Subject: Re: Get them dang cows off the Refuges (dadburnit!)
Date: Feb 12 10:32:56 1996
From: Maureen Ellis - me2 at u.washington.edu


Not being a professional grassland ecologist, I have been
generally dismayed at the "damage" caused by cattle grazing in the
Rufuges. However, most of my experience has been in the
northern Utah Great Basin, a slow-recovery area and a notably
livestock-abused region. Moved to the rainy, very rainy, NW in May, 1992.

In early January, while attending a wintering sparrows workshop in
southeastern Arizona, our group spent some hours at Pategonia Lake State
Park, a lovely, marsh-edged, fairly good-sized reservoir. The park
allows cattle grazing; most of adjacent meadow areas were eaten down to
the bare dirt. Maybe in the spring or during the desert monsoon time in
late summer, these meadows recover, but I was aghast!

I pretty much came to the conclusion that unless the concentrations of
cattle can be greatly reduced or the rotation of them on the refuge
grasslands greatly altered, domestic livestock should not be on these dry
country refuges at all! An amateur's opinion, yes. But, perhaps, a wet
lush environment like Nisqually does "benefit" from well-managed grazing.
What grazed there before the cows? Northern Utah may have had wandering
buffalo historically. Deer were probably the largest grazing critter in
SE Arizona prior to ranching.

On a happy note, birding at Pategonia Lake was just fabulous the second
week of January. We saw a neotropic (olivaceous) cormorant, hoards of
great egrets and GBH's "roosting" on the hillsides above the water,
Hutton's vireo and gray flycatcher and black phoebe, and eared grebes on
the water plus two relatively cooperative...for a rail...Virginia rails.
Glorious fun and a couple of lifers (the cormorant and the vireo---have
struggled to see in WA, but found at a desert lake; it's 'go figure' time).

Maureen E. Ellis, me2 at u.washington.edu, Seattle, WA, USA

I LEFT THE ENTIRE MESSAGE BELOW INTACT; SEMI-LONG AND GOOD INFO.
*************************************************************************

On Sun, 11 Feb 1996, M. Smith wrote:

>
> OK, I'll bite. I'm sure Steve Herman will have a few things to add
> (won't you Steve?).
>
> Jon, I think you're off when you compare grazing at Nisqually (and for
> that matter, any west-of-the-Cascades NWR) to grazing on Malheur. The
> productivity of westside ecosystems is amazing. Things seem to grow while
> you watch. Cows could be a useful tool in maintaing an area at a certain
> stage of succession, but the neat thing is, if you want to let the area
> grow back to native vegetation (which is of course in most cases *not*
> anything cows would want anyway), just take the cows off. Grazing in
> shrub-steppe regions is an entirely different story. The grass
> communities in these areas are not nearly as resilient to alteration.
> Grazing sets back the bunchgrass communities for years, especially if
> cheatgrass or annual mustards are able to colonize. The perennial
> bunchgrasses characteristic of these areas just cannot compete with the
> annuals which thrive in the presence of grazing. And yes, I know that in
> years past fire played the disturbance role that some people think cows
> play now. But no, it's very different. Fires would kill the sagebrush,
> cows encourage it (assuming they're not at so high a density that they
> trample it). After a fire, the area would be shrub-free for a long time,
> allowing the perennial bunchgrasses to get a foothold (take a look at the
> FEALE (ALE) site as an example of how this *used* to occur). After
> grazing, an area has more cheatgrass and other annuals. It changes the
> community from one with the potential of interspersed sagebrush and
> bunchgrasses to one of dense sagebrush and cheatgrass. Shrubs in such
> areas are generally thin, and soil compaction from cattle feet also
> decreases shrub vigor. I could go on and on about how these effects are
> detrimental to shrub-steppe passerines, but you can read about it yourself
> in the literature, check out the series of stuff by John Wiens, J.A.
> Rotenberry, and B. Van Horne. They have a number of papers in various
> journals about the subject. Another thought is the amount of habitat
> left. When we talk about grazing in shrub-steppe and prairie habitats, we
> are talking about continued alteration of a rapidly vanishing habitat (in
> many cases *vanished*). When we talk about grazing at Nisqually, it's
> just using an old farmland. I think there's a huge difference. I'm all
> for getting cows off Malheur, and all other refuges and national
> 'forests' which have as a component prairie, shrub-steppe, desert, or
> open forest savannah habitats. Move along little dogies, get on out!
>
> BTW, there once was cowboy who never went anywhere without his Dachsund.
> When a fellow cowpoke finally asked him about it, he replied, 'Well, my
> daddy used to always yell out "Get along, little dogie", so I got a long,
> little doggie'... (groan)
>
> -------------
> Michael R. Smith
> Univ. of Washington, Seattle
> whimbrel at u.washington.edu
> http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html
>
>