Grazing can be a tool to restore and/or improve rangelands, particularly by reducing cheatgrass competition to promote native plant recovery. Perhaps the best example of this is the “Green and Brown” grazing strategy: graze when invasive annual grasses are green and desired species are brown.

Click Play to listen to Mike Pellant discuss livestock grazing as a fuels management tool.

Click on graphic for a printable PDF version.

Grazing as a strategy is also known as time-controlled, short-duration, high-intensity grazing (see graphic from Smith et al. 2012). This strategy works because annual grasses are most palatable, nutritious, and susceptible to damage by grazing while green. Perennial grasses are less palatable and more grazing-tolerant when they are brown because they are dormant. This creates the opportunity to graze when annual grasses are green and perennial grasses are brown. Once the perennial grasses initiate any growth (become “green”), the animals must be moved to another pasture. Over time, desired perennial grasses will increase and annual grass abundance will decrease.

However, here are some key points from Mike Pellant’s “Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems” course to take into consideration:

• To reduce cheatgrass fuels on large areas of rangelands you must strategically repeat appropriate grazing practices over a multi-year period over a diverse landscape under widely different climatic conditions.

• Spring grazing in annual grass dominated areas is the most effective time to reduce cheatgrass fuel loads before the start of the wildfire season.
• Fall/winter grazing can reduce carryover fuels but not spring production.
• Scale of fuels management treatments has to be commensurate with the scale of a wildfire.

A critically important issue when using grazing as a restoration tool is whether and how long to defer grazing on a site being restored (Miller et al. 2014):

• Grazing deferment for only two growing seasons is probably appropriate where:
• Treatment severity will be low to moderate;
• Erosion is minimal;
• Resilience and resistance to invasives is high;
• Pre-treatment herbaceous vegetation is dominated by natives and invasive annual grasses are only a minor component; and
• Post-treatment monitoring indicates adequate recovery of shrubs, perennial grasses, and forbs.
• Grazing deferment for more than two growing seasons is probably appropriate where:
• Treatment severity will likely be high, resulting in mortality of perennial grasses;
• Resilience to treatment and resistance to invasives are moderate to low;
• Invasive annual grasses are co-dominant or dominant; and
• Post-treatment monitoring indicates low or slow recovery of perennial grasses and forbs.
• It is also appropriate to consider the impacts of recreational use, wild horses/burros, and wildlife when deciding whether and how long to defer grazing.

The development of a National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration (the Seed Strategy) was called for in the Implementation Plan for Secretarial order 3336 on Rangeland Fire Prevention, Management and Restoration. The Seed Strategy provides a coordinated approach to improving the use of native seed, building federal and private capacity, and increasing the supply of genetically appropriate native seed.

Choosing the right seed or plant materials for a project is not straightforward, but it is fundamental to restoration success. Both seed source and genetic diversity are important to consider when selecting seeds and plant materials. Sage-grouse habitat management exemplifies this new approach and demands a new level of sophistication because sage-grouse use a variety of shrubs, grasses, and forbs (Connelly et al. 2011).

Sage-grouse use of plant species varies by season and vegetation type, and its diet includes both plants and insects during nesting and brood-rearing (Dumroese et al. 2015). Specifically for sage-grouse, land managers cannot entirely rely on seed mixes that include only a few native perennial grass species or nonnative species such as nonnative wheatgrasses because these plant species will not support the full dietary or habitat needs of this (Dumroese et al. 2015) or many other sagebrush dependent species. The resilience and resistance approach will direct managers on when and where to seed, while the Seed Strategy will direct managers on what and how to seed.

Generalized seed zones are based on climate variables that have been shown to be important to plant establishment and survival, or are based on other broad scale ecological considerations, such as plant communities or soil types.

Bower et al. (2014), Figure 3.

A recent generalized seed zone approach developed by Bower et al. (2014) uses minimum temperature and aridity variables to define provisional seed zones. When generalized seed zones are combined with level III ecoregions, the resulting map captures much of the variation existing in adaptive seed zones. Therefore, the combined provisional seed zone and ecoregion mapping approach is a good starting place when empirical seed zones are unavailable. The provisional seed zones of Bower et al. (2014) can be intersected with Sagebrush Focal Areas (SFAs) and sage-grouse Priority Habitat Management Areas (PHMAs) to produce a sagebrush provisional seed zone map.

When fully implemented, the Seed Strategy will ensure that managers will have available sufficient quantities of the correct, locally-adapted seeds for all needed species to use in restoration, rehabilitation, or fuels management projects. This will increase the likelihood of project success and ensure cost-efficient solutions to many land management problems.

We have some promising techniques for restoration; however, we don’t know everything that we need to know. Click Play to listen to Matt Germino discuss these promising sagebrush restoration techniques.

Next explore the Case Studies section to learn lessons from practitioners regarding restoration and ESR practices.