Evaluation of a Grazing System for Maintaining Grassland Integrity and Improving Upland Bird Habitat

North American tallgrass prairie ecosystems have been reduced to less than 2% of their original area. Periodic disturbances are vital to native grassland management. Fire, an important process maintaining grasslands in the past is prescribed in many grasslands. However, fire alone is not consistent with historical disturbance regimes. Practices utilizing grazing and fire create a mosaic of Habitat types and may more closely resemble historical disturbance patterns. This project will demonstrate and evaluate vegetative structure and composition of tallgrass prairie flora and wildlife resulting from the use of patch burn grazing (PBG). Under this management scheme, one-third of each pasture will be burned annually. The intensity of grazing and resulting Habitat structure will shift among patches through time as different patches are burned and previously grazed patches recover. The predicted advantages of PBG are: 1) vegetation structure and composition will differ among patches within a pasture; 2) the Habitat mosaic created by the fire-grazing interaction will support more diverse plant and wildlife populations; and 3) PBG will prove economically competitive with traditional cool-season systems for raising beef cattle. PBG does not require internal cross fences or intensive supplemental feeding, but should yield competitive weight gains. PBG will be demonstrated at 5 Missouri and 2 Nebraska sites monitoring variables including floristic quality, vegetation structure, cattle activity patterns, economic benefits, and avian community responses.