From the OSU Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
STILLWATER – Researchers from Oklahoma State University are partnering with university scientists and researchers in two other states on a project using fire and mixed animal species to graze in an effort to enhance livestock production and more sustainable rangelands.Enhancing Livestock Production from Rangelands in the Great Plains is a research project funded through a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Partnering with OSU are researchers and scientists from Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas A&M Agrilife Extension and the University of Nebraska.
The project will help agriculture producers adopt management practices that will increase food production and more sustainable rangelands, said Sam Fuhlendorf, regents professor and Groendyke Chair in Wildlife Conservation with OSU’s Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management.
”We’re dealing mostly with cattle and goats in this project. Cattle have always been important in the Great Plains,” said Fuhlendorf, who serves as the lead OSU principal investigator on the research portion of the study. “We’re using goats because they eat different plants than cattle, and many of the types of plants they eat are species ranchers spend a lot of money trying to control.”He said the project team will be working with a team of ranchers from Texas, through Oklahoma to Nebraska who are doing various aspects of the project’s objectives.
For many years, fire has played an important role in rangeland landscapes that are managed for livestock production. Fuhlendorf said it controls woody plants that are invading rangelands throughout the Great Plains.
”We view invasive plants as the greatest threat to rangeland agriculture and conservation in the region,” Fuhlendorf said. “Fire increases forage quality and quantity, manages the distribution of livestock and improves wildlife habitat. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans burned these landscapes nearly every year.
The grasslands that were here when settlement occurred were dependent on these fires. However, those fires were stopped upon settlement, and in some cases, became illegal. This socio-ecological transformation is finally catching up with us.”Laura Goodman, assistant professor and OSU Extension range specialist, said prescribed fire is very effective in controlling all woody plants when they are young. However, when plants get larger, it can be more difficult to control some resprouting species.
”Woody brush encroachment is a big problem for ranchers. Species such as honey locust and sumac can resprout, but fire can make those more accessible to goats to browse,” said Goodman, who is the lead principal investigator for the Extension part of the Prairie Project. “Research shows prescribed fire and grazing have been used to decrease the spread of wildfire by decreasing fuels, but by combining fire and grazing, you can increase how long fuels are suppressed.”
from The Ada News