1. Compatibility of cattle and wildlife (Turkey Vulture about to “break bread”).

2. Compatibility of cattle and one form of recreation

3. DO COWS MATTER? HART MOUNTAIN NATIONAL ANTELOPE REFUGE: BEFORE AND AFTER Steven G. Herman, Ph.D. Member of the Faculty The Evergreen State College © Steven G. Herman 2004

4. Hart Mountain Refuge

5. Hart Mountain NAR from the west

6. Two primary Refuge wildlife species, Pronghorn and Sage Grouse

7. Female Sage Grouse (seldom illustrated) Male Sage Grouse

8. Brewer’s Sparrow (equally important but not often acknowledged)

9. Robinson Draw, where SGH banded birds every summer for 24 years, from 1981 until 2005. NOTE the new aspen cohort, released when cattle were excluded. NOTE also the older, senescent cohort of aspens that were fading when this shot was taken, in 2004.

10. Lyon Meadow, west of HQ, before (above) and after (right) cattle. NOTE the vigorous grass at the margins of meadow in the after shot.

11. Buck Meadow before (left) and after (below). The large pasture inside the fence was (incredibly) protected from grazing throughout the cattle days. During those decades the stream entered the exclosure running over bare rock, then disappeared in a deep, grass-covered channel within a few feet of the fence. On the other (north) end, shown here, a massive head cut began at the fence where the creek left the exclosure. The willows in the after photo came back naturally, along with everything else but the geology, as part of the healing process.

12. Looking south on a slope a few miles from Blue Sky. Major healing in the after shot (right)

13. Uphill (north) at the same site (photos from the road)

14. Not really a paired before and after sequence, but from nearly the same spot, a spring (below) just east of the Blue Sky gate (note tree line in background). Springs had to be fenced during the approximately half century that cattle had their way with the Refuge, and the contrast between inside these small exclosures and outside was dramatic. I couldn’t resist showing the bull, just adjacent to the protected spring. Here the grass is fine in the after shot (right). But with cattle it was as it is here at the bull’s feet!

15. Male Sage Grouse numbers. The vertical red line designates the removal of cattle from the entire Refuge. Grazing in the last grazing years was (typically) without restraint –gates left open, no control on grazing duration or numbers, etc. The main permittee was a wealthy hobby rancher who had been given a base property on the Refuge by his close friend, the Refuge Manager. The resulting damage was so ubiquitous and so serious that vegetation took about five years to recover and set the stage for Sage Grouse recovery. Thus the “lag effect” evident in the graph.

16. The same general pattern is visible in this graph of Pronghorn numbers.

17. This photo was taken in the Willow Creek drainage during cattle time, and it is typical of what could bee seen in all drainages on the Refuge. It shows that there was virtually NO aspen reproduction during that time. Here the bark of these aspens has been polished and stained by the coats of cattle, and every struggling aspen sucker and blade of grass has been taken to the ground! And NOTE the cowflop as well.

18. 1986 1994 These are the most telling images. They show SGH sitting in the same place in 1986, 1994, and 2004. I am in Robinson Draw, facing the same willow tree (visible in all three shots, though tough to see in the 2004 photo). 1986 marked the first spring and summer in decades that aspen suckers had escaped the browsing of cattle, and had survived. Cattle were excluded from Robinson Draw following a fire that came close in 1985 (and after nagging protests from SGH for years). By 2004(next slide) the new aspen cohort, released by the exclusion of cattle, had essentially excluded me from the site of my old banding table. The only difference here is cattle, plain and simple. And when the time finally came to consider removing cattle from the whole Refuge, Barry Reiswig, the courageous Manager who eventually did that, kicked us out of our draw long enough to hold a “workshop” there, where he was able to demonstrate unequivocally some of the ecological benefits of cattle removal.

19. 2004