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Practitioners� views should be made public and entered into land-management discussions. When those views contrast, wholly or partly, with the best science there is an understandable reluctance to discuss the contrast for fear of inhibiting further practitioner contributions. Silence, however, simply promulgates error or an incomplete representation of an issue�doing no good for science or practitioner. With that understanding, we here respond to a view published in the subject technical reference (pages 58-59). The view is expressed by the managers of a ranch on the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, 2743-m (9000-ft) elevation, that it is desirable to fall graze riparian pastures. �They offer as evidence an on-ranch, 1 May, photographic comparison of two pastures, one grazed with 1000 pair for 30 days the preceding fall and the other rested. The photos show the grazed pasture green and growing while the rested pasture is brown and dormant. Early spring green-up may benefit grazing but it is not desirable for water-conservation. Two significant threats to water availability around the world are ground-water depletion as documented by NASA�s 15-year GRACE mission, and loss of streamflow resulting from loss of mountain snow and ice as documented by numerous studies on multiple continents. Those world-wide shortages are true also of the lower Rio Grande River Basin encompassing the cities of Albuquerque, NM, and El Paso, TX, and the substantial food-producing Basin farmland. The Basin needs water. Dobrowolski and Engle recently observed that ��rangelands are valued increasingly for capture of surface and subsurface water leading to storage.� Fall grazing mountain riparian areas hinders capture and storage of water by removing vegetation that would (1) slow spring runoff, (2) keep water-containing soil cold, and (3) add water-storing soil organic matter. Better arrangements are needed for compensating upstream landowners for water conservation benefitting downstream users.