Nevada ranchers suffer from self-deluded drought denial

cropped-MUSTANG-NV-Feb-8-2011.jpg

Data Backs BLM Manager’s Allotment Cuts in Face of “Cowboy Express” Protest

Washington, DC — A U.S. Bureau of Land Management District Manager from Nevada targeted by angry Nevada ranchers was more than justified in removing cattle from drought-stricken public rangeland, according to data released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Tomorrow, protesting ranchers start a “Cowboy Express” ride to Washington demanding removal of BLM Battle Mountain District Manager Douglas Furtado as an “abusive federal employee” even as conservation groups urge that Furtado be commended not condemned for his actions.

Like much of the West, Nevada has been in the grips of persistent drought, with nearly 90% of the state under “severe to exceptional” drought for three consecutive years. This, in turn, causes greater conflict over dwindling water and forage. Not surprisingly, Nevada has also become Ground Zero for rising tensions on range management as illustrated by this spring’s armed standoff with renegade rancher Cliven Bundy who has been illegally grazing his cattle in southern Nevada for more than a decade.

“We all know about climate deniers, but this is the first we’ve heard of drought deniers,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, pointing out that much of Furtado’s Battle Mountain District has been among the hardest hit by drought in Nevada. “If we are to believe the ranchers, an extreme, multiyear, regionwide drought has magically spared only their allotments.”

In July, Battle Mountain District Manager Furtado ordered livestock removed from parched range on the sprawling 332,000-acre Argenta allotment in northern Nevada after conditions fell below thresholds that ranchers and BLM had previously agreed would trigger removal. The ranchers contend that Furtado’s actions were arbitrary but an analysis of Geographic Information Systems and BLM data reveal range in terrible ecological shape:

Nearly every Battle Mountain allotment evaluated failed range health standards for wildlife and water quality, largely due to livestock grazing;

Half of the Argenta Allotment, and roughly 30% of the Battle Mountain District is habitat for sage grouse, a species being reviewed for listing under the Endangered Species Act. BLM has been directed to protect the species’ habitat but 90% of assessed sage grouse habitat was in Battle Mountain allotments failing standards due to livestock; and
Fence line contrasts visible in satellite imagery show that public lands in the checkerboarded allotment are far more heavily grazed than private lands, suggesting that ranchers are more protective of their own lands than they are of publicly-owned range.

“Doug Furtado should be praised, not pilloried, for doing his job,” Stade added, noting a letter of support sent today from PEER and Western Watersheds Project urging that BLM as an agency to do more to stand up for its employees when they attempt to protect public resources. “The Cowboy Express is actually a cynical attempt to use iconic imagery to mask selfish abuse of public lands. If ranchers will not be responsible stewards then conscientious land managers have to make hard decisions, as Doug Furtado has done.”

Western Watersheds Project intervened in the Argenta case when ranchers initially refused to remove their cattle despite their previous agreement. Even after an order from an Interior Department administrative law judge affirmed the BLM’s authority to remove the livestock, as many as 100 cattle remain on the Argenta allotment to this day.

“The rancher resistance to drought protections in Battle Mountain is aimed at preventing effective protection of public lands and sage-grouse habitats across the West,” said Katie Fite, Western Watersheds Project’s Biodiversity Director. “It is meant to intimidate other federal agency managers so that they turn a blind eye to habitat degradation.”

The records for all roughly 20,000 BLM allotments across the West, many of which show similar overgrazed conditions, will be displayed next month in a new PEER website documenting longstanding and serious ecological impacts caused by ongoing livestock overgrazing.

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See the data on Range Conditions in the Battle Mountain District

Read letter in support of Doug Furtado

View the denial of the permittees’ appeal of BLM’s decision

Look at heavy hoof-print of commercial grazing in the West

All content © 2014 Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
2000 P Street NW, Suite 240 Washington, DC 20036

33 million Acres of BLM Grazing Allotments Fail Basic Rangeland Health Standards

LIVESTOCK’S HEAVY HOOVES IMPAIR ONE-THIRD OF BLM RANGELANDS

PM No More Roundups By Cat


Washington, DC (May 14, 2012) — A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.

