Area. Two years later, the agency began using a “full-fledged rest-rotation system” at Wall Creek, complementing its range management plan with that of surrounding private and Forest Service lands. The result: further increases in elk populations and better use of the area by those elk. The agency found that without the pressure only livestock grazing could offer, the elk wouldn’t eat the plant life on lands that once had been used for crop growing; but cows made those plants tastier and more attractive to the elk, and thus increased the landscape’s productivity.

Today, the Wall Creek Area supports between 2,000 and 2,500 elk, compared to 250 when the agency purchased the lands. Much of this population growth resulted from changes in hunting restrictions and other factors, but bringing cows back furthered the trend, says Kurt Alt, the wildlife biologist who oversees the wildlife aspects of the agency’s management of Wall Creek and several other wildlife management areas.

Alt generally agrees with Fred King’s assessment of livestock grazing, though he chooses words with care and is less exuberant about cows. “I do know that when you use livestock and livestock grazing properly, you can enhance that range productivity for wildlife,” Alt explains. “From my perspective, a well-managed landscape for wildlife allows livestock, too.”

But, he says, “the categorizing that cows are the bane of the existence of wildlife, or that when done right are the savior, both of those views are out of line with how I view things. Cows are a fact of life on these lands, and so are wildlife. How you fit them together is the challenge.”

Alt notes that “a lot of these lands evolved with large ungulates”—meaning bison— “and livestock, if managed well, can mimic that. The real issue is how they’re managed. On landscapes that are in a highly productive growing state, the plant community is perpetuating itself and enhancing its growth, and you can see the livestock play an important part of that. If you take those livestock away you might not get the same productivity, but that doesn’t mean it’s in a worse ecologic state. I just get tired of the rhetoric, and I boil it down into a practical view: what we have are people and wildlife and livestock.”

The Learning Process Continues

Retired wildlife biologist Joe Egan says that 40 years of Gus Hormay’s continuous research at sites all over the West proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that maintaining and improving the health of rangeland tends to require livestock grazing under the rest-rotation method. It therefore torments Egan to see that, in his opinion, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management often fail to apply Hormay’s findings to their own land management decisions, especially since these agencies were the ones that funded Hormay’s research.

As for the Montana wildlife agency that he used to serve, Egan is frustrated by the fact that “most of these fisheries biologists right now don’t want anything to do with cows,” even though “we can show them places where stream banks are actually repaired by livestock.”

Egan reflects on his own process of coming to appreciate the value of cattle grazing. “I guess the fish people are still like I was at first. There’s still not a strong commitment by people in the fish and game department on how important habitat is, because for the most part it’s not a land administering agency. There’s a lot more glory tied up in marking elk and tagging grizzlies and being up in the high country with the goats and all of that. Wildlife are dependent on and they’re a product of habitat, pure and simple, but there’s no glory in telling people you’re out there measuring plants.”

Yet there seems to be reason for optimism, for expecting that in the coming years more and more wildlife professionals—and the sportsmen and activists who tend to respect them—may, like Egan, become vocal advocates of proper livestock grazing. Today FWP conducts 95 different rest-rotation grazing projects on 552,958 acres. This includes conservation easement programs and many of the agency’s wildlife management areas, usually purchased with sportsmen’s dollars for the purpose of maintaining healthy winter habitat for big game populations.

To range coordinator Mike Frisina, who oversees the wildlife agency’s livestock grazing programs, the results already are clear. “If you really look at it objectively,” he says, “you can say that certain grazing strategies can be good for wildlife.” What’s more, Frisina’s perspective tells him that ongoing debates about public land grazing, propelled by environmental groups that think livestock grazing is necessarily harmful, are shortsighted and miss the real point.

“In our state, even if you took all cows off public land, that’s only one-third of the land, most in the western part of the state, with most of the area’s wildlife using private land for winter range. Elk and antelope populations, for example, are really tied to private land,” Frisina notes.

“You have to accept the fact that Montana is second only to Texas for the amount of land in farms and ranches. Two-thirds of the state is privately owned, and two-thirds of that private land is managed as farms and ranches. So the playing field for producing wildlife is really closely tied to private land, and for us to become actively involved in programs like livestock grazing, we’ve found a way to integrate what we need to get out of the land with what the rancher needs, so that we can both benefit. That’s more useful than people arguing about whether grazing is or isn’t good for wildlife.”

Frisina’s experience leads him to emphasize the value of using rest-rotation grazing approaches that consider private and public lands together, managed as larger, integrated landscapes, “especially with our big game species,” he says. “For the most part they are dependent on private lands for their winter forage. If you took cows off public land, that would put more pressure on private land. And a lot of these smaller ranches need public land to operate. If they have to sell off perhaps to subdivision or to new users not open to any public uses, it’s bad for wildlife.”

He concludes that, “Aside from how grazing can help with the management of soils, vegetation, and water, when these lands are kept as ranches you maintain a critical element that we never used to worry about— open spaces. In the old days, we used to hear ‘We want more elk,’ but about 10 to 15 years ago it changed to ‘How are we going to maintain this open space’ so that wildlife can persist?”

Allowing the right kind of livestock grazing seems to offer a clear means of realizing everyone’s objectives, of maintaining range health and an abundance of fish and wildlife, and maintaining rural lifestyles and economies at the same time. The Montana wildlife agency’s own experiences at Mt. Haggin, Fleecer and the Wall Creek Wildlife Management Areas demonstrate that it works