We just had a 138,000 acre fire in the wilderness near here. They took the cattle off years ago and the game followed and it grew up into an unmanaged tangle of growth. Whatever they think they protected went up in smoke.
It has already improved our watershed, the water is coming down the river instead of being consumed by useless plant matter.
We had a neighbor rancher whose ranch had some rare falcon. They made him cover his troughs so they wouldn’t drown and when it came time for the baby birds to hatch they made him take the cattle off the pasture. Guess what...the falcons abandoned their nests and followed the cattle.
The Nature Conservancy bought a huge ranch and immediately took all the cattle off of it, the game left voluntarily, lol.
Cattle keep their little trails beaten out which prevents the thick underbrush. They kick up mice and small game for the hawks, falcons and eagles. They keep the grass grazed so it is growing fresh tender feed.
That is exactly what the land management guy I mentioned came to realize. The high weeds took more of the water and nutrients out of the ground, and the loss of the cattle fertilizer diminished the nutrients further.
Tell me about it! We had 100s of thousands of acres burn in my county a few years ago, couldn’t breathe for the whole summer.
Even worse, the environazis filed suit after suit to prevent any cost effective logging in the burned areas.
The only way they could cut and remove the timber was with hand crews and helicopters. No logging roads allowed because of the potential runoff into the creeks and rivers (as though it didn’t happen any way), so no dead timber harvest, just wasn’t cost effective.
Now we have hundreds of thousands of acres of dead wood standing, just waiting for a spark in the right place to destroy the rest of the surrounding forest in one massive fire storm.
Thank you Sierra Club and USFS, YOU IGNORANT ASSES.
We had 40 jungle acres in Montana once. Right when I bought it I called the neighbor and let him graze his cattle and horses. Cleaned it right up and made it useable.