Grazing Reduces Fire Fuel

Several years ago Idaho Rancher and blogger Kim Brackett and her husband made the business decision to shift some of their grazing lands from federal land permits in Idaho to private lands in California. She shares more about a recent wild fire on their pasture lands in Northern California and the difference grazing made.
Brackett: “Well the fire we had most recently was on our ranch in Northern California - which was different experience than what we are use to in Southern Idaho. The fire in California was on timber land which is a different situation. The large timber companies come in and harvest those trees and then allow grazing to let cattle come in and graze underneath there which significantly reduces the fuel load for fires. So I think that did have an impact on how easily they were able to contain that fire.”
Thankfully, the damage wasn’t too severe.
Brackett: “It burned quite a bit of our fall feed. So we are making some tough business decisions right now for feed for the next couple of months for the cattle. We had only one cow that was burned significantly and we had to put her down. We were very fortunate that was the only livestock loss in this fire.”