vestock industry believe that livestock are the answer to all of mankind’s and nature’s ills. This same thinking suggests that livestock can generally be used for grazing these excess ground fuels. But that thinking is what has brought us to the brink of destruction by catastrophic wildfire and trending deforestation through policies posited by those on the other-end of the spectrum: the ‘let it burn’ environmentalists. Neither extreme has it right, and the appropriate solution is available but has been intentionally dismissed or overlooked because of the typical downfalls of man: greed, ego and ideologies.
Recently, a reader who is a professional firefighter for the Oregon Department of Forestry sent me an email that posed the following important question: “One article I came across troubled me slightly. I can’t recall who it was written by but it stated that wild horses changed the fire regime of the area by consuming the natural grasses and allowing the invasive species to become dominate and increase fire spread rates (more I think for the area they were referring to). Do you know of any studies done on this if so can you refer them to me.”
I immediately recognized the statement (wild horses adversely affecting wildfire regime) as one of many canards that have been spun by some folks in and around the livestock industry along with some researchers. In reality the opposite is true; livestock grazing adversely affects and depletes native pastures and worsens the fire regime.
First, let’s get the number one livestock industry canard dispelled. The truth is that American wild horses are without any doubt a native species. And the best science tells us that here.
More comprehensive information about that myth and others here: The Three Greatest Myths About American Wild Horses.
Invasive species grazing by cattle, sheep and goats, all of which are not North American species, adversely affects wildfire regimes on native pastures, especially in and around wilderness and fragile forest areas.
North American ecosystems have evolved over the millennia with native species flora and fauna including wild horses, and have done so in the face of millennia of normal wildfire cycles. The catastrophic wildfires that have evolved in recent years are not part of any normal fire-cycle. They are in fact man-caused disasters stemming from the mismanagement of wildlife, especially the mismanagement of apex predators. These fires are deforesting America at an alarming rate and are so hot they kill genetic lines of fire-resistant conifers that have survived millennia of wildfires, and which require normal fire-cycles for their seed dispersal. Instead, these conifers that were considered by experts to be fire-resistant are being incinerated by abnormally hot wildfires.
For the past 50 years, some factions in the livestock industry have tried to paint wild horses as a problem on public lands by popularizing a host of myths. One such myth is that wild horses damage range and riparian lands. However, it is well-known scientific fact that cattle and sheep operations have wreaked more havoc on US range-lands than all other species combined over the past 5000 years, as cited by Professor Thomas L. Fleischner, Ph.D: “The most severe vegetation changes of the last 5400 years occurred during the past 200 years. The nature and timing of these changes suggest that they were primarily caused by 19th-century open-land sheep and cattle ranching.”
Yet another invasive species that enters into the discussion on western range-lands and the wildfire regime is the yellow star-thistle, which is prized by bee-keepers for the honey it renders, but as with all invasive species presents its own particular problems on our western lands and in the fire regime: According to the USFS: “Infestations west of the Rocky Mountains are most severe in California, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho [20,38]. Infestations in California cover more area than those in all other states combined .”
In fact, the same citation states that as of 18 years ago, the infestation of yellow star-this