Cattle to the rescue

Heres a pottery barn approach to meddling with ecosystems: You broke it, you fix it.

Only problem: Turns out its a lot easier to mess things up than to set them right.

Thats one conclusion that emerges from a creative effort to use intensive cattle grazing to get rid of an invasive, ecosystem-wrecking exotic grass, deliberately seeded over thousands of acres after the Dude Fire in 1990.

The experiment focused on reducing the ecosystem tyranny of the weeping lovegrass planted by air in 1990 to prevent flooding and erosion after the intense crown fire that seared the soil across 28,000 acres.

Rim Country rancher Ray Tanner teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service, researchers from Northern Arizona and others to determine whether concentrating cattle in an area overrun by weeping love grass would actually allow many other grasses and shrubs to get a roothold in an area dominated almost entirely by the domineering, non-native grass.

The two-year effort enjoyed limited success. It increased the amount of bare ground and encouraged a greater diversity of other grasses. But the effects faded quickly after the rancher returned cattle numbers to normal and stopped concentrating them in certain areas.

The researchers concluded the experiment could have produced a long-term effect if continued for a longer period and carefully controlled, according to the results in Rangeland, published by the Society for Range Management.

Researchers included Christopher Bernau, Jim Sprinkle, Ray Tanner, John Kava, Christine Thiel, Vanessa Prileson and Doug Tolleson.

The study adds to an intriguing set of studies that suggest careful management of cattle can improve the condition of rangelands, which remain in degraded, stressed-out condition across Northern Arizona. Uncontrolled grazing in the early 20th century transformed grasslands and pinyon-juniper and ponderosa pine forests like those surrounding Payson. Those changes resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of cattle the U.S. Forest Service allows on the range, devastating changes in wildfire patterns and the near extinction of family ranch operations.

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Cattle to the rescue