From the Capital Press/Agriculture Weekly
November 26, 2005
Some rangelands get green endorsements
Chip Power California Staff Writer
Environmental groups and the California Cattlemen’s Association don’t agree on everything, but the value of livestock to thwart urban sprawl in some rangelands is one area where they’ve found common ground.
The California Native Plant Society, the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society and other green groups joined the cattle group in a joint “California Rangeland Resolution” adopted last week at the livestock group’s annual meeting in Nevada.
The pact is “a pretty big and significant accomplishment for us,” according to Ben Higgins, executive vice president of the California Cattlemen’s Association.
The resolution , which cites recent scientific studies that declare that cattle grazing can be beneficial for temporary wetlands called vernal pools in the valley, represents a “first step” in better working relations with the beef industry, said Carol Witham, president of the plant society’s board of directors.
The resolution is restricted to California’s fast-growing central counties, Witham said. These largely grassland properties, which are largely privately held, are a vital link to some species preservation, Witham said.
“We could agree on 85 percent of some issues,” she said. But the society would never endorse cattle grazing on deserts, meadows and other areas that have become battlecrounds over cattle grazing rights, such as some public lands, she said.
The groups said they “recognize the critical importance of California’s privately owned rangelands, particularly that significant portion that encircles the Central Valley and includes the adjacent grasslands and oak woodlands, including the Sierra foothills and the interior coast ranges. These lands support important ecosystems and are the foundation for the ranching industry that owns them.”
The groups also said the rangelands “include a rich and varied landscape of grasslands, oak woodlands, vernal pools, riparian areas and wetlands, which support numerous imperiled species, many native plants once common in the Central Valley, and are home to the highest diversity and density of wintering raptors anywhere in North America.”
Similarly, the resolution concluded that allowing the lands to continue as ranches would support native animal and plant life. And so they agreed to “collaboratively work together to protect and enhance the rangeland landscape that encircles California’s Central Valley and includes adjacent grasslands and oak woodlands.”
Witham, in an interview, said conservation easements hold part of the answer to maintaining the ranch land in its current or even improved condition.
She also said “if some of the environmental groups and the cattlemen can go into a congressman’s office together,” goals such as obtaining more funding under future farm bills becomes more achievable.
A recent study published in the Journal of Conservation Biology, and supported by California research in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy, casts new light on vernal pools and livestock.
The study, written by principal author Jaymee Marty, concludes that cattle grazing in and around vernal pools can actually increase biodiversity at those seasonally wet areas.
“The debate over grazing needs to move,” Marty wrote, “beyond the simple dichotomy of whether it is good or bad and be properly evaluated through experimental studies of practical alternatives.”
Vernal pools occur throughout California’s Central Valley grasslands, where the soils restrict water percolation.
Chip Power reports from Fresno. Reach him via e-mail at cpower@capitalpress.com.
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