Cattle Grazing in Wetlands

Abstract

Cattle grazing drives successional change in wetland vegetation by removing tall grasses and other vegetation. As a disturbance, cattle grazing in some ways resembles natural disturbances such as native mammal grazing and lightning-strike fire, which can support higher biodiversity in wetlands. To encourage rare and Red-Listed species, natural land managers sometimes incorporate a variety of techniques to remove tall vegetation including mowing, hand-cutting, burning and cattle grazing. As a farming practice, cattle grazing was once very common in world wetlands, but as agriculture intensified after WWII, small-scale farmers slowly stopped grazing cattle in natural wetlands. As a result, tall macrophyte and woody species have overgrown some wetland types once used as pastures for cattle.