N RANCHING
atural Resources
that bare ground is a niche of nutrient and water sup- ply that isn’t being used due to the lack of grass there. So we start to see woody encroachment developing, whether that’s in the form of blueberry or redberry cedar trees or juniper trees, and we also see that in the mesquite encroachment as well, resulting in an altered fi re regime.”
Best defense against wildfi re Russell says that for a landowner, the best defense
against wildfi re will always be a good offense. She says the creation and maintenance of fi reguards can- not be stressed enough, particularly on land that bor- ders a busy highway or interstate since many central Texas wildfi res have been started by chains striking the road, discarded cigarettes or even a fl at tire being driven on the rim. “Fireguards allow some fl exibility in your overall
management,” she says. “Let’s say, for example, you are a rancher, and you were severely under-stocked this year because you sold a majority of your herd due to drought. You could not afford to buy livestock to get back into the grazing game, but you wanted to be proactive about the amount of grass you had accumulated due
Many central Texas wildfi res have
been started by chains striking the road, discarded cigarettes, or even a fl at tire being driven on the rim.
to the spring rain, and you also wanted to be a good land steward. If you have fi reguards already built, that enables you to implement a prescribed burn to protect yourself against wildfi re, and also to maintain overall productivity of your native perennial grasses.” The excess rain in some parts of Texas, she says,
created a unique situation this past year. The spring rains, sandwiched by the historic drought earlier in the decade and the resumption of dry conditions in the summer, led to an increase in wildfi res in July and August; that’s because the rain had produced volumes of new grass, plenty of fuel for the fi re.” Then you fac- tor in that we do not have the livestock numbers we traditionally have had as a state,” she says. “So all of a sudden we have all this fi ne fuel and native peren- nial forage, but we have nothing to graze it with. That
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44 The Cattleman January 2016
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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