Range riders still roam central Idaho

During the summer, sheep ranching in the U.S. West follows a biblical rhythm. When the bands leave their valley homes for summer grazing, shepherds accompany them. Herders spend all summer with the sheep, guiding them to new feed, providing water, and camping near them at night. 

Although cattle are checked on, watered, and moved regularly, they aren't herded as closely as sheep. Except for Alderspring Ranch cattle. Based in central Idaho's Pahsimeroi Valley, Glenn and Caryl Elzinga, their seven home-grown cowhands, and a crew of range riders herd their organic grass-fed beeves all summer long on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing allotments. I helped (by staying out of the way and taking photos) Elzingas move over 400 cattle from their valley ranch to public rangelands in late May.

Roxy's ready to help new range riders learn to keep cattle where they belong.

Glenn Elzinga gets Sunny ready, with an assist from son-in-law Ethan Kelly.

Horses were tied up everywhere, far enough apart than nobody got tangled up.

Roxy strikes a pose.

Even the hitching rail held horses.

Hats off for a blessing before leaving.

Last minute adjustments.

Riders top the hill gathering cattle.

Abby (Elzinga) Kelly move the electric fence out of the way...

...and checks that everyone's ready for her to open the gate and release the cattle.

It's hard to get water to make a right angle turn; the same is true for a herd of cattle. Here they're back on the road and headed up the hill.

The cattle leave behind their irrigated valley pastures for the upland range.

Buster helps by holding some heifers.

Everything's going well coming down the Pahsimeroi Road.

A long line of cattle follows the highway along the Salmon River for a short way.

The herd does great on this right angle turn.

Hooves over the Salmon River.

Melanie Elzinga points the way.

Riders, horses, and cattle all made it safely to public lands, where they'll send the summer.

The oldest profession?

Rancher Glenn Elzinga says herding might be the oldest profession. I wonder if he also knows shepherds have a long record of improving human culture. Shepherds brought civilization to people in the 4,000 year-old Epic of Gilgamesh. A couple thousand years later, shepherds starred in many Greek myths. One story traced the roots of cowboy poetry to the shepherd Daphnis, who composed the first pastoral poem on the island of Sicily.

Today, the profession doesn’t maintain the workforce it did in ancient times and it provides fewer cultural innovations, but shepherd still watch flocks of sheep in the U.S west. Herders live 24/7 with bands of a thousand animals. With the help of herding dogs, the shepherd guides the flock to browse a variety of plants and avoid poisonous fare. The animals are watched at all times and can be kept away from areas protected for other uses. The herder sleeps nearby to help the guard dogs protect the sheep from predators and theft.

For years, I wondered why herding sheep made so much sense, but herding cattle was, well, unheard of. I wondered until I heard Glenn Elzinga’s keynote address at the 2015 Idaho Sustainable Ag Conference. He's developing a "new" approach to ranching: he's herding his cattle.

After lunch, I lurked with intent and buttonholed Glenn as we walked back to the afternoon session. I followed up with an email. Later, I asked if I could write about him. He and his wife Caryl agreed. My story on Alderspring Grassfed (and herded) Beef was in the Fall 2016 issue of Edible Idaho.

Local land trust helps Swift River Farm grow in Salmon, Idaho

Local food used to be the only food in rural central Idaho. People living in isolated mountain valleys grew and shared most of what they ate. When paved roads and trucks arrived to stock grocery store shelves, residents shopped more and farmed less.

Jessica McAllese and Jeremey Shreve are (re)creating local food networks in Salmon, Idaho. The couple settled in the Lemhi County town in 2013 with a border collie named Nora, a tractor named Fergie, and years of experience farming in Pocatello.

Salmon has been fertile ground for Shreve and McAllese’s Swift River Farm. Other small farmers, a local foods group, and a farmers market are reviving small scale production and distribution systems.

Ranchers started the Lemhi Regional Land Trust to protect local landscapes and rural lifestyles. The trust found a way to help McAllese and Shreve buy land to expand their farm and build a home together.

I told the Swift River Farm story in the Summer issue of Edible Idaho.

Do sagebrush steppe grasses need to be grazed?

