EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Compared to more productive rangelands, both domestic livestock grazing impacts and grazing management strategies are poorly documented in the scientific literature for the Sonoran Desert. Although the literature, when viewed comprehensively, does document that livestock grazing can cause adverse impacts, it does not provide sufficient information regarding thresholds of grazing intensity that can enable one to distinguish between benign and damaging grazing intensities. The unique ecological characteristics of the Sonoran Desert require specific attention when considering development and implementation of a grazing management strategy. Current approaches to grazing in the Sonoran Desert mostly seem to follow the conceptual thinking underlying grazing management strategies developed and tested for ecosystems typically of higher productivity and of significantly different ecosystem dynamics. As a result, no currently described approach, including continuous grazing and each of the specialized grazing systems, is completely applicable to or appropriate for the Sonoran Desert ecosystem within their current formulations.
Source: Excerpt from The Impacts of Livestock Grazing in the Sonoran Desert: a Literature Review and Synthesis.
Reports and other documents about Sonoran Desert ecology, management, and conservation. Curated by the not-for-profit Altar Valley Conservation Alliance (AVCA) located outside Tucson, AZ.