03/30/05 Grazing is preserving

How can grazing be considered a way to preserve America's grasslands? I'm Jeff Keane and I'll be right back to tell you about one study that finds grazing may be the best hope for our native ranges. Richard Knight, a wildlife biology professor at Colorado State University just researched grazing effects on grasslands along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Knight, along with a faculty affiliate with the Natural Resource Conservation Service and a wildlife biology graduate student studied songbirds, mammalian carnivores, and plant communities in areas that had a mix of private ranches, public protected range, and ranchettes. The research was started with the premise cattle grazing damages wildlife. Most study areas showed native plant species were more abundant on ranches. Ranches had the healthiest rangelands, while the protected wildlife refuges and ranchettes were the weediest. Wildlife was as good on the ranches as it was on the protected areas and of course better than the in the developed sites. Knight feels ranching is a preferred land use since it gives a better biological diversity than protection without grazing or home site development. Knight also believes anyone who supports ending grazing on public lands is aiding and abetting the cause of developers since many times losing a public lands lease forces the sale of the rancher's private lands to a developer. So now we have research that confirms what some of us already knewgrazing is good for grasslands. I'm Jeff Keane. Western-Farmer Stockman March 2005