Nevada's meadows provide juvenile sage-grouse with protein-rich forbs, especially during low precipitation years. Livestock and wild horses favor meadows over uplands during hot summer months for water, forage, and thermoregulation. Proper functioning condition of meadows ensures ground water availability to forbs and erosion resilience under grazing and high flow events. Overgrazing often leads to decreased meadow functioning condition. Light to moderate grazing can improve habitat conditions for sage-grouse, promoting young, nutrient rich, leader growth. Successful grazing management in riparian areas leverage tools that allow recovery after grazing. There are many tools in the livestock management toolbox. There are currently no effective tools for managing wild horses. This study will examine effects of horse and livestock grazing on vegetation and hydrologic response variables with regard to prevailing guidelines for sage-grouse late-brood rearing habitat in meadows. The goal is to identify grazing patterns leading to resilient or degraded lentic riparian habitats. Draft Inventory and Monitoring in combination with Designated Monitoring Area Methods for Lentic Wetland Areas will be modified and applied. Sage-grouse habitat indicators will be assessed using methods established in the Sage-grouse Habitat Assessment Framework. Horse and livestock grazing activity captured year-round by automatic cameras will document actual use. Such data are needed to move the wild horse management conversation beyond its current impasse and develop management concepts for livestock and wild horse use leading to successful management of lentic riparian resource values and habitat conditions for sage-grouse. To date, no systematic study of this type has occurred across Nevada's riparian meadows.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.