Tweeters,

Ahhhh, Sagebrush Flat (no "s"). How can I resist?

Steve Herman wrote:

>..posts from me and others about the loss of Sagebrush Flat to the politics
of abysmal >science and cowboy worship elicited virtually no response from
Tweeters.

Jon Anderson wrote:

>"Abysmal Science" is a subjective label that I notice is often used against
managers by >those in the Ivory Towers of Academia.

One of the things that seems to distinguish those biologists and managers in
public service who last awhile is not only the ability to practice abysmal
science but also the ability to strike a balance in an air of controversy.
I agree with Jon that consideration of social factors appears not to be
important to those in the Ivory Towers. Social considerations, however, can
be very important to the recovery of endangered species.

So, am I claiming that there is some kind of balance in the decision to
allow continued cattle grazing at Sagebrush Flat? Allowing cattle grazing
at a site where the last remaining members of a species that evolved in the
virtual absence of grazers does not seem like a balanced decision. But,
there is more to it and it bears repeating. Sagebrush Flat has been managed
as State Trust land for many decades. It has been grazed by cows and horses
for many decades. Pygmy rabbits were present and collected by scientists on
numerous occasions over these many decades. Now, it is recognized as the
last place with a significant population of pygmy rabbits in Washington.
The obligation to continue managing Sagebrush Flat to produce income for the
Trust is a requirement of State law unless the Trust is compensated for the
land. Now, money has been raised, the Trust is being compensated and
Sagebrush Flat can be managed without regard for Trust responsibilities.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will probably be managing
Sagebrush Flat. It irks some that management of Sagebrush Flat will not
change dramatically, at least not immediately. What is important to me is
the knowledge that the door is now open for substantial change in the
management of this land and that pygmy rabbits will be a major consideration
in this site's future.

So, why not order the cows off, right now? Well, look at it from the
ranchers side (I grew up with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and I worship them).
The rancher and his dad and his dad's dad have been raising livestock
forever while the rest of the world built houses and plowed the ground into
long, straight rows. The government discovered that pygmy rabbits were gone
from everywhere except the place where the rancher's family has been grazing
their cows. The government can't produce data that indicates that pygmy
rabbits have gotten any scarcer on that particular piece of ground but it
says that piece of ground is important and the cows must be removed
immediately. When the rancher asks why the cows must go, the government
replies "Because these rabbits evolved in the absence of large, grazing
ungulates. The cows are competing with the rabbits and probably collapsing
their burrows." To the rancher, the government is shutting down the
enterprise that sustained generations for what appears to be speculative
reasons.

Michael Smith wrote:

>You know the rabbits have been able to live there for millennia, they'll be
fine
>without cows now. This is the don't-fix-what-ain't-broke approach.

The rabbits may have been there for millenia, but they have also been there
for a century or more while domestic livestock have also been present. In
fact, we know for sure they have occupied the site during the livestock
period. We can only speculate that they were there prior. The point is
that the "don't-fix-what-ain't-broken" perspective can be viewed many ways.
To the rancher, the rabbits are doing fine under the land management of the
past century. The data so far gathered does not dispute this. Why order
the cows off?

I believe that it may be determined that cattle should not graze pygmy
rabbit habitat. If this is true, however, we have probably lost pygmy
rabbits in Washington, independent of Sagebrush Flat. Lacking any economic
uses of the land which are compatible with the rabbits, there will be no
possibility of managing most private lands for the rabbit. Sagebrush Flat
may be a publicly-owned island where grazing can be eliminated but it is not
large enough to sustain pygmy rabbits over the long haul. All of our most
radiant of college-learned concepts about what sustains and invigorates
ecosystems are of little value when applied to a 3,000+ acre fragment of
shrub-steppe surrounded by roads, homes, and wheat fields.

I believe that the approach being taken at Sagebrush Flat is cautious and
considerate of a variety of points-of-view. The area that has not been
grazed in recent decades will remain that way. The area that has been
grazed will continue to be grazed at varying intensities while annual
sampling accomplishes characterization of both the pygmy rabbit population
and the vegetation. We stand to learn something about pygmy rabbits and
grazing from this approach. We could have ordered the cows off, learned
nothing about the relationship between pygmy rabbits and grazing and made
enemies out of many of the rabbits' neighbors.

Kelly McAllister








Michael Smith wrote:

But fire is such an integral part of shrub-steppe ecology, that is should be
viewed as a component of the ecosystem. Fires burn off Artemisia, and open
up the areas for
colonization by bunchgrasses. After time, sagebrush grows back, leaving
the climax community of Artemisia and bunchgrasses.