The “Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2011” covers BLM allotments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.  The report totals BLM acreage failing to meet rangeland health standards in measures such as water quality, watershed functionality and wildlife habitat:

  • Almost 40% of BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 have failed to meet the agency’s own required land health standards with impairment of more than 33 million acres, an area exceeding the State of Alabama in size, attributed to livestock grazing;
  • Overall, 30% of BLM’s allotment area surveyed to date suffers from significant livestock-induced damage, suggesting that once the remaining allotments have been surveyed, the total impaired area could well be larger than the entire State of Washington; and
  • While factors such as drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants, and sprawl are important, livestock grazing is identified by BLM experts as the primary cause (nearly 80%) of BLM lands not meeting health standards.

“Livestock’s huge toll inflicted on our public lands is a hidden subsidy which industry is never asked to repay,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, noting that the percentage of impairment in lands assessed remains fairly consistent over the past decade.  “The more we learn about actual conditions, the longer is the ecological casualty list.”

Last November, PEER filed a scientific integrity complaint that BLM had directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a factor in changing landscapes as part of a $40 million study, the biggest such effort ever undertaken by BLM.  The complaint was referred to a newly appointed Scientific Integrity Officer for BLM but there are no reports of progress in the agency’s self-investigation in the ensuing months.

At the same time, BLM range evaluations, such as this latest one, use ambiguous categories that mask actual conditions, employing vague terms such as “making significant progress” and “appropriate action has been taken to ensure significant progress” that obscure damage estimates and inflate the perception of restoration progress.  For example, in 2001 nearly 60% of BLM lands (94 million acres, an area larger than Montana) consisted of grazing allotments that were supposed to be managed to “improve the current resource condition” – a number that has stayed unchanged for a decade.

“Commercial livestock operations are clearly a major force driving degradation of wild places, jeopardy to wildlife, major loss of water quality and growing desertification throughout the American West,” Stade added, while noting that BLM has historically been dominated by livestock interests.  “The BLM can no longer remain in denial on the declining health of our vast open range.”

It’s only getting worse

Here is a video message about the American wild horse crisis in February 2010. The numbers are bigger now with 53K wild horses in holding and perhaps 15K left on the range.

Thank you Arlene Gawne and team for bringing this YouTube message to the public.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 we all tried to help The President understand the need to save the mustangs. Sadly he appears to want The New Energy Frontier above and beyond anything else.

If you don’t like what’s going on then contact your representatives and senators because they are your voice in government. Congress funds the rotten Wild Horse and Burro Program under the Bureau of Land Management.

Request a Congressional investigation, forensic accounting and a moratorium on roundups as well as fertility control until the truth comes out that there are hardly any wild horses left out on America’s public land.

This year the EPA passed a fertility control pesticide for use on America’s wild horses and burros. Our indigenous horse has been formally labelled a “pest” by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. We want the erroneous classification reversed. Pests and invasive species are weeded out and disposed of . . .  Why did the EPA sell out?

(Photo © Cat Kindsfather, all rights reserved)

Stop the roundups and the extermination!

Taxpayer fairness bill introduced to defund welfare ranching

 

Fence where cattle graze (Photo © Anne Novak, all rights reserved)

 Cross-posted from The Independent

Nelson offers up fair grazing legislation

Posted: Saturday, July 14, 2012 11:45 pm | Updated: 10:26 pm, Sat Jul 14, 2012.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has introduced a taxpayer fairness bill to end the substantial federal subsidies that an elite number of livestock producers receive.

If enacted, the bill would save American taxpayers about $1.2 billion. Nelson’s bill requires that the Secretary of the Interior work in conjunction with the Secretary of Agriculture to set livestock grazing fees on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Forest System public rangelands at rates comparable to those found on nearby private grazing lands.

“The facts are clear. Two percent of ranchers are getting a benefit that 98 percent of other grazing ranchers have not been able to get. They pay far less than the market value for the right to graze on public lands,” Nelson said . “This isn’t fair to the taxpayer, and this isn’t fair to the other 98 percent of cattle grazers who have to compete in the market-place.

“The State of Nebraska charges over $20 dollars a head of calf to graze on state land. Why should the federal government charge $1.35?”

The senator has also offered his grazing fee bill as an amendment to the Small Business Tax Credit Bill currently before the Senate. If adopted, the amendment would help defray the legislation’s costs.

