Leopold Center - Workshop explores grazing as a land management tool for prairies

The thought of grazing a prairie, especially a remnant prairie (historic vegetation on land that has never been plowed), makes many people flinch at a mental picture of over-grazed pastures with exposed soil and eroding waterways. However, like many things, the dose makes the poison, or the medicine, and it seems that a small dose of grazing can be good medicine for a natural area.

More and more natural land managers are embracing the idea that carefully monitored grazing is a good and natural thing. After all, stampeding buffalo herds and enormous animals such as moose and elk were common in the Midwest before European settlement. It’s reasonable to assume these animals were an important part of the ecology of the land, and certainly they altered the vegetation where they lived. Somehow, large herbivores not only roamed and grazed on Iowa’s prairies and savannas without destroying them, they were an important part of the web.

For the last few years I’ve been fascinated by the management technique that Scott Moats uses at Broken Kettle Grasslands, a native prairie north of Sioux City that encompasses more than 5,000 acres, most of which are owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. Selected local beef producers are allowed to bring in their animals to graze, but must agree to remove them promptly when asked to do so. Moats knows what he wants the landscape to look like, and he gauges the degree of grazing to match that concept. Encroaching invasive plants are removed (especially useful in areas that are not well suited for prescribed fire), and the producers are happy with the growth of their animals.

Last spring it seemed I was hearing more stories and received more questions about grazing native plants and natural areas. I approached Brian Peterson, the grassland specialist for the Iowa Natural Resources Conservation Service, to see if he thought there was sufficient interest to organize a one-day conference on this topic. With Brian’s support and a grant from the Leopold Center, 80 people gathered in Ames on August 10 to hear a slate of speakers offer their perspectives on grazing native plants.

I found a few common threads, especially with respect to grazing for animal production. It’s easy to graze too hard. Several people in attendance have native species in their pastures, a practice that is fairly unusual in Iowa. Those who are successful have learned that tallgrass prairie species cannot be grazed as short as the more commonly used non-native forages; even resilient prairie plants struggle if repeatedly cropped too short. In other words, plants that would be 4 to 8 feet at maturity are definitely stressed if repeatedly grazed to heights that inherently shorter non-native pasture species can tolerate. However, done carefully, both the grazing animals and the native plants prosper.

Another theme arose: the use of grazing as a tool for land management. Moats provided an excellent summary of his experience at Broken Kettle. Iowa State’s David Engle reviewed the range of concepts behind “patch-burn grazing” (the topic of another research project funded by the Leopold Center).

One of my favorite presentations was by Julie Wheelock, who summarized her study on the use of goats and temporary fencing to remove unwanted vegetation in the Loess Hills (coordinated through Agren, Inc., of Carroll). She found that goats did, indeed, clean things up quite well, although they unfortunately did not have a taste for red cedar.

Wheelock hopes to someday offer temporary goat grazing for hire, and I’ve heard others are considering the same. I keep wondering if goats might have a taste for garlic mustard. Just think, if dairy goats were used, the feta cheese might already be garlic flavored!