Desertification, Climate Change/Global Warming

Long before there was widespread scientific and public awareness of the dire effects of climate change and global warming processes on the planet, ecologists understood the serious adverse effects to arid landscapes of livestock grazing and trampling disturbance in causing desertification. Desertification processes include the adverse and interacting effects of depletion of protective plant and soil cover, accelerated soil erosion, impacts to drainage networks and riparian areas, and other deleterious effects. All of these factors combine to make landscapes hotter, drier and thus more desertified. Such desertification has greatly impacted grazed landscapes in Asia, the Middle East and other arid areas over millennia. Now, in only 150 years or so, the catastrophic effects of grazing on arid western North American lands have caused the very same effects through these interacting processes that promote desertified and hotter and drier lands with accompanying species losses and reductions in biodiversity. See Sheridan CEQ 191, Dregne 1986, Steineld et al. 2006.

Such desertification often represents irreversible losses in soils, waters, native species and biodiversity. Agencies knowingly allowing harmful desertification to occur, and taking only minimal steps to stop harm and loss are allowing undue degradation of the public lands to occur.

Livestock grazing and other disturbance-facilitated desertification and global warming processes should be a consideration in all agency actions. This is especially the case with livestock grazing, any vegetation “treatment” such as logging or thinning on arid lands, and including prescribed burns and herbicide application of/to native woody vegetation, as is currently being proposed to deforest juniper, pinyon and other arid forest lands. Global warming should be among the existing and reasonably foreseeable environmental effects that agencies always seriously examine in consideration of effects of management actions, as well as cumulative effects of processes relate to shrubsteppe-dependent species.

Now with heightened scientific concern about these processes, grazing, treatment and other agency actions in arid public lands require preparation of an EIS to examine adverse effects.

This EIS must also consider how ecosystem disturbance/disruption associated with grazing livestock in arid lands, along with the greenhouse gases released by livestock, will promote climate change and global warming processes.

This EIS must analyze the ecological and climate change Footprint of:

  • Grazing, livestock facilities, road building linked to grazing activities, and management actions and other associated activities on all affected lands. A full inventory and analysis of all current grazing, facilities and management disturbance effects in promoting climate change must be provided.
  • Grazing, facilities and other associated activities part of, or foreseeably associated with, the livestock scheme.
  • Grazing and other activities linked to the livestock grazing operation here (including such effects as feeding hay on private lands) and the total footprint of he livestock operation.
  • Effects of existing and foreseeable vegetation treatment (forage, fuels, “wildlife”), mining, energy and other projects in promoting site drying and desertification ad losses in biodiversity, as well as in intensifying and amplifying grazing disturbance effects. In considering climate change, the cumulative impacts are likely (or at least more likely) to be very significant.

In addition, agencies may not permit actions that would take or jeopardize listed or candidate T&E species. Agencies must also manage habitats for state and Federal sensitive species to prevent the need for Listing and to maintain viable populations. Listed species habitats must be managed to prevent any further losses and degradation – especially as many imperiled species now are facing threats that will be amplified by climate change. For example, grazing watersheds will promote erosion and sedimentation, which will add to effects of climate change temperature increases on salmonids in the river systems. Grazing will reduce capture and slow release of waters in the springs and streams of the affected lands, resulting in reduced perennial flows – and such effects will be amplified by reduced winter snowpack and rapid runoff due to climate change.

Examining effects of climate change, including of agency actions promoting climate change, on sensitive and rare or imperiled species is critical to understanding the scale and severity of effects of an agency undertaking on habitats. This is critical to understanding the effects on populations and population viability over the short, mid and long-term.

A federal court has recently held that FWS, a federal agency, must consider climate change in estimating effects of a water project on the delta smelt.

Such analysis must be conducted to ensure compliance with sensitive species policies, MIS species concerns, and ESA and other regulations and policies, as well as state policies related to species protection, water quality, and climate change. Agencies clearly have the authority not to authorize actions that would exacerbate existing environmental conditions, just as they have authority to take actions to mitigate (help compensate for) the effects of climate change. A recent GAO report on climate change noted this.

Further, a recent US Forest Service report, though obviously bland and politically muzzled to a large extent, warns that global warming now makes the outcomes of various land disturbances LESS predictable. See USDA USFS 2008 “Assessment of Status and trends of Forest and Rangeland Resources” 15 Key Findings.

Land management agency actions not only contribute to global warming but also can help offset its impacts. A full range of actions, and alternatives, to mitigate climate change effects, including on important and sensitive/imperiled species, must be analyzed here. Such alternatives include: permanent closure of lands currently being grazed to livestock grazing, significant reductions in disturbance across arid lands, a full range of passive restoration actions such as removal of harmful facilities or removal of livestock disturbance from remaining better condition habitats. We stress that the full environmental Footprint of current and foreseeable grazing disturbance, as well as other disturbances or uses of that may affect habitats or climate change processes, must be provided.

