This file was created by scanning the printed publication. Errors identified by the software have been corrected; however, some errors may remain. RESOURCEUWPACTSOFCHEATGRASS AND WILDFIRES ON PUBLIC LANDS AND LIVESTOCK GRAZING .Thomas C. Roberts, Jr. ABSTRACT acres that have been dominated by cheatgrass in Tooele or Box Elder Counties. We also had some acreage burned under prescription and noncheatgrass wildfires. In the past decade, nearly 500,000 acres of rangeland have burned in the Salt Lake (Utah) District of the Bureau of Land Management. Most of the acreage consumed has been dominated by cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). This paper addresses the resource impacts on lands dominated by cheatgrass and burned areas where cheatgrass was not dominant. Included are discussions of impacts on vegetation, forage, wildlife, and budgets. NONCHEATGRASSFURES These comparatively few acres will be addressed first. In the early and mid-1980's, we had some wildfires go through Rich County. I will review a couple of them. At the south end of the county, a lightning strike the evening of July 24, 1981, caused a fire that consumed approximately 1,100 acres of sagebrush interspersed withjuniper stands. The hot and dry conditions prior to fire contributed to the hot fire that in combination with high winds resulted in a very clean burn. The fire moved so fast through the country that cattle on the South Woodruff Allotment were nearly stranded and killed. Postfire evaluations resulted in rehabilitation efforts on the site. We used a mix of grasses and forbs in a rangeland drill, and we were also able to use a Dixon Land Imprinter. We found the Imprinter to be effective on this site, but because of a narrower swath and poorer control of seed dispersal, it was probably more expensive than the drill to use. Two years later some clipping studies showed that the net results of the fire were positive. An unburned plot yielded a clipped weight equivalency of 880 pounds to the acre while a burned plot nearby yielded the equivalency of nearly 1,500 pounds to the acre, an increase of 69 percent. The notes taken at the time indicate that those areas not reseeded had also greatly improved. Clearly the net impact on range productivity was positive. Nonetheless, this fire did require two growing seasons of nonuse on the allotment and an additional workload on the part of the permittees, BLM resource area staff, Soil Conservation Service district staff, and the expenditure of funds by all concerned. The fire took place in what was then considered a critical deer winter range, and they were affected also, shifting their use elsewhere. The blowing and drifting soil that resulted from the fire and reseeding operations may have indicated some soil loss. On August 25, 1983, a dry lightning strike caused a fire that burned through the Rabbit Creek area of northern Rich County. This fire involved parts of two allotments, the Duck Creek Allotment and the Rabbit Creek Allotment, both summer cattle allotments. The Rabbit Creek fire was apparently a fast-moving, cool fire in rangelands that were in pretty good shape with a diversity of grasses and shrubs, in the sagebrush-grass community type. The permittees had grazed it conservatively for years and the INTRODUCTION The previous days' sessions have included some ideas on revegetation, the ecology of cheatgrass, and fire ecology and management. This morning I will address some of the resource impacts of cheatgrass and wildfires on public lands and their management. I will address some of the concerns that we have in the Salt Lake District of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Our District comprises over 3 million acres of public land in Box Elder, Rich, and Tooele Counties in the northern third of Utah. Elevations range from about 4,200 feet at the surface of the Great Salt Lake to over 12,000 feet at the top of the Deep Creek Mountains. Some of the vegetation comniunity types include: a limited acreage in the spruce-fir type; the aspen community type; the mountainbrush type; the pinyon-juniper type; the juniper type; the sagebrush-grass type; the salt desert shrub type; and the cheatgrass type. In our District, most of the cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) type is located in what was or is the salt-desert shrub community type. Unfortunately, in some parts of the Pony Express Resource Area, cheatgrass population is becoming more dense in the sagebrush-grass community type and the juniper community type. Consequently, its presence is becoming a factor in any vegetation management decision process. However, my task today is to discuss the resource impacts of cheatgrass and wildfires on the public lands and livestock grazing in our District. In the last 10 or so years nearly 500,000 acres have burned in our District. Most of this acreage has been in cheatgrass wildfires. These are Paper presented at the Symposium on Ecology, Management, and Restoration of Intermountain Annual Rangelands, Boise, ID, May 16-22, 1992. Thomas C. Roberts, Jr. is a Range Conservationist for the Pony Express Resource Area, Salt Lake District Office, Bureau of Land Management, Salt Lake City, UT 84119. 