West Texas Rangelands
West Texas RangelandsWe hope to provide a variety of science-based rangeland information and current research on prescribed fire, wildfires, brush management, and grazing management!

Managing Old World Bluestems…A Review

by

Merry Christmas!

As we gather with family and friends this holiday season, many of us are also thinking ahead to 2026 rangeland goals, especially the ongoing battle against invasive monocultures of Old-World bluestems. In the spirit of giving useful gifts, here’s a practical, research-backed summary from TAMU RWFM’S Dr. Lucero’s lab on the newest science on how to fight these tough grasses, just in time for your 2026 management planning!

Old-World bluestems, non-native grasses from the genera Bothriochloa and Dichanthium, were originally introduced to the United States for forage and erosion control. However, these species have become invasive, spreading aggressively across rangelands, reducing biodiversity, and providing limited nutritional value to livestock as the growing season progresses. Their crude protein content, for instance, can decline from approximately 19% in early summer to as low as 3-4% later in the year, impacting grazing quality and ecosystem health.

A recent systematic review and meta-analysis, published in Rangelands (DOI: 10.1016/j.rala.2025.10.002) from TAMU Rangeland, Wildlife, and Fisheries Department Dr. Talia Humphries, Christopher J. Lortie and Dr. Jacob Lucero, synthesizes existing research on controlling these invasive grasses. This study examined 16 peer-reviewed articles from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, yielding 89 observations. The analysis identifies effective management strategies while highlighting gaps in the literature.

Challenges Posed by Old-World Bluestems

These warm-season perennial grasses, native to regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, thrive in drought-prone, disturbed environments. Introduced since the late 1800s for their resilience to grazing, fire, and poor soil conditions, they now form dense monocultures that outcompete native species. This leads to decreased plant, insect, bird, and mammal diversity, as well as potential facilitation of pests and diseases, such as serving as hosts for vectors of sugarcane white leaf disease.

The review emphasizes the ecological and economic urgency of control, as these species continue to expand across southern U.S. states and Hawaii, threatening rangeland productivity and sustainability.

Key Findings on Control Strategies

The meta-analysis evaluated 15 treatments, measuring their impact on bluestem cover, frequency, biomass, and other metrics using Hedge’s g effect size. The overall effect across treatments was a moderate reduction in invasion (Grand mean = -0.49 ± 0.12). Notably:

  • Prescribed Fire: This standalone treatment significantly reduced bluestem abundance (Hedge’s g = -0.9961, P < 0.0001), offering a practical option for rangeland restoration.
  • Herbicide Combined with Burning: Integrating herbicide application prior to burning yielded strong control (Hedge’s g = -3.1234, P = 0.0018), enhancing efficacy through synergistic effects.
  • Rain Shelter Combined with Burning: Simulating drought conditions via rain exclusion before burning also proved effective (Hedge’s g = -0.8887, P = 0.0100), particularly in arid regions where water stress weakens the grasses.
  • Competition through Overseeding: Introducing competitive native or desirable species significantly curbed bluestem spread (Hedge’s g = -1.1602, P < 0.0001), promoting long-term ecosystem recovery.

Conversely, mechanical removal alone increased bluestem invasion (Hedge’s g = 0.9636, P = 0.0072), likely due to soil disturbance favoring regrowth. Standalone herbicide applications showed no significant effect.

Study duration influenced outcomes, with longer-term experiments indicating potential bluestem resurgence, underscoring the need for repeated or sustained interventions.

Research Gaps and Implications for Management

The analysis reveals a scarcity of studies—only 16 met inclusion criteria despite over 30 years of concern—limiting statistical power for some treatments. Most research focused on Bothriochloa ischaemum, with limited data on other species like Bothriochloa bladhii or Dichanthium annulatum. Few studies explored integrated approaches, suggesting a need for more research on combined strategies and broader geographic representation.

For ranchers, landowners, and conservationists:

  • Prioritize burning or herbicide-burn combinations, consulting local experts for safe implementation and regulatory compliance.
  • Incorporate overseeding with native species to foster competition and biodiversity.
  • Avoid isolated mechanical removal, as it may exacerbate the issue.
  • Monitor sites over multiple years to assess and adapt management plans.

This synthesis provides evidence-based guidance for addressing Old-World bluestems, supporting sustainable rangeland management. For detailed methodologies and results, refer to the full article in Rangelands. Collaboration with extension services can help tailor these strategies to specific locales.

From all of us who work to keep America’s grasslands healthy, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, a prosperous New Year, and strong success in restoring your pastures and prairies in 2026. May your cattle gain well, your native grasses flourish, and your Old-World bluestems finally meet their match.

