g typically increases soil erosion.  Reduction in soil depth, soil organic matter and soil fertility impair the land's future natural and agricultural productivity. Soil fertility can sometimes be mitigated by applying the appropriate lime and organic fertilizers. However, the loss of soil depth and organic matter takes centuries to correct. Their loss is critical in determining the soil's water-holding capacity and how well pasture plants do during dry weather.
In the continental United States, to prevent overgrazing, match the forage supplement to the herd's requirement. This means that a buffer needs to be in the system to adjust for the fastest growth of forages.
Another potential buffer is to plant warm-season perennial grasses such as switchgrass, which do not grow early in the season. This reduces the area that the livestock can use early in the season, making it easier for them to keep up with the cool-season grasses. The animals then use the warm-season grasses during the heat of the summer, and the cool-season grasses recover for fall grazing.
The grazing guidelines in the table are for rotationally grazed, cool-season forages. When using continuous grazing, manage pasture height at one-half the recommended turn-in height for rotational grazing to optimize plant health. The growth habit of some forage species, such as alfalfa, does not permit their survival under continuous grazing. When managing for legumes in the stand, it is beneficial to use rotational grazing and graze the stand close and then give adequate rest to stimulate the legumes' growth.
Overgrazing is used as an example in the economic concept now known as the Tragedy of the Commons devised in a 1968 paper by Garrett Hardin.  This cited the work of a Victorian economist who used the over-grazing of common land as an example of behaviour. Hardin's example could only apply to unregulated use of land regarded as a common resource.
Normally, rights of use of Common land in England and Wales were, and still are, closely regulated, and available only to "commoners". If excessive use was made of common land, for example in overgrazing, a common would be "stinted", that is, a limit would be put on the number of animals each commoner was allowed to graze. These regulations were responsive to demographic and economic pressure; thus rather than let a common become degraded, access was restricted even further. This important part of actual historic practice was absent from the economic model of Hardin.  In reality the use of common land in England and Wales was a triumph of conserving a scarce resource using agreed custom and practice.
- overgrazing consequences in region: 2010 Sahel famine
Overgrazing does not necessarily mean total denudation of the land. Overgrazing can also occur with native species. In the Australian Capital Territory, Australia the local government, in 2013, authorised the culling of 1455 kangaroos due to overgrazing.
- Laduke, Winona (1999). All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. p. 146. ISBN 0896085996. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
- Duval, Clay. "Bison Conservation: Saving an Ecologically and Culturally Keystone Species" (PDF). Duke University. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 8, 2012. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
- In balance with, and accompanied by, prides of keystone predators.
- "Holistic Land Management: Key to Global Stability" by Terry Waghorn. Forbes. 20 December 2012.
- Savory, Allan. "How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change". youtube.com. TED. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
- Savory, Allan. "Can sheep save the planet?". youtube.com. IWTOCHANNEL. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
- West Virginia University Extension Service Archived 2009-04-23 at the Wayback Machine Overgrazing Can Hurt Environment, Your Pocketbook Ed Rayburn. 2000.
- C.Michael Hogan. 2009. Overgrazing. Encyclopedia of Earth. Sidney Draggan, topic ed.; Cutler J. Cleveland, ed., National council for Science and the Environment, Washington DC
- Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science