Wednesday, September 19, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
19
Commentary...
A million cows in the National Forests
By Hobbs Magaret
Correspondent
Was there ever an age
where the forests didn’t
burn? Where soil water reten-
tion was so great and energy
transfer so effective that fires
weren’t necessary to keep
woody biomass at bay?
It turns out there was.
The beginning of the
Pleistocene around two mil-
lion years ago exhibited lev-
els of biodiversity we can
only dream of today. Just a
cursory glance at Pleistocene
history reveals what our scle-
rotic public landscape is miss-
ing: massive herds of grazers.
I’m talking millions and mil-
lions of animals on annual
migration circuits. Compared
with the Pleistocene, the
number of grass and grazers
on the landscape is sinfully
low, and the few that we have
are mostly grazing the wrong
way. Yes, it seems counterin-
tuitive to put more animals on
a degrading landscape, but in
the words of Nate Chisholm,
“what humans find coun-
terintuitive, nature finds
innovative.”
Here is the crux of the
issue: Grass wants to be
grazed in a very specific
way — severely with long
rest periods — and we are
letting it down. Grass grows
quickly and dumps its root
system into the soil when
grazed. Then it uses energy
stored in the remaining root
reserve to grow new solar
panels that kick off a new
period of rapid growth. Rinse
and repeat. If the stem and
blades are nipped off again
before completely rebuilding
its root structure, you have
classic overgrazing and the
plant dies.
But undergrazing is just
as bad, if not as obvious.
The plant must be defoli-
ated to allow new growth to
spring back. A collection of
moribund grass waving in
the breeze may have a cer-
tain beauty, but it’s a sign
that energy is not flowing on
the landscape, water is not
being retained, and fire dan-
ger increases. If it doesn’t
burn, the existing grass even-
tually chokes itself to death,
and new seedlings can’t take
root or sprout due to a lack of
soil disturbance and repack-
ing. Grazing densely, herds
of herbivores consume and
knock down moribund grass,
and their hooves prepare the
seedbed for new grass.
In fact, our invention of
the plow and hoe are crude
implements designed to
imitate what herd animals
already do naturally.
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“How little note is taken
of the deeds of nature,” said
John Muir. Indeed. Per unit
of mass, grass transfers more
organic material into the
soil than any other lifeform
if grazed according to its
genetic expectation — a huge
deal considering that every
pound of organic material in
the soil holds four pounds of
water.
I would be remiss not to
mention a tiny but mighty
force in this eco-drama:
microbes. Microbes digest
grass in ruminates’ “first
stomach” (the rumen).
Microbes also make nitrogen
usable in plants by convert-
ing it into ammonia. So grass
and ruminates need microbes,
and microbes need grass and
grazers cycling organic mat-
ter into the soil. Each relies
on the other two. If one is
missing, the cycle doesn’t
function properly.
You might be thinking,
PHOTO BY HOBBS MAGARET
Without grazers, this nicely curated section of National Forest will need
to be burned or brush-hogged again very soon.
“The Forest Service and
BLM already administer
grazing leases, so we should
be good, right?” We are graz-
ing, yes, but our scale is far
too small, and how we graze
is most often disharmonious
and destructive. So we have
to increase the number of
animals and change the way
we graze. Some ranchers do a
great job moving their cattle
frequently (my hat is off to
them), but the majority graze
traditionally. Traditional
grazing flips nature on its
head by taking the hands-off
approach, allowing animals
to graze selectively at their
leisure. This method advo-
cates a conservative stocking
rate resulting in better per-
formance per animal at the
expense of overall ecological
See GRAZERS on page 25