A rancher in southwestern Idaho and I have been having the same conversation for years. We both enjoy it and we always have something to talk about. My friend, the rancher/cow whisperer, thinks our native perennial grasses are better off when they’re grazed. By better off, he means greener and more vigorous, without old, dead leaves.

Rancher/Cow Whisperer told me about perennial grasses growing in a steep canyon, where his cattle can’t reach them. The grasses are choked with dead leaves and their centers have died. Grazing would have kept the grasses trim, green, and vigorous.

I tell Rancher/Cow Whisperer that I also prefer green plants to dormant or dead ones. I’d rather see lush green lawns, pastures, and alfalfa fields than dry, brown ones. When I see big, thick summer grasses bucking and waving in the wind of the Dakotas or the Great Plains, I want to roll in them.

But, are sagebrush steppe grasses embarrassed by their old leaves? Do they worry about their dead centers?

I remembered my on-going conversation with Rancher/Cow Whisperer when I saw a piece by a writing rancher. Rancher/Writer had visited one of my favorite places on the Sagebrush Sea, where management includes restrictions on grazing. She wondered if there wasn’t too much bare ground and if appropriate grazing could help fill in between the plants. As a plant ecologist, I see bare ground and I’m reminded of the admirable tenacity of our native perennial grasses.

Bare ground reminds me that sagebrush steppe grasses grow in clumps so they can use the water and nutrients in the space around them. The plants have to do all their growing in the limited time between the “too cold” of winter and “too dry” of summer. They have to grab all the water and nutrients they can, as fast as they can, from as large an area as they can.

Our native bunchgrasses aren't altruistic. They won't cut consumption so other plants can grow around them. If they left water and nutrients for others, the other might be cheatgrass, which would increase the chance of fire. Cheatgrass is fuel for fires; bare ground is a firebreak that helps protect bunchgrasses.

Rancher/Writer noticed dead grass leaves and wondered if appropriate grazing could rejuvenate the plants. I see dead leaves and dead grass centers and I’m reminded of how well the plants are protecting the soil.

Dead leaves remind me that the material will decay and release nutrients into the soil for the plant to use. When the center of a bunchgrass dies, the dead material goes on protecting the soil, its water, its nutrients. The plant cries, “It’s just a flesh wound!” and keeps growing out around its edges--finding more water and nutrients.

Do our native sagebrush steppe grasses need to be grazed? If we look at it from the plants’ and the soil’s point of view, I don’t think so.

I’ll slow down to enjoy the sight of green irrigated pastures and breathe in the fragrance of a just-cut alfalfa field. Someday, I might stop to roll in the lush summer grasses on the plains. I'll also be amazed by our native perennial grasses. These bunchgrasses grow in challenging country and can do an exemplar job protecting our soil and keeping cheatgrass out of the Sagebrush Sea.

Instead of focusing on their unkempt appearance, let's thank our sagebrush steppe grasses for all the work they do.

Who should monitor federal rangelands?

“The fox guarding the henhouse.” That's what Linda Price expects some to say about a new rangeland monitoring program. I quoted the manager of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Field Office in Salmon, Idaho, in a recent article.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) saw the need for more information on the condition of BLM rangelands in the state and came up with a solution. Brooke Jacobson, ISDA’s coordinator for the project, helps ranchers get start collecting vegetation data on land they lease for livestock grazing. Meanwhile, the BLM’s vegetation specialists are stuck at their desks doing paperwork. A steady stream of time-sucking lawsuits provides job security, but keeps agency employees away from their monitoring duties.

Brooke shows ranchers how to take annual photos at BLM monitoring sites and send their data to the agency. Ranchers can also attend one of the University of Idaho’s monitoring workshops. In this pilot program, ranchers will monitor only upland rangelands, not sensitive riparian areas. They won’t be measuring, or even counting, vegetation; they’ll be collecting photographic data.

Even with training and help from Brooke, some people might not think ranchers are up to the task. The skeptics must never have worked on a veg crew.