Actions to be considered also include: Removal of grazing from the most change-sensitive areas, removal from areas “at risk” of accelerated cheatgrass or other wed invasions, removal of grazing from all potential sage-grouse (or other species of significant conservation concern) habitats currently grazed, removal of grazing from all sage-grouse habitats in the area, restoration of natural spring flows in areas where existing livestock facility projects may have diverted or reduced water availability, and other actions all must be examined as part of any analysis.

Many waters in the interior West, Great Basin, interior Columbia Basin, and Columbia Basin already do not support, or are on the verge of not supporting salmonids, other cold-water biota, or even warm water biota during the summer. Streams are becoming increasingly intermittent due to chronic livestock-caused degradation and desertification, as well as climate change. Climate change will promote not only rapid and compressed runoff with reduced infiltration, but also warmer water temperatures, and drier or less predictable climate patterns in many areas of the Wet. The majority of precipitation will switch from snow to rain. This means diminished flows earlier in the summer and much warmer water. This was explained in detail in scientific presentations at the Columbia Basin inter-agency climate change meeting in Boise, ID in June 2008. See:

Diminished water flows means livestock will concentrate more on remaining wetted areas of streams, springs, and seeps - with serious adverse effects – such as effects of concentrated trampling.

Diminished water flows means that all possible care must be taken across the watershed –including the large upland areas – to retain water on-site. Grazing disturbance simplifies community structure. It removes protective shading, cooling and soil-stabilizing vegetation and microbiotic crusts. It promotes site hating and drying = desertification processes. It is typically accompanied by extensive road networks that creep outward across the landscape in association with facilities and management activities.

Diminished flows means the effects of livestock water developments that alter, reduce, diminish or altogether cut off natural flows at springs will be even more extreme. Mesic and wetted riparian areas and local water tables will shrink even more

Reliance on any livestock facilities dependent on such flows and foreseeably declining aquifer levels will be even more uncertain.

The need for full consideration of aquifer characteristics and demands to understand the effects of any existing, proposed or foreseeable livestock developments will be even more important.

The effects of grazing-promoted rapid runoff and site drying on water infiltration and aquifer recharge must also be examined.

The interacting effects of heavy bank trampling, vegetation removal, and other livestock-concentration effects on remaining wetted areas of drainages, as well as increasingly intermittent and ephemeral waters, will exacerbate adverse effects. This may lead to loss of remaining perennial flows. See Sada et al. 2001, describing such effects of livestock trampling capping surface flows at springs. In streams, bank erosion, head-cutting and gullying will further reduce available surface waters.

Plus, in arid landscapes, livestock consumption of water may place a significant demand on limited surface waters such as upland springs and seeps. Cattle drink 10 to as much as 30 gallons of water and day. They also excrete large amounts of waste, which often ends up polluting surface waters and may even infiltrate aquifers. Given the already very scarce surface waters in many portions of this landscape, this alone could reduce flows critical to native wildlife species, aquatic biota, etc.

Necessary flow, infiltration, and other measurements must be conducted over all periods of the year to determine/predict if perennial or sustainable flows will exist throughout the life of the grazing, facility or other action.

National Marine Fisheries Service talks often about "good" and "bad" Pacific Ocean conditions for anadromous salmonids (e.g., El Nino, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (10 year period was the norm). As the oceans change with climate change, more bad oceans will occur more frequently. Concurrent with poor ocean conditions due to a loss of upwelling and food for growing salmon and steelhead is also a weather pattern that leads to many areas of the Interior West with reduced snow-packs and looking at much longer growing seasons, more rain and long-term drought. Effects on aquatic biota will be significant.

Grazing reduces or eliminates the cooling shade of riparian vegetation, and reduces vegetation to protect watersheds under predicted more violent and extreme runoff and other weather events. The use and reuse of irrigation water to grow hay for cattle (i.e. diversions) results in even warmer than natural water temperatures.

Especially with the added stressor of grazing, with climate changes/shifts in species composition of riparian areas to often less productive, and non-native species, will be exacerbated.

Effects on sagebrush and arid-forest-dependent biota will e likewise severe – if agencies stay on their current course and do not act to halt or sufficiently mitigate grazing disturbances and other activities that promote desertification and climate change processes.

For sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, loggerhead shrike, rare reptiles other sagebrush biota - this means doom as well. Vegetation zones will move upward in elevation, as will weeds like cheatgrass – especially with continued livestock grazing disturbances.

With global warming, recovery times of sagebrush and arid forest communities (if recovery is possible at all) from disturbance such as grazing will take even longer. See USDI BLM Pellant Testimony 2007. Risk of irreversible effects of grazing disturbance in less resilient arid lands – such as accelerated wild land weed invasions – will become eve greater.

Lower elevation sites are already highly vulnerable to cheatgrass and other weed invasion especially with livestock grazing and trampling disturbance of soils and microbiotic crusts. They also have lower resilience to disturbance.

As they become hotter and drier, sagebrush and other arid communities will become more prone to fire and cheatgrass. Recovery times of sagebrush communities (if recovery is possible at all) from disturbance will take longer. See Pellant Testimony 007.

