Could Cattle Be a Weapon Against Raging Wildfires?

With the production of dairy and beef, cows play a critical role in feeding the nation. But could this bovine backbone of the food pyramid assist in protecting the country, too?

With recent wildfires raging in states like California, Colorado, and Oregon, and ravaging millions of acres—in some cases decimating entire towns, climate change and wildfire prevention have never been more at the forefront of the national consciousness.

Firefighters have techniques to prevent fires from sparking and to contain them significantly enough so they can be quelled, but could a grazing cow’s appetite help prevent forest fires? That’s the essence of the question researchers at the University of California Cooperative Extension set out to answer. More specifically: How much fine fuel—grasses and other plants that are known to kindle fires—do cattle consume, and how do their feeding habits affect wildfire behavior?

The study, yet to be published, found that in 2017 about 1.8 million beef cattle grazed California’s rangelands—that included oak woodlands, grasslands, and shrublands. Beef cows were the most abundant class of beef cattle, with 677,000 on range in the state, far outnumbering steers, heifers, and bulls.

Beef cattle grazed in every county in California, except for San Francisco. The animals consumed 11.6 billion pounds of fine fuel in 2017, and according to the researchers’ analysis—which was based on county crop reports, Agricultural Census data, and UC Cooperative Extension data—cattle consumed vegetation across about 19.4 million acres of rangeland, which was mostly owned privately. Some grazing did, however, occur on federally-owned property and other public lands as well, especially in mountain and desert regions of the Golden State. The average amount of fuel consumed across grazed rangelands in the state was 596 pounds for every acre.

The study concluded that without cattle grazing wildfires could greatly worsen.

“Without grazing we would have hundreds to thousands of additional pounds/acre of fine fuels on the landscape, potentially leading to larger and more severe fires,” an author of the study wrote in a blog post on the UCCE website late last month.

Still, the researchers caution that grazing alone isn’t the answer to reducing wildfire hazards.

“Widespread and severe wildfires are predicted to increase over time in California,” the blog post continued. “This ‘new reality’ requires that we take advantage of all the tools in our management toolbox to protect public safety while meeting our broader rangeland management objectives…However, there are opportunities to improve fire safety in California by grazing rangelands that are not currently being grazed or even by increasing grazing intensity on very lightly grazed areas.”

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