Feed Lot Magazine Online, Fire as a Management Tool

Many years ago the well known range management consultant Allan Savory was asked if "fire is good." His answer was that fire is neither bad nor good; it is simply a management tool that can be used. Unfortunately, not everyone was paying attention. In many circles fire is being treated as a great renovator of grazing land. Even among wildlife management and so-called environmental groups, fire is being written up and presented to the public as nature's way of restoring the land. Indeed, it can almost be said that fire on rangeland has become a fad.

Workshops for burning are intensely interesting. Figuring wind direction, allowing for breaks, considering ambient temperature and humidity are all well covered. Demonstration burns are nothing less than exciting. What is often missing, however, is serious scientific discussion of alternative range management techniques.

The bottom line is that in most instances, there is very little that fire can do, that a well managed herd of cows can't do equally as well, if not better. As Mr. Savory has pointed out, "fire is simply a method of dealing with inadequate management in the past."

If rangelands are poorly managed, i.e. uneven grazing has allowed areas of mature, unpalatable dry grass to build up, fire will sweep through and remove this mature material allowing green, succulent, much more nutritious grass to replace it. But also can a herd of cows.

If we concentrate our cows on the pasture during the winter and supplement the cows with a pound or two of protein, they can effectively remove the dry grass so lush, nutritious grass can come up in the spring. So what is the advantage to the fire? Theocratically, if there are some specific brush control problems, fire can be used as a partial control. As a practical matter, however, fire is usually not very effective in controlling brush (on rangeland). Really, fire is usually effective only in a forest setting (to remove underbrush). When toxic plants are a problem, only then does fire have a definite advantage over controlled grazing on rangeland.

The primary disadvantage to fire is depletion of soil moisture. In some areas and ecosystems, this can be a significant disadvantage. But I think most everyone knows this.

The disadvantage many people don't consider is the energy loss. That is, while dry mature grass is certainly not as nutritious as lush green grass, there is still a lot of energy there -- energy that can burn up the neighbors fence posts or anything else that gets in the way if we haven't figured our wind direction or other safety factors correctly.

If on the other hand, we have carefully calculated our burn, we will successfully send all that energy up with the smoke. It won't destroy anything, but then it won't create anything either. And that is precisely the advantage to controlled grazing. We can just as successfully remove the old dry grass, but we won't be wasting all that energy. Instead of converting all that energy into heat and CO2, we can convert it into a calf.

There is usually a lot of rhetoric paid to the minerals left by the ash, but the reality is that only in tropical areas are these minerals really important. In the western U.S., minerals are usually not a limiting factor. In the western U.S., soil moisture is the limiting factor. Trading solid moisture for some minerals is normally not a good trade. Trading the old dry grass for a calf is.

Certainly old dry grass is not digestible enough for lactating cows nor stockers. But in most cases it is adequate for dry pregnant cows. We will, of course, need to supplement with some protein, vitamins and minerals. In extreme cases, we may even need to add a couple of pounds of an energy concentrate.

But supplementing is no real problem. We just need to know what the requirements of the cows are. The real problem is fencing. In most cases continuous grazing (or lack of grazing) is what has allowed the grass to mature in the first place. Given a lack of cross fencing, fire is a much more expedient remedy. But unless we put in the fencing, or otherwise concentrate our animals in a rotational manner, we will have the same problem to deal with once again. Fire may not be the solution to the problem -- it is merely part of a circle of mismanagement. Only well managed grazing (rotational grazing) is the solution to the problem.