N RANCHING
atural Resources
cent Wise County, have some of the most erosive soils in the U.S. “While we’ll go in with a road grader or bulldozer in a lot of areas and cut a fi reguard into the soil, here that creates signifi cant erosion,” Brite says. “Here we put in black lines (burning the fuel near a control line) a few days or weeks ahead of the fi re.” There is also the risk of fi re tornadoes, which can
whip up in corners of the burn area when the fi re gets too hot. “They have the ability to walk across your control lines,” he says. On the other hand, if the wind picks up it can produce more lift and the hot, light particulate matter drifts down.
Firebreaks built with targeted grazing Researchers in the Pacifi c Northwest have been look-
ing at what is called “targeted grazing” as a potential means of establishing fi rebreaks. Dr. Karen Launch- baugh, director of the University of Idaho Rangeland Center, says that in a broader sense, targeted grazing is a way to accomplish a goal with landscape or veg- etation, but for the last decade she’s been working with the fi re-related faculty at UI on using livestock to reduce fuels. “I use fuel, which in our case is also forage grasses, and they tell me what the fuel loads are,” she explains. Launchbaugh says the targeted approach involves strategic application on a landscape. “It’s about break-
The best way to reduce the buildup
of fuel for a wildfi re is a good grazing management program.
ing up the fuel continuity, so not only reducing the amounts — which cows do really well — but looking at using livestock to create fi rebreaks along roads or areas where fi refi ghters can have a chance of fi ght- ing a fi re,” she says. “We use livestock to try to create these strips of low vegetation to create these breaks.” She is just completing one project involving a pre-
scribed burn last September, in the Owyhee Mountains south of Boise. Beforehand, grazing animals were placed in blocks of land with high or low shrubs. In those areas with low shrub cover, the grazing
slowed the fi re down and kept the fl ame lengths down, which makes it easier for fi refi ghters to combat a blaze. “The fl ip side of that,” Launchbaugh says, “is when you get a lot of shrubs — in our case, that’s sagebrush — that is what carries the fi re, and cows just are not good at reducing that woody fuel. Of course, in Texas, you
54 The Cattleman April 2016
Use livestock to create strips of low vegetation to create breaks.
have done a lot of goat grazing, and that’s a different matter,” she says, adding that she speaks from experi- ence — she received her master’s degree from Texas A&M University. Cattle can also be used to protect parts of the ranch
from wildfi re. Launchbaugh says based on her con- versations with area ranchers, heavy grazing can be used around areas that are being restored, and even around the ranch house, to divert fi re from roaring right through those areas. “We do a lot of haying up here, so ranchers are starting to use heavy grazing right around their hay yards to make sure that if a fi re comes through, it’s not taking out their hay sheds,” she says. Launchbaugh notes that she confers with ranchers
on projects. They know where the fi re is likely to go through and when they are going to be at risk. Even if they haven’t experienced it themselves, their parents — or grandparents — would have, because “fi re is a part of our landscapes.” While the amount of fuel varies every year, Launch-
baugh recommends against going back to the same area year after year to produce grazed fuel breaks. “You really want to change the areas where you are grazing down the vegetation,” she says. “I would not recommend grazing it down to the nubs every year, because you are going to be in trouble in another way. Year to year, the fuel changes, and year to year the area on which you do intense grazing needs to change.” However, she says their research shows that cows,
and sheep, can be used to reduce herbaceous fuel and break up fi re continuity. Wildfi res in Idaho can be huge — fi refi ghters sometimes have to deal with 400,000- to 500,000-acre fi res — and targeted grazing gives them a better chance to catch and compartmen- talize these blazes. Launchbaugh says they are now focusing on stud-
ies into how grazing reduces the intensity of the heat. “We don’t know a lot about this, but I think what is really important is reducing how deadly the fi re is to the plants, just by reducing the fuel in the landscape,” she says. “Historically, our fi res were huge, but they were
patchy. Some areas didn’t burn. I think if we can bring grazing back into these landscapes in strategic ways, we can get that patchiness again.”
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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