The Government Accountability Office has estimated that just 2 percent of American ranchers hold animal grazing rights to National Forest System public rangelands. The grazing fees charged by the federal government on the rangelands are far below market value, at times up to 95 percent lower than the market fees charged for grazing on state- and privately-owned lands, fees that 98 percent of grazing ranchers have no choice but to pay.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Statistics Service, Nebraska charged a state land grazing fee of $27.30/animal in 2011. The $1.35 figure cited by Nelson was published in a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on Livestock Grazing-Related Federal Expenditures. Among the GAO report’s findings are:

— From 1980 to 2004, BLM and Forest Service grazing fees fell by 40 percent.

— From 1980 to 2004, the market price on grazing fees rose by almost 80 percent.

— The government collects nearly $21 million/year in grazing fees on public rangelands.

— The government puts about $144 million/year into the maintenance of public rangelands.

“In other words, there is a shortfall of $120 million dollars coming from two percent of ranchers,” Nelson said.

Link to article: http://www.theindependent.com/news/ag_news/nelson-offers-up-fair-grazing-legislation/article_9bf429c2-ce2c-11e1-8158-0019bb2963f4.html

Livestock’s Heavy Hooves Impair One-Third of BLM Rangelands

33 Million Acres of BLM Grazing Allotments Fail Basic Rangeland Health Standards

WASHINGTON – May 14 – A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.

The “Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2011” covers BLM allotments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.  The report totals BLM acreage failing to meet rangeland health standards in measures such as water quality, watershed functionality and wildlife habitat:

  • Almost 40% of BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 have failed to meet the agency’s own required land health standards with impairment of more than 33 million acres, an area exceeding the State of Alabama in size, attributed to livestock grazing;
  • Overall, 30% of BLM’s allotment area surveyed to date suffers from significant livestock-induced damage, suggesting that once the remaining allotments have been surveyed, the total impaired area could well be larger than the entire State of Washington; and
  • While factors such as drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants, and sprawl are important, livestock grazing is identified by BLM experts as the primary cause (nearly 80%) of BLM lands not meeting health standards.

“Livestock’s huge toll inflicted on our public lands is a hidden subsidy which industry is never asked to repay,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, noting that the percentage of impairment in lands assessed remains fairly consistent over the past decade.  “The more we learn about actual conditions, the longer is the ecological casualty list.”

Last November, PEER filed a scientific integrity complaint that BLM had directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a factor in changing landscapes as part of a $40 million study, the biggest such effort ever undertaken by BLM.  The complaint was referred to a newly appointed Scientific Integrity Officer for BLM but there are no reports of progress in the agency’s self-investigation in the ensuing months.

At the same time, BLM range evaluations, such as this latest one, use ambiguous categories that mask actual conditions, employing vague terms such as “making significant progress” and “appropriate action has been taken to ensure significant progress” that obscure damage estimates and inflate the perception of restoration progress.  For example, in 2001 nearly 60% of BLM lands (94 million acres, an area larger than Montana) consisted of grazing allotments that were supposed to be managed to “improve the current resource condition” – a number that has stayed unchanged for a decade.

“Commercial livestock operations are clearly a major force driving degradation of wild places, jeopardy to wildlife, major loss of water quality and growing desertification throughout the American West,” Stade added, while noting that BLM has historically been dominated by livestock interests.  “The BLM can no longer remain in denial on the declining health of our vast open range.”

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Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. PEER’s environmental work is solely directed by the needs of its members. As a consequence, we have the distinct honor of serving resource professionals who daily cast profiles in courage in cubicles across the country.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Links:
Posted from the PEER press release

Wildlife and cows can be partners, not enemies, in search for food

Cross-posted from News at Princeton

Princeton University researchers are leading an effort to put to pasture the long-held convention of cattle ranching that wild animals compete with cows for food.

Two recently published papers — including one in the journal Science — offer the first experimental evidence that allowing cattle to graze on the same land as wild animals can result in healthier, meatier bovines by enhancing the cows’ diet. The findings suggest a new approach to raising cattle that could help spare wildlife from encroaching ranches, and produce more market-ready cows in less time.