Merry Christmas!

Fire Up Plant Diversity!

by

A recent study from Texas A&M researchers, published in Landscape Ecology, dives into how prescribed fires impact plant diversity in mesquite-oak savannas like those on the Edwards Plateau. By analyzing data from over 288 plots before and after a prescribed fire, the team found that these fires boost local plant diversity, encouraging more species richness and evenness in burned areas. This is especially true in soils with better water-holding capacity, where post-fire regrowth thrives amid the mosaic of burned and unburned patches. But there’s a flip side: fires can reduce beta-diversity, meaning less variation in plant communities across your land, as similar species start dominating post-burn.

The study highlights how soil types and rainfall play starring roles in these outcomes. In areas with deeper, moisture-retaining soils like Kavett silty clay, fires sparked significant gains in forb and grass diversity, helping control woody encroachment from mesquite and juniper while creating prime grazing spots. However, in shallower, drier soils like Tarrant, the effects were muted, underscoring the need to time burns with wetter periods to avoid stressing your vegetation. Precipitation patterns around the 2019 burns, drier than average, further mediated results, showing that fire heterogeneity (those patchy burns) shapes spatial diversity patterns, ultimately supporting a more resilient ecosystem for livestock and wildlife alike.

For ranchers looking to implement pyric-herbivory, combining fire with grazing, this research is a game-changer!! It suggests strategic burns can sustain biodiversity, improve forage quality, and maintain ecosystem services without homogenizing your landscape. Start by mapping your soil types and monitoring rainfall forecasts to maximize benefits. While the study focused on semi-arid savannas, its insights encourage adaptive management: test small-scale burns, observe plant responses, and adjust for your ranch’s unique conditions. In the end, embracing fire thoughtfully could ignite long-term health for your rangeland, turning potential threats into thriving, diverse, opportunities!

For more information on the study led by Jaime Xavier as part of The Prairie Project, please click here!

New Publication! Photosensitization

by

Happy Thanksgiving Eve 2025! Tomorrow we eat too much, watch football, and thank the good Lord for another year on rangelands. But before we all disappear into food comas and family chaos, I want to hit you with one quick heads-up that can save you a pile of money and heartache this winter and next spring. A new publication was recently released by Dr. Thomas Hairgrove, Dr. Barron Rector, Dr. Jake Thorne, and Dale Rankin. Click here for the publication!

Photosensitization is sneaking up on herds right now.

Those pretty cool mornings and bright sunny afternoons we’re having? Perfect recipe for trouble if you’ve got lechuguilla, sacahuista, lantana, kochia, kleingrass, goathead, or rain lilies hanging around. Even alfalfa hay or heavy green wheat pasture can set it off when the liver gets damaged and can’t clear the green-pigment toxin (phylloerythrin).

You’ll see it first on the white-faced or light-skinned cattle, sheep, and goats: ears drooping, eyelids swollen, noses and udders red and peeling, animals crowding into any shade they can find or standing belly-deep in the tank. It hits FAST – sometimes in just hours after sun-up on a clear day.

Notice the early signs or you’ll be doctoring animals when you’d rather be deer hunting.

Quick checklist – do this TODAY (yes, even the day before Thanksgiving):

  • Ride or fly the drone over pastures and look for those culprit plants, especially in draws and south slopes where they stay green.
  • Make sure every pasture with light-skinned stock has real shade or a barn they’ll actually use.
  • If you see even one animal with puffy eyes or crusty ears, get them in the barn NOW and call your vet. Every hour in the sun makes it ten times worse.
  • Check liver fluke control – they’re a major player in Type III (the most common kind).

This ain’t regular sunburn. This is skin literally cooking from the inside out because of a toxin + sunlight combo. It’s painful, expensive, and 100% preventable if you stay ahead of it.

So enjoy tomorrow. Eat the extra piece of pecan pie. Hug your people. Tell your wife or husband you love ’em. But before you carve that turkey, take 20 minutes to look at your cattle.

Your future self (and your bank account) will thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Stay safe, stay grateful, and give those critters some shade options!

Published to Pasture…Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management

by

In 2018, Wilmer and others published “Collaborative adaptive rangeland management foster management-science partnerships” in Rangeland Ecology and Management (check it out here).  I really valued this paper, because fostering management-science relationships is what Extension is all about!

This paper is a case study, based on qualitative social data collected from meeting notes and interview transcripts recorded from ranchers and agency representatives in a Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management (CARM) study. In this synthetic assessment, they explored to what extent participation in the CARM experiment enabled adaptive decision making by a group of rangeland stakeholders (landowners, agencies, non-profit, etc..).

