- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When a hiker on a San Francisco Bay Area parkland unknowingly walked between a cow and her calf, the mother came over, knocked the hiker down and stepped on him. In another incident, a woman walking her dogs off leash was chased by cows. She slipped and sprained an ankle.
Such incidents, though rare, prompted UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) experts to write guidelines for people who hike, cycle or ride horses in natural areas where grazing cattle are used to manage the land. The...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Stately oak trees with blue-green leaves – known as blue oaks – are found in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada and coast range, and nowhere else on earth. They are valued for their beauty, wildlife habitat, shade and acorn production. Protecting the resource poses challenges since the vast majority of blue oak woodlands are part of privately held ranches where owners use the landscape to raise cattle for a living.
Researchers with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) have worked with landowners for decades to help them manage these oak woodlands in ways that balance the ranchers' economic needs with ecological considerations.
In the late 1990s, Tulare County...
- Author: Fadzayi Elizabeth Mashiri
Statements such as: "This year is the best (or worst) grass year of my adult life" or "We started seeing this weed on our property about 10 years ago and now it is all over" are commonly used to describe rangeland condition. Although such statements are most likely correct, what is lacking in most cases is rangeland monitoring data to support these statements.
What is rangeland monitoring? Rangeland monitoring is observing, collecting and analyzing data to document change over time and how these changes may relate to management and environmental factors such as climate and soil.
Landowners need monitoring programs...
- Author: Fadzayi Elizabeth Mashiri
"Drought and taxes have a lot in common. They are both facts of life that must be dealt with periodically, they are both pains in the neck, and they both carry serious consequences if we choose to ignore them." - Jeff Mosley, Extension Range Management Specialist, Montana State University, Bozeman.
The past few years, particularly this past growing season, have been very challenging for most producers due to drought. Drought is one of the problems where the question is not if it will happen, but when, how intense, how long it will last and how prepared are the producers?
As a result, producers over the years have developed strategies to cope with the inevitable effects of drought. Ranchers are tremendously...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
One of the worst rangeland weeds in the West is aptly named after a monster in Greek mythology that has writhing snakes instead of hair.
Medusahead, an unwelcome transplant from Europe, is anathema to the cattle living off rangeland grass. The weed's three-inch-long bristles poke and sometimes injure the animals' mouths and eyes. The weed is also low-quality forage for livestock. When medusahead takes over rangeland, it reduces the forage value by 80 percent.
When Fadzayi Mashiri, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Mariposa, Merced and Madera counties, was appointed in 2013, she became the first natural resources and rangeland expert to hold the position since the...
