Cows, Grass, and the Future of the Plains: Why the USFS Has It Backward on Grazing

A Grassland Without Grazers Is No Grassland at All

A Grassland Without Grazers Is No Grassland at All

The U.S. Forest Service’s draft assessment for the Comanche National Grasslands has alarmed ranchers across southeastern Colorado and western Kansas. In more than 1,500 pages of analysis, the agency lists “livestock grazing” as a threat to multiple species of conservation concern, lumped together with “urbanization” and “industrial disturbance.”

For the people who live on and care for these prairies, that framing is upside-down. Grazing isn’t a disruption to nature — it’s the heartbeat that keeps grasslands alive. The Great Plains evolved under millions of hooves long before the Forest Service existed. To erase that relationship from management plans is to misunderstand what a grassland is.