The reports stem from large-scale studies conducted in Kenya wherein cows shared grazing land with donkeys in one study and, for the other, grazed with a variety of wild herbivorous animals, including zebras, buffalo and elephants. The lead author on both papers was Wilfred Odadi, a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Dan Rubenstein, the Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology and chair of Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

In August, Rubenstein and Odadi reported in the journalEvolutionary Ecology Research that cattle paired with donkeys gained 60 percent more weight than those left to graze only with other cows. The researchers proposed that the donkeys — which were chosen as tamer stand-ins for zebras and other wild horses — ate the rough upper-portion of grass that cows have difficulty digesting, leaving behind the lush lower vegetation on which cattle thrive.

Donkey Cow in field

In August, the Princeton researchers reported in the journal Evolutionary Ecology Research that cattle paired with donkeys gained 60 percent more weight than those left to graze only with other cows. The researchers proposed that the donkeys — which were chosen as tamer stand-ins for zebras and other wild horses — ate the rough upper-portion of grass that cows have difficulty digesting, leaving behind the lush lower vegetation. (Photo by Dan Rubenstein)

In September, Odadi and his co-authors on the Science paper reported that other grazers, especially zebras, did remove the dead-stem grass layer and that cattle indeed seemed to benefit from sharing land with wild animals. Cows in mixed grazing pastures took in a more nutritious diet and experienced greater daily weight gain — but this effect was limited to the wet season, the length of which can vary by region. Cattle competed with wild species for food in the dry months.

Nonetheless, the Princeton studies help counter an enduring perception that wildlife is an inherent threat to the food supply of livestock, Rubenstein explained. These results could prove crucial to preserving animals that are increasingly threatened as the human demand for food drives the expansion of land used to raise cattle. Zebras and wild horses are especially vulnerable to the spread of pastures because of their abundance.

“Grazing competition from other animals has been an issue throughout history,” Rubenstein said.

“There’s a fear that if some other animal is eating grass meant for livestock, that hurts the rancher. Those perceived competitors were seen as vermin and exterminated,” he said. “These experiments suggest that in certain cases cattle can actually experience considerable advantages in terms of growth when allowed to graze with other species.”

Experimental proof of old observations

The studies are the first to experimentally test and prove hypotheses from the 1960s that equines make grazing land more suitable for bovines, a dynamic known as facilitation, Rubenstein said. Observations of zebras and wildebeests had suggested that the zebras’ ability to digest grass stems exposed the leafy grass wildebeests prefer.

Animals in the horse and cattle families both process food through fermentation as microbes in the digestive system break down vegetation. In horse-like animals, this process takes place in an organ located after the stomach that is similar to the human appendix (though humans are not fermenters). For bovines, on the other hand, fermentation happens in the rumen, an organ before the stomach that produces cud, which is regurgitated for the animal to further chew.

As a result of these digestive distinctions, Rubenstein said, equines can eat the rough low-quality grass that would linger and fester in a cow’s slower, more complex gut. The bovines in turn enjoy the lush, easily digestible grass underneath the stems.

Donkey Cow weighing

For the study published in August, the researchers documented the weight changes and eating habits of the donkeys and cows for 12 weeks. Wilfred Odadi (rear, in hat), a postdoctoral research associate in Rubenstein’s lab based at Kenya’s Mpala Research Center, was lead author on both recent Princeton papers. The project stemmed from the senior thesis of Meha Jain (front left), who earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton in 2007. (Photo by Dan Rubenstein)

Both Princeton studies showed that the presence of equines resulted in less dry-grass cover and a more nourishing diet for the cows. Although the study in Science matched cattle with other wildlife — including bovines such as buffalo — Odadi and his co-authors largely attributed the removal of the low-quality grass to zebras.

What was not expected was just how much the cattle can benefit, Rubenstein said.

“Scientists had this intuitively pleasing, circumstantial evidence that equines make the landscape more habitable to bovines, but the idea was never tested,” Rubenstein said. “This was the first demonstration that the animals behave accordingly, but also that the performance of the cows as measured by growth is actually enhanced. Previous evidence of the effects we found on the health and development of cattle had been missing.”

Cows versus donkeys

Rubenstein conducted the experiment reported in Evolutionary Ecology Research on rangeland in northern Kenya with Odadi, who is based at Kenya’s Mpala Research Center — with which Princeton is a partner — and co-author Meha Jain, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton in 2007 and whose senior thesis was the basis of the project.

