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Tolerate Change – Where the Green Grass Grows
For most of the West’s livestock grazing history, riparian areas were
considered sacrifice areas – dung piles deepened under shady conifers,
livestock trampled the deep-rooted sedges that held streambanks in place, and
willows provided scratching posts until the branches broke off. Today, range
managers realize sacrificing riparian areas means potentially fouling clean
water, increasing the chance of severe soil erosion during spring runoff, reducing
bird and big game habitat and killing productive livestock forage, not to mention
the political fallout from other land users.
SARE funded a project designed to evaluate cattle behavior in riparian areas
during early and late summers for Oregon’s Tim DelCurto, his research
collaborator, University of Idaho’s Patrick Momont and their partners
from the Forest Service, the Oregon and Idaho cattle associations, Extension
and Idaho Fish and Game. They expected cattle behavior to change as they aged
and weaned their calves – that dry heifers and older dry cows would travel
farther away from creeks and shade than running-age cow-calf pairs.
Surprisingly, heifers often did not seem to know where to find good grazing
on the uplands and dry cows seemed lazier, lounging under the trees in the hot
summer. Instead of dividing herds along age classes and grazing without regard to the season, the researchers recommend
grazing mountain riparian areas earlier in the summer when temperatures are
cooler as long as the riparian soils are not muddy. Cattle will graze the uplands,
farther from the riparian areas, avoiding re-grazing each plant. Placing mineral
supplements in upland areas helps draw cattle away from streams, too, especially
later in the summer.
Besides protecting riparian areas from erosion and other environmental calamities,
producers who remove livestock from riparian areas also reap the benefit of
tapping formerly unused forage that grows on extensive and often rugged uplands.
So researchers are investigating just what it takes to implement another inexpensive
yet effective management strategy: selecting for cattle that like to travel
the uplands and culling those “bottom dwellers.”
In Montana, Derek Bailey found that some individual cattle prefer to lounge
around streams and water holes while others will perform just as well even though
they expend more energy climbing hills to more abundant forage. Bailey, now
at New Mexico State University, continues to probe techniques to identify and
promote “hill climbers” individually and by breed for western cattle
producers.
“Livestock can be compatible with natural resources,” says eastern
Oregon’s Tim DelCurto. “It is all a matter of how to manage timing,
intensity and frequency.”
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