The specific objectives of this study were to 1) document how diverse stakeholder experiences and knowledge (meaning their socially constructed theories and justifications for rangeland management knowledge) contribute to the CARM project, 2) evaluate how co-produced knowledge informed management decision making through three grazing seasons, and 3) explore the implications of participation in the CARM experiment for rangeland stakeholders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some snapshot comments from ranchers, agency, and NGO reps on uncertainties, learning/collaboration, and motivations:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The authors found that this interactive process can reveal the differences among stakeholder knowledge about complex rangeland systems, but does not reconcile those differences.  And that it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that stakeholder decision-making related to cattle rotation and prescribed fire decisions will be made on data from research or experiments.  However, it is likely that Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management (CARM) can build awareness and appreciation for the diverse ways of knowing about rangeland management.  Stakeholders are more likely to utilize:

  1. Discussion and consideration of different reasoning for management actions
  2. Enhanced understanding when stakeholders are involved in the project design and monitoring data collection and presentation.
  3. Frequent discussion of the rational for decisions
  4. Presentations of multiple information sources
  5. Focus groups or tours that encourage sharing participants’ ways of knowing and experiences

Bottom line, rangeland management stakeholders prefer making decisions based on the broadest range of available information, INSTEAD of exclusively using scientifically derived knowledge!!!

Next, data from this paper showed TRUST among stakeholder and researcher groups may improve social learning by increasing the transparency of unique stakeholder experiences and knowledge.  Stakeholder trust over time facilitated engagement and commitment from stakeholders and researchers to work toward a common goal.

So…are you a landowner, rancher, producer that agrees with this?  I certainly hope so because this is all about what Extension creates, facilitates, and nurtures.  Our job is to provide YOU the landowner with all the information and bring YOU to a network of stakeholders that you TRUST!

As Extension, we  should:

  1. Make direct efforts to share and acknowledge managers’ different rangeland management experiences, epistemologies, and knowledge
  2. Involve long-term research commitment in time and funding to social, as well as experimental, processes that promote trust building among stakeholders and researchers over time

This all is very ironic to me, because it is what ranchers have been telling me for a long time.  But, now that we have it in a published journal, maybe the other half can start listening!

I love my job.  I love delivering information.  I love working with ranchers.  I serve at the pleasure of West Texas ranchers, and it is a an honor.  Thank you!!

 

Wilmer, H., J.D. Derner, M.E. Fernandez-Gimenez, D.D. Briske, D.J. Augustine, L.M. Porensky, the CARM Stakeholder Group.  2017. Collaborative adaptive rangeland managment fosters management-science partnerships. Rangeland Ecology and Management 71: 646-657. 

Jimmie Powell – Thee Man

by

Mr. James L. Powell accepted the Foy Proctor Memorial Cowman’s Award of Honor in Midland last week and some of the greatest stories of West Texas were shared.

I first met Mr. Powell on a prescribed burn south of San Angelo and the man is just cool.  He is humble, gracious, hard-working, not to mention, a legend. He even has his own chapter in the Texas Cattle Barons book.  But in my book, he is right up there with John Wayne and other cowboy heroes. img_5557

The following is a story he told while at the 20th Fall Gatherin’.

“WWII was underway and all the cowboys who were in their 20s had been drafted if they hadn’t already enlisted.  We were rounding cattle in Reagan and Crockett County.  It encompassed about 64 sections.  The corrals where they loaded the cattle on the train were right in the city limits of Big Lake.  Back then we gathered the calves and weaned them as we worked a pasture.  We had all the calves grouped in a four-section pasture leading in to the corrals.  Now keep in mind it was just myself, my dad, and the foreman on that place and three boys that my dad got out of school that day.  We were handling about 400 head of fresh weaned calves, and we had started mov
ing those calves up the fenceline.  We had them grouped up on the north fenceline about a mile or so from the pens, and about the time they got those calves to the corrals, the train came by.  That engineer blew his whistle three or four times, and there was no way in the world we could hold those calves together.  They went between us and under us and before we knew it they were scattered all over that pasture again.  I know if my father could have caught that engineer, he would have talked to him about that.”

Outside the Fire with Jeff Goodwin

by

This October we are featuring Mr. Jeff Goodwin, Range and Pasture Consultant Agricultural Division with the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Ardmore, OK.  Jeff is a Texas man, but more importantly he is a fire man who promotes the responsible and practical use of fire on rangelands.

