The 2008 Joint Meeting of the Society for Range Management and the America Forage and Grassland Council.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 9:00 AM

Diverse Plant Communities, Heterogeneous Landscapes, and Behavior-Based Grazing Management for Herbivores and Ecosystems

F.D. Provenza, Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Natural Resources Building, USU Main Campus, Logan, UT 84322

Once understood, behavioral principles and processes can be transformed into practices that provide an array of solutions to challenges people face in attempting to manage landscapes for the well being of the many species of plants and animals that depend upon them. Unlike the infrastructure of a ranch such as corrals, fences, and water development, behavioral solutions cost very little to implement, they are not fossil-fuel intensive, and they are easily transferred from one situation to the next. In the case of grazing, behavior-based management is increasingly attractive given growing economic and environmental concerns with fire, herbicides, and mechanical means of rejuvenating landscapes. While we have learned much during the past three decades about how genes interact with social and biophysical environments to create foraging behaviors, scientists and managers remain generally unaware of the power of behavior to transform ecosystems, despite compelling evidence. The issue isn't if creatures are adapting to ongoing changes in social and biophysical environments, they do so every day of their lives. The only question is whether or not people want to participate in the process. If so, behavior-based management offers opportunities to use understanding: 1) of the relationship between palatability and plant biochemistry to rejuvenate landscapes to benefit wild and domestic animals, 2) of the importance of variety in the diet and heterogeneity of landscapes to provide a full range of benefits -- nutrition and health for plants, herbivores, and people -- without the unsustainable costs associated with fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, antibiotics and anthelmintics, and 3) of the association between experiences early in life with particular diets and habitats and local adaptations of herbivores for sustaining the biodiversity of landscapes.