Researchers have found that climate change has led to the deterioration of many western rangelands. Hence landowners showed keep livestock and other large animals from grazing on public land.
Climatic changes over the last decade have taken a toll on nature and have reduced the amount of greenery on the planet by leaps and bounds. Eight researchers from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University found through a study that the degradation of land needs serious attention. According to researchers, further degradation could be avoided if "large areas of Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service lands became free of use by livestock and "feral ungulates" such as wild horses and burros, and high populations of deer and elk were reduced."
The move would slow down the process of land degradation and speed up the recovery rate of the ecosystem. It would also give scientists an opportunity to study the extent of effect grazing has on degrading land along with climate change.
"People have discussed the impacts of climate change for some time with such topics as forest health or increased fire," said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and lead author on this study. "However, the climate effects on rangelands and other grazing lands have received much less interest. Combined with the impacts of grazing livestock and other animals, this raises serious concerns about soil erosion, loss of vegetation, changes in hydrology and disrupted plant and animal communities. Entire rangeland ecosystems in the American West are getting lost in the shuffle."
"If livestock grazing on public lands were discontinued or curtailed significantly, some operations would see reduced incomes and ranch values, some rural communities would experience negative economic impacts, and the social fabric of those communities could be altered," the researchers wrote in their report, citing a 2002 study.
The study was published Wednesday in Environmental Management, a professional journal published by Springer.