When I hired crews to collect vegetation data at the U.S. Geological Survey, I didn’t ask if applicants knew how to count plants. I asked the hard question: “Can you handle a summer living out on the Sagebrush Sea?” Anyone who can tolerate boring, repetitive tasks can learn to collect data; only a few hardy souls can sleep in a tent, haul water, and build a toilet with a shovel all summer. Data collection ain’t rocket surgery.

Nonscientists collecting data is nothing new. Amateur and professional scientists work together on the North American Breeding Bird Survey. They receive the same training and their data go into the same valuable dataset on bird numbers and distribution. Citizen scientists also record the seasonal changes in plants and animals for the National Phenology Network. This information helps scientists identify patterns of global climate change, which helps planners address the social and economic stresses that result.

You could argue that ranchers might fudge the data when monitoring their grazing lands. If you did, I’d point out that anyone could be tempted to blink at the wrong time while reading data. Every BLM employee has an opinion on livestock. Researchers have their favorite hypotheses. Even universities listen to their supporters, legislators, and alumni, all of whom have biases.

Software developers are making data collection easier and more accurate for both citizen and career scientists. Before Amazon ever heard of drones, Terry Booth, at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Cheyenne, WY, was photographing rangelands from light aircraft. The photos were clear enough to count plants and measure bare ground. In other words, they were detailed enough to monitor rangelands.

It’s been years since I saw a rancher with a flip phone (four months since I gave up mine). Smart phone cameras take excellent pictures and a University of Nebraska app makes photographing the same spot every year...a snap.

Ranchers and BLM employees look through the same viewfinder, but they see different things. Most agency workers move several times during their career. Most ranchers stay put for decades; their families often stay rooted for generations. Ranchers experience many El Niño and La Niña years on the same land. They see swings in precipitation and note the effects on plants and livestock. Ranchers are on the land 24/7/365 and they see things.

When my friends Jake Weltzin and Steve Archer investigated why mesquite trees were invading Texas grasslands, they asked the local ranchers. Guy and G. D. London told my friends that mesquite moved in after they killed the prairie dogs. Jake and Steve tested the ranchers' hypothesis and found that prairie dogs keep mesquite out of grasslands by clearing away seedpods and stripping bark from seedlings.

Rumor has it that ranchers remember three years: this year, last year, the best year. Researchers know memories fade and insist on written data. In the words of Adam Savage, one of Discovery channel’s MythBusters,“The only difference between screwing around and science, is writing it down.”

Ranchers will go one better when they monitor their rangeland: they’ll take pictures. Then they're write down when and where they took them.

Ranchers Helping Salmon in Idaho's Lemhi Valley

Salmon and ranchers both need water. Salmon swim up rivers and streams to spawn; ranchers irrigate hay fields to provide winter feed for their livestock. Eastern Idaho rancher Merrill Beyeler believes that these uses can coexist.

He is increasing salmon habitat in Idaho’s Lemhi Valley while improving his ranching operation.

Beyeler is working with other ranchers, The Nature Conservancy, Idaho Fish and Game, and other groups, to remove barriers to fish, reconnect tributaries to the main Lemhi River, return the river to its previous, winding channel, and increase flow at the mouth of the Lemhi. Often, these changes mean less work for him and other ranchers.

I wrote about Merrill Beyeler’s stewardship work in the current Intermountain Farm & Ranch.

Why Did the Chickens Cross the Pasture?

To let the vegetation regrow, reduce parasites and disease, spread nutrients evenly, and to find more plants and insects to eat.

The chickens crossed the pasture in a travel trailer.

I visited Malheur River Meats’ ranch while they were moving their chickens recently. Their flock of laying hens and attending roosters live in remodeled trailers. I’ve lived in something similar, but it still had appliances and furniture.



 
The chickens can’t move on their own; they need some help: First, pull the T posts at each corner of their current pasture. It’s easiest to use a chain on the bucket of the tractor.







See this line of fence? As you walk down it, pull each of the white fence posts out of the ground. Lay each post, and the attached woven electric fence, on the ground as you go.







When you get to the end, grab the last post and walk toward the chicken's new pasture. Once the fences are in the right places, hook the tractor to the trailer and drive off. If the door swings open and chickens start popping out, ask the photographer to run over and shut the door.




Be careful as you drive over the prone fence.

