Taking Stock of Indian Ranching
Local Ecology: Arid Lands and Cattle

Range Land and Cattle Production

     Cattle, unlike sheep, primarily forage on grasses. Cattle are relatively hardy animals and they can process a wide variety of plants, converting it to beef. When the Spanish first arrived, California’s valleys were largely perennial bunchgrasses and herbs. California Indians had used fire ecology, regularly burning much of the land, producing a landscape of large old trees with open, park-like areas between them. This produced excellent forage for deer and other important wildlife in the indigenous diet, and was the basis for a very good cattle pasture. The most important plants for cattle production were Stipa, Poa, Koeleria, and Melica species. Stipa species were needlegrasses and were very useful as forage but had the disadvantage of producing awns. Poa species were bluegrass bunchgrasses, which were highly palatable and nutritious, had no awns, and were green most of the summer and even good when dried. Other useful plants included fescues and oat grasses (Danthonia spp.). The Spanish introduced other species useful in cattle production: wild oats (Avena fatus), black mustard (Brassica nigra), and bur clover (Medicago Hispida). These and the native grasses were the staple of the open range.

Local Landscapes, Wildlife, and Cattle

Rabbit Brush looks pretty, but is not a good forage plant.
It is very fire tolerant and hard to control; it increases on degraded land.

     Cattle, if unmonitored, can have serious effects on the environment. Early cattle ranching in California frequently overstocked the range, and the combination of overgrazing, periodic droughts, and farms’ plowing practices damaged the native grasses, which were adapted well to periodic burning but not heavy grazing or plowing. Under such stress, non-native plants began to invade California’s range. Most of the invasive weeds were not palatable or nutritious, such as thistles and cheatgrass, which remain environmental problems to this day. In a 1904 survey of ranchers, 58% said the grass situation was getting worse. By 1936, only 36% of the plants on grazed land were palatable and nutritious, compared to 95% on ungrazed land. A number of factors contributed to early ranchers’ mismanagement of the range. First, land tenure was extremely unstable. Most ranchers grazed their cattle on common pastures and the governmental policy on grazing continuously changed. Second, there was actually an incentive to overgraze the land, since settlers would not find land in poor quality attractive. Finally, many ranchers were unfamiliar with the environment (particularly the Spanish at first, and later immigrants from the East) and so did not understand the grasses’ limitations and the effects of periodic drought. Thus, for quite some time the range was overgrazed and left largely unmonitored, an environmental legacy that ranchers are still trying to alleviate.

Cheatgrass is a non-native invasive annual.
Now present throughout California, it is most extensive in degraded areas.
It is drought tolerant, fire resistant, and extremely hard to get rid of.

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