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Log it, graze it or watch it burn...

I expect it's harder to hold the permittee to much, when the permit holder is a 5 term state legislator...they tend to have a fair amount of pull in the western states.

Cheat grass, knapweed, St;Johns wort, hound's tongue, cockle burrs, the list goes on. Livestock spreads a lot of it and fire helps control some so it's a tough call in a lot of situations. In a lot of areas in North Idaho, knapweed is so prevalent it looks like they want to grow it. The one thing certain is that everyone can't be happy with administration of BLM lands. GD

Yeah, I've lanced, flushed, and given antibiotics to more than a couple.

I seen some cattle out near Grand Staircase Escalante. Miles of rock, sand, chunks of fuggin ancient lava, a few sprigs of cactus.

I thought, gawd no wonder the beef tasted like deer tarsal when we travel out that way.

You'll welcome cheatgrass when you have Yellowstar thistle.

IMO, the most damage is done when low numbers of grazing animals are allowed to pick over an area and eat only the preferred plants. Those plants are repeatedly eaten down to the crown and it eventually kills them while the less desirable plants are allowed to flourish. Short duration grazing is one answer, but another viable option is high-intensity low-frequency. Trying to implement either on large tracts is problematic, though.

Maybe technology can make it work someday, but you still have the problem of getting water to the livestock once you've figured out how to confine the animals to the area you want grazed.

Damn...I haven't thought about this stuff in almost 30 years.

I guess I'd forgotten how good my memory is.

Jim,

I have lanced several lump jaws, and removed the cheat from the abscess on horses and cattle. We had an old mare on which a cheat traveled from the back of her mouth, upward to behind her eye and below the ear. After lancing and removing the cheat, it took about a month to get her healed up. But most often the abscess was located on the lower jaw of the animal.

Cheat grass is an excellent feed source. We grazed it from March onward. We irrigated fields of pure cheat and watched it grow to 30 inches in height, then swathed and baled it for winter feed. The seed heads are very nutritious, and feeds much like oat hay. But that is where most of the lump jaw abscesses came from.

We saved mature cheat grass pastures and grazed them through the winter with great success.

Even our alfalfa fields were usually 50% cheat grass for the first cutting. The actual milking herd was fed corn silage and 2'nd or 3'rd cutting alfalfa. But all the young stock, horses, and dry cows lived on baled cheat grass or cheat grass blend.

Cattle do have a hard time subsisting on standing cheat grass in July and August, simply because the stalks become dry, brittle and hard to eat. It is uncomfortable for cattle to chew dried cheat grass in arid conditions. But as higher humidity levels arrive and soften the stalks in Sept and Oct the cattle do quite well on the dried cheat grass.

As to BLM management around here, in the '60s and '70s the local BLM allotments were all given to sheep grazing. The sheep spent March, April, and May grazing the BLM. After the sheep left, just enough cheat grass would mature to produce seed for next year.

Incidentally, the conditions were ideal for shooting whistle pigs as the grass was not high enough for them to hide in.

As the price of wool dropped below cost of production, and lamb crops could not support the cost of sheep ranches, the BLM allotments around here were converted to cattle. But the cattle are managed differently from the sheep allotments. Where the sheep grazed in early spring, the cattle around here are now turned out on BLM in the fall and through winter.

The problem with the way the cattle are grazed is that the fuel load is peaked in late July, and August and creates our biggest fire threat. Every lightning strike or man made spark has the potential to become a conflagration.

The cattle DO need to be out grazing in April and May.

Yes, that is a real advantage of sheep grazing. A couple dogs can hold a band of 1000 ewes and their 2000 lambs onto a tiny area until it is grazed to the ground and let them advance over the range as needed. Around here, tanker trucks carried water to the sheep bands as needed.

I am Canadian , don't know much about grazing land under those rules. Here, in Canada, rancher's with grazing permits on public land are watched pretty closely, you can't over graze the west slope timberlands, even in a dry year. Tons of grass, and it can be a fire hazard. In dry year, atv's motorcycles and displaced city people are a fire hazard, not the line rider and his stock dog. Most cows do not combust to begin a grass fire either.
City folks build house for a view, and all their contraptions are real fire hazards. Yup, city folks should stay in the city imo ( hate to say it but sheep are considered range maggots to a cattleman) I love to watch the stock dogs working though.

Your BLM leases have cattle on them in winter time??

My youngest brother graduated with MS in Range Management. After 4 years with BLM in Nevada, he quit in disgust when they would not let him do his work. It seemed there were always reports to write in quinltuplet anytime he wanted to get out and do actual (gasp) field surveys!

So he started his own company as consultant to the ranchers, doing the work he was trained to do, and been at it ever since- some 30 years now. . (Intermountain Range Consultant. - maybe Management?).


He spends a lot of time in court, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

Elk season comes along, they all go hunting together.... so far, everyone has come back.

We purposely graze our cows on Spring cheat grass.....before it becomes a pita; and it knocks out the seed for the next year. At least that is the way it's worked for us.

The leases in Payette Co Id do, and I have been told by ranch folk that many Western Oregon leases are year round with rotation around the lease as the year passes.

Which district did he work?

75 million buffalo would keep that stuff ate down.

Unfortunately, some of those city people have discovered Tannerite. Last year, it's illegal use north of here burned off 95k acres in just 1 fire, much of it being elk winter range.

BLM from earlier this year.



(looking towards the CMR)


(overgrazing around the waterholes)

I was on some of the APR's leases this July. North east of Zortman a ways.


The grass out there was amazing.

Jim, it was probably the best grass year of my lifetime.


A bunch of that country has never really been used and abused like some private stuff around here.