When it comes to the value of resting land, opinions are as varied as wild plants. That’s because a carefully prescribed time and duration of rest in one area might be of great benefit, but the same prescription just won’t fit someplace else. As every rancher knows, conditions of rainfall, heat, wind, water supply and soil vary from season to season and from one side of a hill to the other. Rest can restore an area to abundance or cause its resources to literally dry up and blow away.

Ruminants (cattle, buffalo, deer, antelope, sheep, elk, etc.) need good grass. In one of those marvels of nature’s harmony, they also create the conditions that allow good forage to flourish, even in dry and brittle environments. Once you understand how rest works, you can never look at a patch of ground in the same way again.

SPECIAL SECTION:
The Value of Rest

Confessions of an Environmentalist

A Fence on the Border

A Walk in the Grass

Beware of Rest

Tall Grass Prairie

From the Ground Up

50 Years of History

Rest-Rotation, Recovery

With & Without Grazing

Ranching & Research

What do you want this land to be?

Owens Creek/West Muddy Creek

Gone To Weed

Download a copy of the Acrobat (.pdf) version of The Value of Rest here (about 1 mb).