Rainfall patterns are expected to be a further boon to cheatgrass See Pellant 2007 testimony.

Any restoration efforts - once disturbance (grazing, fire, a combination) has led to significant cheatgrass/medusahead or other weed dominance – will be much more difficult in lower moisture regimes, and landscapes faced with increasingly unpredictable weather events, more frequent droughts, etc.

Alternative Use of Public Lands Must Be Considered to the Maximum Extent Possible: habitat and Carbon Sequestration

A recent excellent summary of the value of un-grazed wildlands for carbon sequestration is found at: Post is attached to these comments).

Alternatives in this process must examine use of the federal lands for sage grouse and other shrubsteppe species wildlife and rare plant habitat restoration, and carbon sequestration.

Grazing and Cheatgrass/Fire

Increasing desperation by agencies to justify arid lands grazing (often for political reasons), now grasps at the straw of claiming livestock reduce fuel loads. Any reliance in stocking public lands based on livestock consumption of cheatgrass or other weeds, or for reductions of any fuel loads, is folly. It violates federal regulations that require AUMs be based on sustainable perennial forage, not the vagaries of wildly fluctuating annuals. Plus, removal of vegetation to levels necessary to “control” a fire is not sustainable.

We certainly hope that this process does not fall victim to the current livestock industry myth that grazing in a changing climate is “needed” to control weeds. Recent studies so that grazing does not effectively control cheatgrass setting seed. See Hempy-Mayer and Pyke 2008. Any grazing event severe enough to “control” cheatgrass will only prime new and expanded sites for cheatgrass and other weed, including invasive mustards, medusahead, bulbous bluegrass, bur buttercup and the like). Plus such intensive grazing will differentially impact the more palatable remaining native species that are critical to persistence of native wildlife species in the area. In the end, such severe grazing disturbance will only increase wildfire likelihood in this landscape, and cut further into remaining habitats for important, sensitive and imperiled species. See Whisenant 1991, Billings (1994)

Further, news articles (Idaho Statesman pasted below) show that cheatgrass (and likely other weeds fostered by grazing or aggressive “treatment” disturbances) will become even less palatable as climate change progresses. So what appears in many current decisions to be a policy of Graze No Matter What the Consequences Because There Will Be at Least Be Cheatgrass for Livestock to Eat has no validity.

Additional Weed, Desertification, Climate Change, Global Warming Concerns

Agencies refuse to act based on science. It is time to act on science, and not the delusions of “renewable” use spun by the livestock industry and enablers in various Land rant Range Departments – who ignore ecological principles and studies (see for example Leischner 1994) in efforts to justify continued livestock damage to western arid lands.

As part of ALL Rangeland Analyses and Grazing Decision processes, and any “treatment” proposals, agencies must provide data and analysis that establishes a clear baseline of weed infestation and risk of expansion, desertification and global warming processes already occurring in the affected landscape. A full range of alternatives to minimize such processes and adverse effects must be undertaken – especially with focus on passive restoration actions, and active removal of facilities and other sources of watershed disturbance and de-stabilization. Only then can Integrated Weed and other management and most effective treatment occur.

Maintaining and recovering microbiotic crusts – a key front line of defense against invasive species – should be a primary component of all grazing analyses and decision-making. To achieve this, rest or removal of livestock disturbance, as well as crust-specific measurable standards of upland trampling-specific damage/disturbance should be Keystones of livestock grazing decisions and other decisions that involve arid lands. Full and adequate baseline surveys of microbiotic crusts across all affected lands must be conducted, measurements and analysis of effects of current and foreseeable grazing and other disturbances on crusts must be provided. Where are “old growth” crusts present? How long will crust community take following disturbance if grazing is significantly reduced or if grazing disturbance does not occur/is eliminated, or if lands are “treated”? What are the cumulative effects of grazing disturbance and any “treatment” disturbance?

Even agriculture/range science has long recognized the critical role of microbiotic crusts, and their susceptibility to grazing destruction or disturbance. See, for example: See also Belnap et al. 2001,USDI BLM Technical Bulletin.

Unfortunately, most agency analyses that we review downplay, or ignore, serious data collection and analysis related to these key components of arid lands ecosystems. This appears to be done so that the agency project of the moment (be it authorizing high numbers of cattle or burning or applying herbicide to trees/shrubs) can be moved forward with minimal consideration of adverse environmental consequences and serious risks of such disturbances.

Recent studies in the Mojave and the Chinese deserts are now revealing the importance of intact microbiotic rusts in sequestering carbon. See Wohlfarhrt et al. 2008, Ertz 2008. Recent studies in Washington State show the key role of microbiotic crust recovery in reducing cheatgrass following fire disturbance. This shows the adverse effects of livestock disturbance to crust recovery. See Ponzetti et al. 2007. See also Deines et al. 2007, and Rosentreter t al. 2007 describing the diversity of microbiotic crusts that are fragile and critical components of arid lands especially shrubsteppe and pinyon-juniper and those that extend into higher elevation sites.