167 crews of both the Forest Service and BLM were involved. The rehabilitation work took the commitment of two BLM Districts and the State Office. The District has also had a couple of other fires in the edge of the juniper type that further extended into that community. One of them, believed to have been started by a motorcycle, was a fire that burned over 1,100 acres in August, 1986. This fire was assisted by the slope of the west side of the Onaqui Mountains. Due to the slope and community type involved, little suppression action was taken. However, a few years after the fire, the area is doing well with a str ong population ofbluebunch wheatgrass and Indian ricegrass. Because of the distance from water, the area was grazed very little by domestic livestock, and consequently there was little impact upon any human use of the area. The area now receives use by deer and wild horses. fuel load and diversity reflected it. When the fire occurred we were able to determine that the area would need only rest to return to better than prefire productivity. This assessment was confirmed in the clipping studies that showed there to be an increase in productivity of 257 percent, from an equivalent of740 pounds to the acre to 2,640 pounds to the acre in one allotment and an increase from 680 pounds to the acre to 770 pounds to the acre in the other allotment. Because of the good condition on this piece of rangeland, the only loss was some nonuse for a couple of seasons. The gentle topography and good rootmasses probably held any soil losses to a minimum. These two fires may also illustrate the difference in postfire measures needed for sites that are in different conditions; the Rabbit Creek site needed no rehabiltitation work, while the burn in the South Woodruff area did need some work. As described by A. C. Hull (1965), the fire frequency is less in a community type with a low frequency of cheatgrass, and our experience in Rich County, with less cheatgrass than the rest of the District, confirms his statement. The major amount of the rest of the acreage that has been burned in the District over the past decade has been in the sagebrush-grass community type (with a sizable cheatgrass component) or in what had historically been the salt-desert shrub type gone to cheatgrass. A notable exception would be a fire that included a crested wheatgrass seeding while burning through the sagebrush-grass and salt-desert shrub types near the Tooele-Juab County line. This fire happened in July with high temperatures, high winds, and low relative humidities. In total, about 7,000 acres burned in the Richfield and Salt Lake Districts. Much of the acreage was reseeded with a mix of grasses, a few forbs, and a small amount of fourwing saltbush. The seeding took place in January and February and, except for fourwing saltbush, was fairly successful. This fire was beneficial to us in that it cleaned up a 20year-old chaining of trees and shrubs that were reinvading. It also illustrated that contrary to what some people may believe, a crested wheatgrass seeding can burn. The livestock forage impact of this fire was some displaced livestock grazing use. We were fortunate in our District that the amount of acreage was only about 1,500 acres, and the grazing use was transferred elsewhere in one allotment, while in the other allotment there were 2 years nonuse. This burn also illustrates that the more conservatively stocked and better condition an area is in prior to a fire, the better it will be after the fire. The fire encompassed two allotments, one that had been conservatively stocked under a cooperative Allotment Management Plan with the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and one operator, the other allotment with 10 operators, all with their own management goals. The area was in the transitional range for mule deer from the Sheeprock Mountains and probably rejuvenated some of the grass plants that had been getting rank. Some of the sagebrush plants are returning to the scene. For both native and domestic ungulates, the net result of the fire 6 years ago appears to be positive. However, this had been an expensive fire, both while it was happening and during the rehabilitation stage. While it was burning for 3 days the fire CHEATGRASS FIRES The greatest impact of fire in our District has been in the cheatgrass type, or in what was probably the saltdesert shrub community type. The problem is best illustrated by the following fire statistics. The Initial Attack Analysis Model, a part of the National Fire Management Planning Analysis System, is a system to track statistics on wildfires. District fires for the last 10 years (1981-90) have been broken into four classes, defined by fuel type, in our case analagous to the following vegetation types; cheatgrass, sagebrush-grass, pinyon-juniper, and fires along the National Forest boundary, generally at higher elevations. These models show the average number of fires per year to be 26 in the cheatgrass type, 15 in the sagebrush-grass type, 16 in the pinyon-juniper type, and only eight at the higher elevation Forest boundary. The statistics can also be broken down by acreage per year. In 1981, there were 144 fires in the District burning nearly 34,000 acres. In 1982 there were 44 fires burning nearly 37,000 acres, and in 1983, 45 fires burned almost 275,000 acres. It would be an understatement to say that fire and fire rehabilitation took on a life of their own in 1983. The BLM acreage in that amount ofland burned required the reseeding of over 46,000 acres with nearly 500,000 pounds of seed. The additional District funds for this total project were over $800,000, requiring the efforts of a joint team consisting of personnel from the BLM State Office, the District and Area Offices, and the Soil Conservation Service. If the problems pertinent to cheatgrass had not been clear before, they were hammered home that year. The lack of