The team chose donkeys as surrogates for zebras, which suffer from food and habitat loss due to cattle operations, particularly the endangered Grévy’s zebra. Because donkeys are tame, the researchers could more easily observe, weigh and record the diet quality and health of the individual animals, Rubenstein said.

The researchers constructed six separate grazing areas divided into three high-density and three low-density pastures. Both the high- and low-density areas hosted an all-bovid group of 15 cows; an all-equid group of 10 donkeys; and a mixed group of 15 cows and 10 donkeys, for a total 60 cows and 40 donkeys. The animals grazed seven hours each day.

For 12 weeks, the researchers documented the animals’ weight changes and eating habits. In addition, the excrement of tagged cows in each grazing area was analyzed for protein, parasite and digested-grass content. Study co-authors and ecologists Herbert Prins and Sipke Van Wieren of Wageningen University in the Netherlands validated the effectiveness of these measurements.

At the end of the experiment, cows that fed alongside donkeys had beefed up by an average of 64 pounds (29 kilograms) per animal in the low-density pasture, and slightly less than 37 pounds (17 kilograms) for the high-density group. In comparison, cattle dining only with their own put on an average of 55 pounds (25 kilograms) per cow with more room to roam and only nearly 28 pounds (12.6 kilograms) in tighter confines.

When compared to the weight of the cattle recorded at the experiment’s outset, cows grazing with donkeys gained an average of 60 percent more weight than cows that did not, the authors reported. Moreover, none of the cows in the mixed groups remained at the same weight or lost weight, unlike some of the cows in the bovid-only pastures. Analysis of the protein and grass-remnant content of the cows’ dung showed that the animals consumed a healthier diet when sharing land with donkeys.

A notable feature of the study Odadi conducted with Rubenstein is that it provides some understanding of how the other animals respond to grazing with cattle, Odadi said.

The donkeys did not exhibit the benefits of intermingling to the extent the researchers observed in cattle. Donkeys grazing with cattle gained only 51 percent more weight than donkeys that did not, and dung analysis showed the donkeys in the mixed groups actually took in a less digestible diet.

But the dung of donkeys in the mixed groups also contained lower levels of parasitic worm eggs, possibly due to the cattle taking in some of the parasites during grazing, Rubenstein said. As a result, parasite infection was less debilitating in these donkeys.

Where the wild things are

For the second study, Odadi and his co-authors on the Science report changed the project’s scope to include large, wild herbivores that share the African savanna with cattle: Grévy’s zebras, African buffalos, elands, hartebeests, gazelles, elephants and giraffes. Odadi worked with ecology professor Truman Young of the University of California-Davis; Moses Karachi of Egerton University in Kenya; and Shaukat Abdulrazak, chief executive officer of the National Council for Science and Technology in Kenya.

The researchers created nine grazing areas of equal size, each with four cows. The pastures fell into three categories: cows only; plots open to medium-sized herbivores and closed to elephants and giraffes; and plots open to all wild herbivores. Each variety was randomly assigned to three grazing areas.

The experiment consisted of two 16-week trials (conducted a year apart) with each trial beginning in the dry season and ending during the wet season. In each trial, the team weighed the cows and examined the animals’ excrement to determine diet quality.

In the wet season, cattle that ate with wild herbivores took in a more nutritious diet and experienced greater weight gain than cows that did not, according to the Science report. In the cow-only enclosures, each animal put on roughly a half-pound (0.25 kilograms) each day. In the other pastures, each cow bulked up by three-fourths of a pound (0.35 kilograms) daily. The experiment coincided with 18 weeks of Kenya’s wet season. For that period, daily weight gain translated to 69 pounds (31.5 kilograms) for each animal in the cow-only enclosures, versus 97 pounds (44 kilograms) per cow in the other areas.

The dry season and resulting scarcity of grass turned that dynamic on its head, however, as Odadi and his co-authors expected. Cows grazing without other animals gained more than a half-pound per day. Weight gain for cows in the mixed enclosures plummeted to roughly one-third of a pound each day. A future direction of the project may be to determine if adjusting cattle-to-wildlife density based on the season would reduce competition when food is scarce, Odadi said.

Taking it back to the ranch

The Princeton researchers make an important contribution to the study of how to reconcile the demand for grazing land with ecosystem conservation, said Michael Coughenour, a senior research scientist at the Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.

