Actions to enhance stream health show large impact
you’d f ind under rocks when you crawled around creeks when you were a kid,” Tate said. “The types of bugs and creepy crawlies present and absent tell us a lot about the biodiversity and health of a stream.” The team found no significant re- lat ionship among r ipar ian heal th, number of livestock and simple yes/ no answers on whether ranchers used fencing, herding or water and salt licks on hillsides to coax cattle from creeks. But the study found there was a sig- nificant correlation between riparian health and time spent implementing those tools. “It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it does take some effort,” Tate said. “When you put a salt lick on a hillside to attract cattle, for example, it’s going to lose its effective- ness if you don’t go back and refill it and move it to another hillsidewhen the grass around it is grazed. Cows cannot live by salt alone.” Tate said he is encouraged by the re- sults and the solutions they suggest. “We see a lot of win-wins,” he said. “Effective management opens up new forage opportunities and increases productivity. And when you have more useable land, you relieve pressure on ri- parian areas, which is good for the envi- ronment and for agriculture.” To help ranchers manage water quality on rangelands, UC has made a Ranch Water Quality Planning Guide
available through the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Publications Catalogue at anrcatalog.ucanr.edu; to f ind the guide, cl ick on Natural Resources, then Water. The guide is also available on the UC Rangelands website at rangelands.ucdavis.edu/ ranchwaterqualityplanning. Several associated instructional and educational videos are available on YouTube by searching for “UCCE Ranch Water Quality Planning Curriculum.” “These newresources provide awealth of contemporary information about wa- ter quality management on rangelands and grazed lands,” Tate said. He described the educational ma- terials as “the next evolution of the Ranch Water Quality Planning pro- gram, based upon the more than 30 years of research and education con- ducted by UC Cooperative Extension and partners.” Tate said the guide also provides re- sources and tools to plan and imple- ment Ranch Water Quality Planning workshops and field days for grazing livestock producers, agency staff and others interested in grazing manage- ment and water quality. For questions and more information, contact Tate at kwtate@ucdavis.edu, live- stock and natural resources farmadvisor Morgan Doran at mpdoran@ucanr.edu or watershed-management specalist David Lewis at djllewis@ucanr.edu.
With a little time and effort, rangeland managers can significantly improve the state’s riparian areas, according to rangeland ecologists at the University of California, Davis. Researchers found that when ranchers invest even one week a year in practices that keep cattle away from creeks—such as herding, fencing and providing sup- plemental nutrition and water—they could improve riparian health by as much as 53%. “The human factor is remarkably sig- nificant,” said Ken Tate, professor and UC Cooperative Extension specialist. “Common thinking is that effective- ness of various rangelandmanagement tools is site-specific and largely due to site factors, such as topography and plant communities. Some practices are better suited to certain ranches for these reasons.” But, he said, the new study suggests that “how you implement the tools might be the biggest factor in keeping rangelands productive and environ- mentally sustainable.” One-third of California—38 million acres—is rangeland, UC Davis said, with much of it mountainous and arid and managed for livestock production.
Grazing on rangeland feeds livestock and offers environmental benefits such as keeping invasive weeds in check, re- ducing risk and intensity of wildfires, and supporting habitat for certain ani- mals and plants found nowhere else in the world. But problems can arise, the univer- sity said, when cattle spend too much time near water, where manure can create water-quality risks for people downstream. That is especially true in California, where an estimated 80% of the state’s drinking and irrigation water is stored on or passes through rangeland. Overgrazing in riparian ar- eas also damages sensitive habitat and allows good forage on hillsides to go to waste, UC Davis said. Tate and his team studied 46 grazing units on ranches and national forests covering nearly 1 million acres of dry, rugged rangeland in east-central and northeasternCalifornia. With the ranch- ers’ help, they looked at the relationships among the number of livestock, mana- gerial effort and riparian health. Tomea- sure riparian health, researchers looked for tiny aquatic bugs, animals and insects known as benthic macroinvertebrates. “We col lected the kind of things
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December 2, 2020 Ag Alert 15
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