Breaking the Cheatgrass Fire Cycle By Dan Harmon and SRM “Summer Tour” Charlie D. Clements After a long year of too many virtual meetings, the Nevada Section - Society for Range Management (SRM) held its annual summer field tour June 10, 2021. The tour visited numerous sites near the northern Nevada town of Battle Mountain. It was good to see so many familiar faces in person again and to meet new folks interested in the art of range management. This year’s tour theme was “Breaking the Cheatgrass Fire Cycle”. Far too often the battle against cheatgrass and its’ associated wildfires seems hopeless, therefor we wanted to focus on effective methods that can restore and protect the landscape. Attendees included local ranchers, employees from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF), Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), Nevada Association of Conservation Districts (NVACD), scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and others interested in successfully managing cheatgrass and reducing wildfires. We began the day by meeting at the Horseshoe Ranch where Dave Voth, ranch manager and Chris Jasmine, Manager of Biodiversity and Rangelands for Nevada Gold Mines (NGM), gave us an overview of NGM’s ranching and rangeland conservation operations. Nevada Gold Mines, a joint venture between Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining, manages and leases numerous ranching properties. It also is an active
participant in both Nevada’s Conservation Credit System and Barrick’s Bank Enabling Agreement, which address impacts to Greater Sage Grouse habitat. Nevada Gold Mines ranches, including lessees, prioritize a commitment to conservation, including improvements to the habitat over time. They work closely with NDOW and USFWS on projects to improve the landscape and reduce threats from wildfires. Our first stop was a section of the Horseshoe Ranch allotment that has been included in the BLM Outcome Based Grazing Authorizations Initiative (OBGA). This new BLM initiative creates flexibility that is needed to best manage grazing on a highly variable landscape. One emphasis of this program is to create and maintain fuel breaks with grazing to disrupt fuel continuity (Figure 1). As Dave Voth explained, this requires flexibility in the allowed number of cattle and options to move the animals depending on the annual production of cheatgrass and perennial forage. Dave said the goal is to reduce the cheatgrass residual dry matter along the roadways, creating a firebreak that could limit the intensity and magnitude of future wildfires. He emphasized the importance of good monitoring to ensure that fuels are being reduced with minimal negative impacts to the desirable plant community. The area we observed had virtually no perennial plants and was dominated by cheatgrass and other weeds. Such areas are ideal for targeted grazing fuel breaks because they pose
Figure 1. Example of targeted grazing and fuel reductions. Without grazing, cheatgrass and other annual weeds produce a vast amount of dry fuel for the fire season.
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The Progressive Rancher
little risk for overutilization of desirable plants. The group discussed how monitoring would require a “control” area without any grazing to determine the effectiveness of fuels reductions, and how a major difficulty is achieving the BLM stubble height requirement with a plant like cheatgrass. The comparisons of grazed versus not grazed must be made within the same year, as opposed to having a baseline first year measurement and then comparing year to year, because annual cheatgrass production is so variable. Dave expressed the responsibility he feels for this effort to succeed since the ranch is at the forefront of this new program (OBGA) and it could be the difference between the program expanding or not. One of the attendees asked if targeted spring grazing of the cheatgrass could control cheatgrass enough to allow seeding of perennial grasses to be successful. Chris Jasmine explained that the goal was not to control the cheatgrass but to reduce its biomass (fuel) production. He stated that even with targeted grazing , cheatgrass produces enough seed to ensure its establishment the following year, and competition from the cheatgrass would decrease seeded perennial grass success. Targeted grazing can buy time and decrease the chance, rate,spread and season of wildfires until we can implement a more effective cheatgrass seed production control means and establish a sustainable perennial plant community. Our next stop was a 1,000 plus acre herbicide application on the TS Ranch (NGM property). The group could see the striking effectiveness on the treatment area, where practically no cheatgrass was growing. The sparse perennial grasses, such as basin wildrye and western wheatgrass, stood out dramatically in the absence of cheatgrass. Pre-emergent herbicides do not affect established perennial plants, with their deeper root system extending below the very shallow layer of active herbicide (<2”). William Kutosky with USFWS in the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program explained about the process of using pre-emergent herbicides to control cheatgrass (Figure 2). William often partners with NGM on habitat improvement projects. He explained how soil active pre-emergent herbicides, such as Imazapic (Plateau), will remain active in the soil and be taken up by the roots of all newly germinated plants, effectively killing them for one growing season, while having no effect on the existing established perennials with deeper roots below the shallow (<2”) herbicide soil zone. Imazapic should be applied (6 oz product/acre) in September to preempt any fall (October) cheatgrass germination, which can often occur. William explained that by doing so the cheatgrass seedbank will be depleted www.progressiverancher.com