In the chickens' new pasture, stop on a level spot and unhook the tractor.








Don't forget to go back for the escaped chickens, which are outside the new pasture. They won’t cross the prone fence, so have the tallest person hold it up so everyone else can chase the chickens underneath. You’ll need at least one person per chicken.


Complete the job by reassembling the fence. Remember to reattach the electrical connectors at each corner, so an electrified fence is more than just a good idea.

When the fence is complete, open the trailer door and stand back from the explosion of red, grey, white, and black hens. Soon, they’ll be laying brown, green, tan, and white eggs at their new home. See a video of the action here.

The chickens seem pleased with their new digs; how does the pasture feel about the roving chickens?

Lisa Burke, one half of the Farming Engineers in Kirklin, Indiana found the answer on Google Earth. The current image of their farm was taken in early spring, before the pasture greened up. But the chickens' travels the previous summer show as a chain of vigorously growing green patches.


The chickens, and their supplemental feed, add nutrients to the soil, but I suspect something else is going on, too. I wonder if the chickens’ scratching could have roughed the soil surface enough that it warmed more quickly than the other areas.

How do you think the chickens painted green patches on the pasture?

Modern Pastoralists use Goats to Reduce Weeds and Fire

Tim and Lynda Linquist are using an old technique to solve modern problems. The couple’s business, We Rent Goats, employs one of the oldest domesticated animals. Their goats are an environmentally friendly way to remove weeds and brush, and reduce fire hazards.

The Linquists set up woven electric fences, and then deliver goats and burly white guard dogs that protect the herd from coyotes and stray dogs. They check on the animals often and are only a phone call away if there are problems. Landowners pay from $350 to $600 an acre for a one-time treatment. The cost depends on the complexity of the fencing required, the vegetation on the site, and transportation costs. The entertainment provided by the goats is free.

The rental goats are minimizing the fire danger in several Boise foothills neighborhoods this spring. Colten Tippetts, Town Manager at Hidden Springs, uses the goats on slopes too steep for mowers and brush cutters. The animals also fit in with the rural focus of the planned community.

The Idaho Transportation Department is using the goats for the first time this year to mow around stormwater retention basins. Shawn Strong, with ITD’s southwest Idaho vegetation crew, said the goats control weeds without the risk of herbicides getting into waterways.

Later in the summer, the herds will remove rush skeleton weed in some of the City of Boise’s foothills reserves. “We usually get good response from the public to the goats, because people enjoy watching them. Herbicide application freaks more people out than goats do,” said Julia Grant, Boise’s Foothills and Open Space Manager. Grant added that, despite warning signs on the low-voltage fence, people can get a shock, especially if they’re unlucky enough to fall onto the fence.

In addition to removing an invasive weed, the goats reduce fire danger. “Weeds are problem number one, but fire and weeds are so intertwined,” Grant said. Weeds allow fire to spread and then often sprout in burned areas before the native plants can recover.

After the weed and fire seasons are over, the Linquists’ goats spend the fall cleaning up alfalfa and organic hops fields. Then the goats have a few months off before they start kidding in late March. By May, the growing kids are ready to go to work with their mothers and the cycle starts again.

When Lynda, 28, and Tim, 36, met, they discovered a shared love for goats. Lynda’s pet goat William went everywhere with her and rode shotgun in her Jeep. Tim had started with 25 goats on his five acres near Wilder, Idaho. He saw a business opportunity when a friend in California wanted brush cleared from his land: Tim increased his herd to 200 and put them all to work.

The couple brought the goats back to Wilder in December 2009. That year, they were all due to kid early. Tim remembered, “I didn’t think it was going to be that bad; we had kidded goats before, but not in the snow and not that many. We were in for an education.” Lynda added, “We had a hard freeze first thing. If we didn’t get the babies into the barn under a heat lamp, they would freeze to the ground within 15 minutes.”

Tim’s job kept him on the road four or five days a week. That left Lynda, who had job closer to home, in charge of the 200 mothers-to-be. Early in 2010, Tim had used up all his vacation time and realized that weed-eating goats were a full time business. He quit his job at the end of April. “It was the best decision I ever made, after marrying Lynda,” he said.