dependability as a source of forage afforded by cheatgrass had always been a concern, but this was a solid demonstration. Using an estimated annual average productivity of 20 acres per animal unit month (AUM), the fires of that year caused the displacement of nearly 14,000 AUM's, affecting numerous ranching operations for two growing seasons. Another problem that we attempted to limit was the soil loss. Efforts included gulley plugs and bank stabilization work for an additional cost of $48,000. The soil losses were evident with estimates of up to 6 feet of gulley erosion and 6 inches of 168 sheet erosion taking place that fall. The problems affiliated with rehabilitation projects of this size include: the disruption of daily routines; the hiring of temporary help, who may or may not be familiar with the needs of the land and project; and the high secondary costs, like extra vehicles, related to the startup and maintenance of projects of this size and immediate nature. Also consider that this was during a period when we may have been a little less sophisticated in our demands and skills in rehabilitation efforts. I think that we have learned a lot since then, and hopefully not all that experience went for naught. That 1983 had a wet spring after a number of wet years and probably set us up for a bad fire year is now a moot point. That year, if nothing else, taught us that cheatgrass fires are expensive. If we use the average cost for fire suppression of $5.00 per acre and a minimal rehabilitation cost of$30.00 per acre for a total cost of$35.00 per acre, we can see that cost of these fires to the taxpayer is also significant. Unfortunately, not all of our rehabilitation efforts were successful, and even where they were, we are left with a vegetation type conversion that many people (and birds or animals) find less than optimal. I also believe that because of the aggressive nature of cheatgrass as a cool-season annual that it exacerbated any condition that may have been peripheral to causing the shrub dieoff that we had in the District a few years ago. Consequently, we have found the cheatgrass type or its invasion to be frustrating and challenging. Cheatgrass is an undependable forage source and is a fuel source for rangeland fires. These fires cause a loss of forage to the ranching community and wildlife most of us enjoy. Concomitant with that is the ultimate loss of diversity in the plant and animal communities that we administer. Add to this the risk of soil loss in an uncontrolled and unplanned fire situation in the precipitation belt where rehabilitation is difficult, and we have a much less than desirable condition. According to any common definition, the loss of diversity and soil would probably fit the term "desertification." Is there a ray of light at the end of the tunnel? Yes, I think that there is. We are gaining knowledge in our skirmishes with cheatgrass. Although, as we have heard this week and as we have seen in our District, it is moving out into other community types, I think that we are becoming more skilled in planning and implementing rehabilitation projects. We are also more cognizant of the potential problems that an aggressive annual plant can cause, and we are more willing to try new ideas. And we are seeing the natural revegetation by salt-desert shrubs (shadscale, Gardner saltbush, and winterfat) in some areas where we thought they had been eliminated. Examples are along the Pony Express Trail in the Resource Area and a railroad section that had burned clean in 1984 that have shadscale returning on them. We are also more willing to attempt to use a diversity of plant materials, native and exotic, in rehabilitating these burned-over areas. Although the use of exotics like forage kochia is debated in some circles, it should be maintained in the arsenal of plant material to be used in some conditions. I also feel encouraged with the emphasis that the cheatgrass and native rangeland restoration problem is receiving in the research arena, including the research effort that the BLM is making. CONCLUSIONS We have found that, in general, noncheatgrass burn areas are less likely to need rehabilitation and, depending on the prefire management and condition, may not need any rehabilitation. Consequently these fires are cheaper and often beneficial from a resource viewpoint. Whereas fires are expensive to suppress and rehabilitate, cheatgrass burn areas often have a lower rate of success in rehabilitation. In general, a 2-year, sometimes longer, period is required after a fire to allow the area to come back, eliminating the use of the area by domestic livestock. Cheatgrass fires tend to be self perpetuating, decreasing the period between fires. Cheatgrass fires also decrease flora and fauna diversity in a time when we as a populace are becoming more concerned with biological diversity. However, to reiterate, the future is not all that bleak; we are seeing an increased emphasis on the research and restoration of our native rangelands, and in some cases a natural revegetation with native salt-desert shrubs. There is also an increased awareness of the importance of our native rangelands from an overall resource viewpoint, not just their grazing capacity. In conclusion, I see a future that is interesting, challenging, and has the potential for great successes. REFERENCE Hull, A. C. 1965. Cheatgrass-a persistent homesteader. In: Proceedings, symposium on the management of cheatgrass on rangelands; 1965 July 27-30; Vale, OR. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management: 20-26. 169