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Large-scale conversion of western US rangelands from a diverse, healthy, perennial plant-dominated ecosystem such as the lower-elevation Basin and Wyoming big sagebrush rangelands to invasive annual grasses, particularly cheatgrass and medusahead has increased wildfire frequency and size, loss of soil structure, increased soil erosion, and reduced watershed function, biological diversity and shortened fire return intervals. Experiments were conducted at four semiarid rangeland locations in Idaho (1), Wyoming (1), and Utah (2) addressing seedling establishment and plant persistence of 14 perennial cool-season grass species in cheatgrass dominated environments. Establishment of the improved native grasses, bottlebrush squirreltail, bluebunch, slender, and Snake River wheatgrasses, across locations were similar in plants m-2 to crested and Siberian wheatgrasses.�� Only western wheatgrass had significantly fewer plants m-2 than crested and Siberian wheatgrass.� Seedling density of native grass cultivars similar to Hycrest II crested and Vavilov II Siberian wheatgrasses were bottlebrush squirreltail (cv. Toe Jam Creek and Fish creek),� bluebunch wheatgrass (cv. P_7 and Goldar), slender wheatgrass (cv. FirstStrike, Revenue, and San Luis), Snake River wheatgrass (cv. Secar and Discovery), basin wildrye (cv. Trailhead II, Trailhead, and Continental), Thickspike wheatgrass (cv. Bannock, Sodar, Schwendimar, and Bannock II), and Indian ricegrass (cv. White River and Rimrock).��Native grasses similar to crested wheatgrass in plant density after 5 years were western wheatgrass, Snake River wheatgrass, and thickspike wheatgrass.� Rhizomatous species western wheatgrass and thickespike wheatgrass increased in plant density over time.� From this data, there appears to adequate plant denisty in native grasses to establish and compete with cheatgrass.