The research not only shows that facilitation between livestock and wildlife is possible, but also suggests the mechanisms — for example, the removal of dry stems — that provide that benefit, he said. Naturally, Coughenour said, many questions remain, such as if the mere presence of many grazers results in more robust plant growth, as existing research has suggested might occur.

But the results should nonetheless prompt researchers to investigate the existence of facilitation in other regions and ecosystems, as well as the livestock-to-wildlife densities that make it possible, Coughenour said. For instance, the United States and other temperate-zone countries do not have a distinct wet and dry season. Also, it cannot be assumed that grass in the American West would respond to mixed grazing in the same way as savanna grass, nor that a similar concentration of zebras and American wild horses would benefit cattle in the same way in their respective environments.

“These findings add to the dialogue by providing evidence that interactions between wild equids and livestock are not necessarily negative, as would commonly be assumed among ranchers and commercial pastoralists,” Coughenour said.

“Clearly, blanket statements that wild equids invariably compete with livestock can no longer be accepted. Facilitation is a very real possibility that should be considered and investigated,” he explained. “However, it would be equally invalid to assume that the extent and mechanisms of facilitation are universal. Research is required to clarify the relationship so as to gain a more precise understanding of the conditions under which neutral or positive interactions occur.”

In the Evolutionary Ecology Research paper, Rubenstein, Odadi and Jain delved into how the weight gain they observed in cows grazing with donkeys could translate to economic gain for ranchers by producing cattle that are ready for market sooner.

As an example, they imagined a farmer beginning with a cattle herd with an average weight of 660 pounds, or 300 kilograms, that he intends to sell after the animals put on an extra 200 pounds, or 100 kilograms. In their scenario, they first substituted the 10 donkeys in the experiment with 10 more cows to make up a herd of 25 cattle. These cows would take nearly 18 months to reach the target weight of 400 kilograms if the animals packed it on at the rate of roughly 0.2 kilograms, or a half-pound, a day, as many of the cows in the researchers’ single-species pastures did.

Replacing 10 cows with donkeys, however, would bring the remaining 15 cows to the preferred weight in about 11 months. The researchers assumed those cows would gain weight at the average of nearly 0.3 kilograms, or 0.66 pounds, a day seen in the mixed-group cows in the experiment.

“Time has a cost. If cows grow faster per day, they can get to market sooner and the landowner can preempt the costs of cattle dying from predation or disease as the animal is exposed to the elements for longer periods ,” Rubenstein said.

“From the perspective of the rancher and the people awaiting the food from his cattle, the cows develop better if there are hind-gut fermenters like zebras present,” he said. “So, by our observations, competition becomes facilitation and expands to become mutualism as both species actually benefit each other.”

Cows with a few extra kilograms of weight could be a “huge” benefit to ranchers and pastoralists, particularly in Africa, as well as to the preservation of natural lands, said Joshua Ginsberg, senior vice president for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Conservation Program. Ginsberg, who received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1988, focuses his research on conservation and animal-human interaction.

“A few kilograms is a major increase,” Ginsberg said. “If the cattle are managed well, and the markets exist and are used, it would allow for greater income, greater protein and the ability, at least in theory, to reduce cattle-stocking rates because of increased productivity.

“Many pastoralists think that zebras compete for food and this study suggests that in many circumstances, that may well not be the case,” Ginsberg said. “The authors clearly suggest that the expansion and recovery of zebra populations in lands that are focused on traditional grazing practices is potentially a benefit, rather than a cost, to these societies.”

At the Mpala Research Center, Odadi has presented his findings to local farmers, but understands the difficulty of overturning long-held views about the livestock/wildlife competition.

“The farmers we have presented these findings to are generally surprised that zebras and other wildlife can facilitate cattle,” Odadi said. “However, we have not been able to determine whether and to what extent their perception that grazing wild animals are detrimental to livestock production has actually changed.”

The first study, “Facilitation Between Bovids and Equids on an African Savanna,” was published in Evolutionary Ecology Research in August 2011, and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Keller Family Trust and Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

The second study, “African Wild Ungulates Compete With or Facilitate Cattle Depending on Season,” was published in Science on Sept. 23, 2011, and supported by grants from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the International Foundation for Science.