Natural Rhythms

 

Blame

Natural Rhythms

The Condition of Sustainability

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

             

If you drive around with a rattlesnake in the cab of your pickup, you’d at least better know where he is.

            Anonymous

            Blame

            There would be those in this day and time that would suggest the foregoing was sexist.

            It seems that Anonymous took the simple liberty of suggesting the snake was a he rather than being more specific and qualifying the serpent as to a particular sex. As such, he has put himself in a position of being judged not by the message he was trying to describe, but by the language he inadvertently used. Like so many common folks he is likely going to be categorized with derision and blame.

Sad but true these are times that have no boundaries in terms of blame. Blame has long been a human pastime and it is only getting worse.

So, it is with essentially all individual managers of natural resources.

While the committees of onlookers sit in judgment, the manager is in the arena trying to exist and manage his margins. The rancher, the modern-day turf manager, is one of the primary targets. In the West, he is ruled by a myriad of overseers and judges and that is even before his product, American beef, is judged by the consumer.

From the time that live product leaves his hands until it is cooked and placed on the table, the eyes, the controls, and the criticism of the system only get more complicated and onerous. In order to survive, though, the product has to be a wonderful thing. If it wasn’t, the external forces would have halted the process long ago.

It is a tribute to the quality and the natural gift of this wondrous protein that has assured this category’s survival.

The Condition of Sustainability

There have been all kinds of references to sustainability over the past several years.

It has become a spectator sport to discuss and take a position on this topic. Legions of folks are getting involved whether they understand the implications or not. In a previous article, the suggestion that ranches that survive under one ownership flag for 137 years are the real models of sustainability. Few should deny such a point, but the more relative point should be what are the conditions that need to be managed in the federal West when so many fingers are trying to manage the outcome.

Let’s start by saying the West is managed by a dominant monograzing complex whereas the evolution of the resource evolved under a complexity of grazing and forage conversion. Together, this should be categorized under the general theme of hoof, or better yet, ungulate action.

Along with that influence, grasslands evolved under conditions of fire, drought, wind, seasonal rains, and rest from the impact of heavy hoof action followed by broad regeneration and growth. Of course, the caveat of periodic should be inserted before every such influence.

In combination, these natural conditions set the evolutionary path toward grasslands in every corner of the world. The stimuli of conditions of growth that influenced that evolutionary trend or outcome, however, can alter the climax condition if any one is removed or modified.

Nearly universally, that outcome is diminished production across the entire system.

Natural Rhythms

Many people have said it variously, but Burke Teichert’s description always rings true. Nature abhors a vacuum and … will fill it.

In other words, the loss of one species will likely result in the appearance of something else that will invariably not be as productive as the original space holder. In the pursuit of sustainability, that is a negative and the highest efforts should be made to avoid the outcome.

The tools for success are as simplistic as they are complicated to bring to bear.

In the case of our operation, fire is welcome only under specific conditions. In short, those must be cool season applications, limited to areas whereby decadence is obvious and or barren ground is declining by measured value, or where there is enough fuel to carry fire into woody plant regimes.

Drought is an uncontrolled feature of the system. It, like seasonal rain and wind, is beyond our ability to control, but it is a necessary feature of grassland sustainability. The belief remains that drought can be largely accommodated if the system is built to address this natural and ongoing condition of our upper Chihuahuan grasslands. It has always been a factor and it will remain a main feature of turf management.

It is a fact of life.

Teichert has been a key moderator of our thinking about rest periods. As our whole herd movement began, the algorithm for pasture tenure was built around the idea of a full year’s rest between cattle installments. In the pickup one morning, Burke asked me what our rest periods were, and the full year rest concept was divulged. There was a long pause.

I don’t think that is long enough.

After the initial shock, the program is being pursued on an extended tenure. It hasn’t been without trepidation, but there is a welcome caveat of sorts. Full rest period is the critical factor. If conditions require, it is always better to overstay the use period than to shorten the rest period especially if the initial use periods coincide with dormancy.

Finally, the matter of livestock water is all important.

Our system (with modification and enhancements started in 2008) is built around the provision of 35 gallons of water per cow unit day during the critical period of May through July. That is a lot of water when the entire herd is located in a single pasture. That parameter is conditional for the management of full rotation. If the system can’t provide that, rotation cannot be sustained. That is why the majority of desert grassland operations cannot rotate cattle successfully.

Implicit in that is … the definition of sustainability.

 

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.