Ranchers repeatedly said that the Soda Fire would not have been so large had they been allowed to have their cattle graze more of the grasses that had grown thick with spring rains.
“We’ll never stop all wildfires, but if we can utilize that grass before it becomes fuel, then we can stop those fires before they get catastrophic,” said Wyatt Prescott, executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association. “That’s why we say graze it, don’t blaze it.”
Now ranchers will have to wait years to return their herds to the public land, and sage grouse might have to wait decades before the sagebrush ecosystem is recovered.
But ranchers consistently overstate the potential to stop wildfires with more grazing, Bureau of Land Management leaders insist. They and firefighters said that extreme winds and other weather factors overwhelmed the fuel conditions on the 279,000-acre Soda Fire. Studies conducted by the University of Idaho and others support the BLM’s argument, most notably studies done after the 2007 Murphy Springs Fire that burned more than 600,000 acres.
The multiagency study team, headed by Karen Launchbaugh, of the
University of Idaho, said the extreme conditions on that fire, similar
to the Soda Fire, overwhelmed all else. “The team found that much
of the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex burned under extreme fuel and
weather conditions that likely overshadowed livestock grazing as a
factor influencing fire extent and fuel consumption in many areas where
these fires burned,” the team’s report said...more
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