Oil and gas activities, particularly road and drilling pad site construction, impact large acreages of native rangeland across the country. These activities destroy, fragment, and introduce invasive species into native rangelands. Many landowners attempt to restore historic wells pad sites to native vegetation, often with varying results. To test the ability of a locally adapted native seed mix made up of grasses, forbs, and legumes we attempted to restore 4 former oil and gas well pad sites to their historic grassland state. Adding to the complexity of the restoration process, these pads were located within large grazing units making it unfeasible to exclude grazing. We evaluated the ability of the native seed mix to establish and persist, and the effects of grazing by cattle the on the restored sites for 3 years after planting. By 7 months post seeding we were able to establish ?0.5 seeded native plants per 0.25 m2. Cattle grazing had little effect on the density of seeded species that established. Cattle grazing did have minor effects on species composition; however these effects are not likely to create any long term effects on species composition. These results are promising to landowners attempting to perform native grassland restoration on sites impacted by oil and gas activities in South Texas.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.