Grassland researchers increasingly recognize that fire and herbivory are essential functions in healthy grassland ecosystems and are using grazing and prescribed fire on public reserves to increase plant diversity, improve grassland productivity, and control encroachment of woody plants, especially eastern redcedar. However, prescribed fire in particular has not been widely adopted as a tool by private landowners. Fire suppression and prescribed fire are two technologies which present different and competing risks to grassland landowners making management decisions. We explore landowner perceptions of risk associated with eastern redcedar and deliberate use of fire in the Grand River Grasslands of southwest Iowa and Northwestern Missouri. We find that although aerial image data on eastern redcedar over the last 30 years in this region reveal significant woody plant encroachment on grasslands, conceptual mapping of landowner beliefs and in person interviews reveal that the risks associated with prescribed fire seem to outweigh perceived risks associated with loss of forage and grassland habitats.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.