Hi Tweets, Much has been said on either side of this issue. I won't speak
for Steve, but I do agree with him 100%. My background on this issue
includes spending three months assisting Megan Gahr in her study of the
rabbits at Sagebrush Flat, and the landscape analysis I conducted on the
Columbia Basin for my M.S. My basis for this belief is that since these
rabbits evolved virtually in the absence of grazers for millennia, it
seems unlikely that throwing some grazers in their habitat now is any
manner of saving the last populations in Washington. The research project
WDFW proposes involves grazing the site (as has been done for many years)
at differing levels to see what effect it has. There are two parts of
this that I object to - first is that this population is so small that if
it is shown that grazing is detrimental to the rabbits, hey maybe up to
2/3 of the habitat would be wiped out by then. Too late by that point?
If no grazing is conducted, that's not really a problem. You know the
rabbits have been able to live there for millennia, they'll be fine
without cows now. This is the don't-fix-what-ain't-broke approach. It
would be acceptable to conduct this sort of experiment on a population
which could sustain negative results, such as any of the large populations
outside of Washington, and extrapolate the results here, if grazing is
that important over there. The second part of the project I object to is
that the population is so small, it will be very difficult to get adequate
sample size to tell anything. Megan spent two years trying to get to this
question with a simple grazed/ungrazed setup, and still didn't have enough
data to get statistically significant results. What makes you think
dividing the population even further (into three categories) will help?
It'll just lower the sample size, up the variance, etc. Again, if this
experiment were conducted on a vast population, it would be very
interesting and reveal some useful info. But I don't think Sagebrush
Flats is the place to try it out. Now to answer some specific points made
by folks that I think need addressing:

>Jon Anderson wrote:
>if the grazing pressure on this piece of land is so "abusive" and =
>deleterious to the species, could you please explain why this piece of =
>land harbors the best population of these critters in the State?
Now Jon, that's really poor logic. The presence of an animal in a site
certainly doesn't guarantee that the site is prime real estate for that
species. The reason this spot has the best population left is because of
its *soils*. The large majority of shrub-steppe left in Washington is on
rocky soils. Deep soils such as Sagebrush Flats are incredibly rare, most
of them converted to ag. land. I suppose if you went out to SF and saw
that the place was crawling with Pygmy Rabbits, you might be justified in
your statement. But it's equally likely that the Pygmy Rabbits are there
in *spite* of the grazing, barely hanging on (as the low #s suggest). Now
grazing may not be the cause of decline, or it might be, who knows? But
you can't use the presence of this species as evidence that grazing isn't
deleterious without long-term research. And that isn't feasible without a
larger sample size and experimentation. Again the conundrum presented
above.

Jon Anderson wrote:
>That the cattle "Might" collapse rabbit burrows is =
>merely speculative, and if they do collapse burrows, what 'might' be the
>effect? Extinction of the rabbits? Hasn't happened yet with all these =
No, it isn't speculative, it happens. I've seen burrows collapsed with
cow prints all around. Chances are the burrows were empty (probably 90%
of them are), so this would prove to be a small source of mortality. But
a much greater issue that you've ducked is the effect cows have on these
habitats. Cows are a major vector of introduced plants, and grazing
pressure has been shown to reduce the steppe land's ability to retard
invasion by exotics. The perennial grasses can't compete in the
short-term with cheatgrass and mustards. Many of the grazed areas in
Sagebrush Flats are already Artemisia-cheatgrass dominated. I also want
to know if the WDFW study plans on grazing the formerly ungrazed sites or
sticking to the old areas. The presence of cheatgrass should not be
overlooked as a possible factor in the rabbit's survival/demise.

On Sat, 20 Jul 1996, Herb Curl wrote:
> Sagebrush Flat is one of three sites in the state with Pygmy Rabbits. It
But this is misleading because non-SF sites are tiny in comparison. SF is
the largest population left in WA.

Herb Curl:
> is hardly pristine, having suffered from 100 years of grazing, fire,
> erosion, and farming around its edges. The rabbits have persisted along
> with Sage Grouse, Sage Thrashers and a variety of other shrub steppe
> species. Grazing was permitted under DNR ownership because the law
An aside to the ongoing debate: fire should *not* be considered as a
factor which has degraded this site. Surely a fire here would wipe out
remaining rabbit habitat. But fire is such an integral part of
shrub-steppe ecology, that is should be viewed as a component of the
ecosystem. Fires burn off Artemisia, and open up the areas for
colonization by bunchgrasses. After time, sagebrush grows back, leaving
the climax community of Artemisia and bunchgrasses. Maybe Kelly Cassidy
will launch into a discussion of this for us.

Herb Curl (speaking of WDFW's project):
> counterintuitive, one alternative hypothesis suggests that cows in
> moderation might be beneficial to the rabbits since the cows eat grass that
> competes with sagebrush, the preferred food of the rabbits.
This makes sense intuitively. Cows preferentially choose grass over
sagebrush. The rabbits eat sagebrush. Therefore cows could help rabbits
by providing more food. But as I stated above, this is counterintuitive
to the natural history of this species and this site. Millennia of living
virutally without grazers should not make a species dependent on grazers.
Right? These grazers-and-dependents relationships do exists where species
coevolve (such as the Serengeti), but this coevolution is absent from the
Pygmy Rabbit. And the numbers now are too small to risk further
experimentation.