How did you get introduced to fire?  I got introduced to fire as an undergraduate at Tarleton State goodwin-picUniversity’s Range and Ranch Management program. After graduate school, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Bill Pinchak and Dr. Jim Ansley at the Texas A&M Research Center in Vernon, Texas conducting research projects utilizing fire to manage landscapes in the Rolling Plains of Texas.  The majority of my experience with fire however, has come through the 15 years I spent as a rangeland management specialist with USDA-NRCS. They provided the training, experience, and opportunity to work with landowners to address rangeland resource concerns and meet their management objectives. Very often in a fire starved landscape, those rangeland management objectives were achieved and/or aided with the proper application of prescribed fire

Do you make special plans for fire in your management plans well in advance, or take advantage of good fuel and weather conditions as they come?  I have been trained my entire career to be a planner, to think about how our management will meet a specific goal and how that action will affect other resources.  However, to answer the question Yes I make plans well in advance, but I also take advantage of favorable conditions as they arise. To me that’s the beauty of a well written and designed prescribed fire plan. Many times we have a specific goal or objective we want to accomplish within a particular burn unit. The challenge and objective should be to write your burn plan specific enough to meet the objective yet the prescription parameters should be open enough so that you have the flexibility to take advantage of those favorable conditions as they arise. The worst thing you can do is to make the prescription parameters so tight that you that you 1) will never meet them and thus never get the burn implemented or 2) push yourself to the limits of your plan parameters and possibly open yourself to liability issues should trouble arise. 

What’s the hook for you on fire? The hook for me with fire is that I am a student of Ecology. For too many years we have looked at fire as a “tool” to manage rangelands. Fire is not a tool, it is an ecological process. A “tool” can be put back in the toolbox and/or replaced. We are currently seeing across the region what happens when we try to replace or use fire sparingly as a tool. I currently live in the middle of the Southern Great Plains, an area encompassing the majority of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Every square inch of rangeland in this region evolved under a fire regime with a fire return frequency, it was part of the fire dependent ecology of this region. As “we” began to manage those rangelands, 150 years ago we suppressed that ecological process. Many of the battles that we fight today in the field of rangeland management are directly related to that suppression, (i.e. woody brush encroachment, reduced rangeland productivity, etc.). So my hook is returning the ecological functionality of our rangeland resources while meeting management objectives of the land stewards that care for them.

In your opinion, what makes a successful fire? A successful fire in my opinion is one that meets the goal and objective of the burn unit. I am not a fan of burning just to burn. Many times we miss opportunities or do not meet the specific objectives of a fire just because we want to get it “done”. For instance, if my goal is to control or suppress Prickly Pear cactus, I will need a couple of things to ensure that outcome. I will need to choose a year or time when we have grown enough fine fuel to carry the fire to adequately meet that objective. I should choose prescription parameters that will effectively allow for a fire hot enough to meet those objectives. If we burn on a day that does not meet those parameters then we will likely not meet the original objective and we will have utilized our fine fuel. Now, I agree there are multiple benefits to getting fire back on the landscape. However, I am in the business of meeting landowner objectives and managing rangeland, to do that we need to be successful with our management applications and fire is no exception. Earlier I stated that Fire was an ecological process that needed to return to Texas rangelands, that is true. With that said, we need to be the ones that decide, when, where, how much and how long. This is where we take the science of rangeland management and turn it into and art.

Who in your burn circle/crew would you never burn without?  I do not have a specific person that I would not burn without, however I will not burn without speaking to my Lord and Savior. I pray before each burn that the lord provides his hand in safety over the crew, the clarity to make the right decision at the right time, and the gratitude for the responsibility to care for the rangeland resources he has provided us dominion over. Fire is a necessary process but can be very unforgiving if the proper amount of respect is not given. Safety is and will always be our number one priority on a burn.

Thank you Jeff!

Dormant Season Burns Paired with Abundant Spring Rainfall – Did you Do that?

by

If you were one of the lucky landowners that burned during early/late winter, I am sure you are pleasantly pleased with the post-fire results you are seeing from these spring/early summer rains! The opportunities that fire reveals are not only inspiring, but make for gorgeous and productive rangelands! Hats off to you landowners that light the match out of faith and reap the blessings and bounty soon after!01b5ccef040adeb235a2c902f8f9e9b834c4b3f8e5 01cdebb89768087e1dfa187df49e6f0a778ee9e76e 01fee7e543eac40f34a2654e497449c433b0827477 016eda4e5cc20112f561dcc1163235fbff6508faba 0105a2e1b4f36ec2abd022fcd8b4b320d86f8567b7