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Climate Hub Partnership Program: Resources for Communicating the Benefits of Patch-burn Grazing

Paul Crump,

Herpetologist, Nongame and Rare Species Program,

Wildlife Division, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

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Climate Hub Partnership Program: Resources for Communicating the Benefits of Patch-burn Grazing

Goal:

Promoting climate-smart agricultural practices to reduce risk and impacts of drought, wildfire, and woody encroachment on livestock production

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Climate Hub Partnership Program: Resources for Communicating the Benefits of Patch-burn Grazing

Pyric herbivory

Multi-species grazing

The climate smart agricultural practices the project focuses on for research and outreach are primarily patch burn grazing, or pyric herbivory, and multi-species grazing.

To aid in research and outreach programs, the project partners with numerous private ranches, in addition to the state university research stations and USDA experimental ranges, who are implementing these climate smart practices.

I don’t have a background in rangeland management, so I applied to participate in the program to better understand for myself the role of grazing and fire in managing the grasslands and savannahs that provide habitat for the rare species that I work on. The course was structured into 2 parts a virtual classroom session and site visits to properties in Texas and Oklahoma where managers are using these concepts on the ground.

One of the obligations of participating in the program is to help spread the word about the about the project and its goals.

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https://data.txlandtrends.org/

As mentioned, woody encroachment is a significant threat to livestock production, ecosystem services, and wildlife habitats in the southern great plains.

And Texas has lost over 5 million acres of grasslands over the 30 years to brush encroachment.

As a comparison, Texas A&M University Natural Resources Institute’s land trends analysis estimates we’ve lost 3.7 million acres of working lands, which includes cropland, timber production, as well as grazing land, to urban and suburban development over the same period. So we have lost 1.3 million acres more grasslands to woody encroachment, than we have we working lands to urban development.

The impacts to the economy are staggering, If you assume $50 per round bale of hay, that’s nearly half a billion dollars of lost revenue to ranchers in 2022 alone.

The wildlife impacts are quality as severe, with the well publicized report on the declines of grassland birds over the past 50 years, and many other wildlife species that depend on open grassland and savannah habitats, including one of the species that I focus on, the federally endangered Houston Toad.

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PATCH-BURN GRAZING OR……

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Prescribed Fire Effects and Benefits for Cattle, John Derek Scasta

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West et al., 2016. Pyric-herbivory and Hydrological Responses in Tallgrass Prairie. Rangeland Ecology & Management 69: 20–27

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The reason they are attracted to the freshly burned area is because the fresh growing grass has a higher protein content than older grass.

In a study from Oklahoma State University, they showed that fire increases forage quality. The researchers compared the protein content of forage from a pasture that was burned in the spring of 2019 with forage from a pasture that was burned in the summer of 2020, in October 2020.

They found that protein content met the needs of a lactating female cow in the Summer 2020 burned area, but was too low in the Spring 2019 burn area.

Similarly they found that patch burn grazing extends forage quality when spring and summer burns can be conducted on adjacent pastures. Protein content stayed at or above the needs of a lactating female cow for 7 months, reducing the needs for protein supplementation during this time and saving the rancher money.

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Similarly, in a study on prairie chickens, pastures which received fire at different times were used by the same individuals for different parts of their life history.

The heavily grazing more open areas that were burned recently were the preferred locations for lekking.

The areas that had not seen fire in over 2 years, and were naturally rested as they are unpreferred by grazers so where the cover is high, was where lesser prairie chickens choose to nest.

And the areas that had seen fire in the past 1-2 growing seasons, were the optimal locations for raising the chicks.

It is the close proximity of all of these different “time since fire” and grazing patches that creates the complex variation in habitat structure and productivity that is necessary to support prairie chicken populations.

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The same is also true of wintering and breeding grassland bird communities.

Studies over the past 20 years have shown these grassland birds are highly variable in their specific habitat preferences and that mosaics of varying patches of time since fire and grazing can promote habitats that support a diverse array of declining grassland birds.

For example, eastern meadowlarks need a variety of structure in close proximity to nest and forage for insects to feed chicks. The older thicker vegetation that develops as time since fire increases and grazing pressure decreases provides important cover for nesting, whereas the more productive areas that were more recently burned provides the high diversity and abundance of insects to successfully fledge chicks.

Just like with the prairie chicken, it’s the mosaic of vegetation types along the gradient that provides habitat for these species.

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https://rangelands.app/

https://www.youtube.com/@rangelandanalysisplatform

Okay so one of the resources I wanted to mention is the Rangeland Analysis Platform. The basic gist of this program is that uses Landsat satellite imagery at 30 meter resolution taken every 16 days continuously since 1984.

The RAP uses this imagery along with rangeland field data collected by BLM, NRCS, and NPS to produce maps of vegetation cover types for each year since 1986.

Because the RAP is essentially a model based on satellite imagery, there are errors associated with the models predictions for what cover type is present in each pixel.

Based on these errors, its recommended that RAP be used as part of the decision making process, along side other methods, and not be relied upon solely to make decisions.

The website is found at this address, and the program has loads of very useful YouTube tutorial videos.

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Perennial Forbs and Grasses

Trees

1986

Perennial Forbs and Grasses

Trees

2023

1986

2023

Perennial Forbs and Grasses

Trees

Here is the type of output you can get from the Rangeland Analysis Platform. The images up top show perennial forbs and grasses and tree cover at the Gus Engeling WMA, where we are today, in 1986 and 2023.

The graph below show the annual changes in the model based estimate from Landsat imagery of these various cover classes.

What the rangeland analysis platform suggests is that, in 1986, forb and grass cover was just under 50% and tree cover was just over 20%. The classifications in 1986 show a diffuse pattern across the property, with few really high cover percentages of trees in particular.

When we look at the 2023 classifications, you can see it appears that tree cover has increased, in particular on the eastern and southern parts of the WMA, but the savannah restoration area in the northwest corner has definitely changed with lower tree cover and higher grass and forb cover.

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https://www.prairieprotector.com/

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Summary

Patch-burn grazing is

Good for cattle
Good for plant diversity
Good for wildlife

Patch-burn grazing is conducted by

Dividing the property into a number of unfenced pastures equal to the fire return interval for the ecosystem
Burning the patches on a schedule and allowing grazers to move freely around the entire property
Short periods of high intensity grazing pressure followed by longer intervals of rest for each pasture

The interaction of fire and grazing creates beneficial variation in the structure and diversity of the plant community.

Website and Facebook Page

TPWD Wildlife Diversity Webinar Series | Recovering Blackland Prairie in Ellis County

So in summary, patch burn grazing is good for grass productivity so its good for cattle production, good for improving plant diversity, and good for wildlife.

Patch burn grazing is implemented by dividing the property into a number of unfenced pastures equal to the fire return interval for the ecoregion and burning the patches on a schedule while allowing the grazers to move freely around. This creates periods of high intensity grazing pressure followed by longer periods of rest for each of the pastures.

The interaction of fire and grazing creates variation in the structure and diversity of the plant community.

I know there are lots of folks in this room with direct experience with this management approach, but for those who are new to this, like me, I’d encourage you to check out the Prairie Project website and Facebook pages. All of the infographics I used in the presentation today are from the Prairie Project, they have a great outreach game.

Also, in 2022 Tim Siegmund did a webinar on this topic for our Wildlife Diversity Series, you can find that at this QR code here. It’s a great overview of the implementation and benefits of a patch burn grazing management project in a real world scenario in Texas.

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