Cheatgrass fuels reduction following targeted grazing

Authors: Clements, Darin; Harmon, Daniel

Submitted to: The Progressive Rancher
Publication Type: Popular Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/11/2024
Publication Date: 1/6/2025
Citation: Clements, D.D., Harmon, D.N. 2025. Cheatgrass fuels reduction following targeted grazing. The Progressive Rancher. 25(1):21-22.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: There are an estimated 990 million acres of non-cropland in the United States primarily designated as rangeland and pastureland, and there are more than 300 invasive weeds found on these sites, causing an estimated annual loss of $120 billion. Rangeland weeds can have a significant impact on both humans and the environment. Their impact on human activities can be associated with livestock production, including interfering with grazing practices, lowering yield and quality of forage, increasing costs of managing and producing livestock, slowing animal weight gain, reducing the quality of meat, milk, wool, and hides, and poisoning livestock. In addition, infestations can reduce recreational land values and the spiny species can cause human health problems. Invasive and exotic weeds cause more economic loss in rangelands than all other pests combined. Invasive weeds that infest rangelands and other non-crop areas can have significant negative ecological impacts, including depleting soil moisture, reducing forage production, reducing plant diversity and community productivity, altering wildfire frequency, reducing the value of recreational land, and negatively altering wildlife habitat. Among the invasive rangeland plants in the western United States, cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is the most pervasive and problematic. The establishment of perennial grasses is critically important in suppressing cheatgrass densities and cheatgrass associated fuels, increasing water infiltration, decreasing soil erosion, reducing wildfire threats, and allowing succession to proceed to improve ecosystem function, and improve grazing and wildlife resources. The introduction and subsequent invasion of cheatgrass onto millions of acres of Great Basin rangelands has revolutionized secondary succession by providing a fine-textured early maturing fuel that has increased the chance, rate, spread and season of wildfires. Historically, wildfires are reported to have occurred every 60-110 years in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)/bunchgrass communities, whereas the frequency of wildfires are now reported to occur as little as every 5-10 years in some instances. Mechanical (disking) and chemical (pre-emergent herbicides) weed control practices have the ability to successfully reduce cheatgrass fuel loads and seed banks in the short-term. Successful seeding of perennial grasses has the ability actively suppress cheatgrass densities and reduce cheatgrass associated fuels for a longer period, but with the vastness of landscapes infested with cheatgrass there is a need for additional tools. The grazing animal is the only real fuels management tool available on these vast landscape scales to biologically reduce cheatgrass densities and fuel loads. Here we investigate the use of cattle (Bos Taurus) in an effort to reduce cheatgrass fuel loads and the impact of this grazing on existing perennial grass densities within an experimental enclosure in northern Nevada. This paper reports on the application of targeted cattle grazing during spring and fall grazing applications from 2016 through 2019. Both spring and fall grazing treatments significantly reduced cheatgrass fuels from 84% to as much as 94%. Perennial grass densities were reduced from 0% to as much as 40%, depending on favorable and unfavorable precipitation events.