Management, Implementation, and Monitoring Approaches to Producing a Healthy Range

Dr. L. Roy Roath

Sustainable systems are those that are capable of continuing appropriate function within the system while producing a product or products that we desire. Appropriate function becomes the operational concept. This, as defined by a National Academy of Sciences panel for rangelands, would include little soil erosion, soil water characteristics near the potential for the site, and production and mixtures of vegetation that would be expected given a specified soil-climatic relationship.

Healthy rangelands and therefore sustainable rangelands are a product of good management programs. The bases for beginning a progressive management program are: 1) understanding what resources you have; 2) determining what demand is being placed on those resources; and 3) determining what goals the owner/operator expects from the land.

It is quite uncommon for management choices to be based first on the capability of the land and later on the kind of enterprise we would like to operate! Generally, quite the opposite is true. My observations are that some of the greatest ecological problems are products of failure to understand the land and its capabilities. It is my conviction that sustainable systems must, by the nature of the definition, be based primarily on what the land is best adapted to produce. This determination must come from experience with the land, observing it and its responses to management activities. It is unlikely that even the most skilled academic, without experience on the land, would be able to ascertain more than a crude assessment of the lands’ capability. It is most skillfully done by those that have lived with the land, perhaps augmented by training.

Biological sustainability will then be reflected by the response of the land through time to the management. While whole system responses are difficult to measure, we can use some indicators of how healthy the system is and what the longer term impacts of the current management choices might be.

One of these indicators is how much moisture the land retains and stores relative to the amount received. Do the streams run? Perennially? Are the draws moist when they should be? Does there always seem to be a drought? Do willows and cottonwoods grow where they should? Are they regenerating? While the expectation is not for wetlands to be everywhere on rangelands, it is my observation that many rangeland areas can and will be moister given appropriate management choices. In fact, there are clear indications that there are many areas of the west where streams ran 100 years ago but that do not now.

Other indicators are ground cover and the presence or absence of active erosion. Most rangeland should accumulate some residual plant material to assist with erosion management. If our choice of animal stocking rate has been appropriate, then we should have positive indicators of low erosion and ground cover in balance with the productive capabilities of the plant communities.

A set of indicators that I use consistently are those that relate to assessment of the plant responses in a grazed environment. We know that plant responses to defoliation are predicated on frequency of defoliation, intensity of defoliation, and opportunity of the plants to grow or to regrow. If this is how plants respond then we should be able to use them to monitor how plants are responding. If the plants are not responding as we would like, then we, now using this new set of tools, can adjust the defoliation events so that the results are more appropriate. This approach has been used to plan a grazing regime by first assessing the probable impacts of the new grazing program. If it predicts poor results, a revised program is chosen and implemented. The implemented grazing program is then monitored by assessing the frequency, intensity and opportunity that the program produces. This approach has been field tested and implemented regionally.

The above descriptive mechanics of sustainable systems can be used to define, implement and monitor your system under its current management or to alter the management so that it comes closer to sustainability.

Dr. L. Roy Roath
Extension Range Specialist
Rangeland Ecosystem Science Department
200-C Natural Resources
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1478
Tel: (970) 491-6543
Royr@Picea.Cnr.Colorstate.Edu

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