The East Wildlife Foundation has a mission of supporting wildlife conservation and the other public benefits of ranching and private land stewardship. This mission is achieved through research, education, and outreach. We have begun a research project that will evaluate continuous versus rotational grazing at 2 different stocking rates. This project will be conducted on approximately 18,000 acres. The area designated has been grazed with cattle for over a century. After the droughts of 2011, 2012, and 2013 this property presented available forage values as low as 5 lbs/ac. The property was destocked in March of 2014 and after the first growing season, in late June 2014, forage availability values ranged from 250-400 lbs/ac. This project will evalaute the changes in vegetation by conducting 230 permanent transects that evaluate vegetation diversity and structure. Grazing intensity will be evaluated by placing 10 5x5'-exclosures along with a paired point per pasture (a total of 80). Furthermore, 6 2-acre grazing exclosures will be placed to evaluate the response of vegetation with the removal of grazing. We have established a grid of 19 double rain gauges in order to collect information uniformly thoughout the research area. The initial phase of this project has been completed. The area was destocked in order to allow for recovery of the vegetation, pretreatment data has been collected, and the monitoring methodology has been established. Because of the low forage availability values, grazing on this project will not commence until the spring of 2016.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.