Lynda, the president of We Rent Goats, participated in Boise’s MicroEnterprise Training and Assistance (META) program. This nonprofit helps women, new Americans, minorities, and other low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs in southwest and south central Idaho. META’s business classes and coaching have been a big help to the new business owners. “I had to learn everything,” Lynda said. “They helped me write a business plan, I learned to use accounting software--everything. And I was a psych major.”

The Linquists have adopted the nomadic lifestyle of many herders before them. The couple gave up their home in Wilder for a fifth wheel travel trailer, which lets them stay near their animals on their yearly circuit of open space, waterways, and agricultural fields. The first two years on the road were challenging. “We were goat ranchers, but we had to learn about portable fencing and being a mobile goat operation. We’re fencing experts now,” Lynda said.

As their client list grows, Tim and Lynda are increasing their herd. They keep the best females for breeding and sell the rest, plus the young males, for meat. The animals are raised humanely and certified as Animal Welfare Approved.

We Rent Goats needs to add people, too. They hire one or two summer employees every year, but they need more if they’re going to continue to grow. As Tim pointed out, though, it takes a special person to care for the goats properly, work with the dogs, and travel constantly. Acquiring land is the biggest challenge most new ranchers and farmers face. “We need a home base, someplace for the does to kid; a place to land if anything happens,” Tim said. Even agricultural lenders are surprised by the couple’s business model. While feed is a major expense for most livestock operations, the Linquists’ goats are paid to eat. “People can’t believe how low our feed costs are, especially now with hay being $200 a ton,” Tim explained.

Until they buy land, Lynda and Tim spend the off-season with their goats on empty patches of land near Boise. They find that bringing a herd of goats with them opens doors, as most people fall in love with the engaging animals. Being around the herd has a soothing effect on people and seems to bring back memories of an ancient way of life.

Have a Cheatgrass Beer and Help the Great Basin

Revenge is a dish best served cold: about 45 degrees for amber ales. Tye Morgan has a plan to foil cheatgrass and heal native Great Basin plant communities by brewing beer. She told Ira Flatow about it recently on NPR’s Science Friday.

As an environmental researcher, Tye finds ways to manage invasive cheatgrass. In her off hours, she and her husband, Joe, are home brewers who teach others how to turn grains, hops, yeast, and water into ales, lagers, and stouts in Reno, Nevada. Tye combined her knowledge of cheatgrass with her love of brewing to come up with a way to restore cheatgrass-invaded areas while producing beer. "Every time people drink our beer, they are doing something to save their desert," she told a local news outlet.

Cheatgrass lives fast and dies young

Conservationists, ranchers, and fire fighters shudder each summer when nonnative cheatgrass dies to form a carpet of tinder.

Although native plants burn, too, cheatgrass stalks carry flames especially well. What’s more, cheatgrass has already assured its survival by the time fire season rolls around. The plants produce a bumper crop of seeds each spring--up to 65,000 per square meter--that sprout into new plants the following fall.

Our native perennial grasses and sagebrush, on the other hand, hunker down and survive the hot, dry summer as dormant live plants. Rooted in place, they can't run and are killed by fire.

When the ashes have cooled, cheatgrass seeds blow or hitch rides on fur or socks into burned areas. With the native plants dead or damaged, the uninvited guests sprout to find they're the only ones at the banquet. Cheatgrass gobbles up soil nutrients and water and produces another crop of seeds to continue the cycle.

By harvesting cheatgrass seeds each year, Tye hopes to both reduce the number of cheatgrass plants and improve conditions for our native plants. Fewer cheatgrass seeds means fewer cheatgrass plants sprouting. Repeatedly taking off the nitrogen-rich seeds for beer should gradually reduce the level of this plant nutrient in the soil.

Fast-growing cheatgrass needs lots of nitrogen to support its lifestyle. But the native plants, with their more tortoise-like approach to the race for survival, thrive in less fertile conditions. Tye will count the cheatgrass seeds and measure the soil nitrogen to know when native plants have the best chances. Then she'll reseed the area with a mix of native species.

Amber ale and more

Ira Flatow tasted Tye and Joe’s amber ale cheatgrass beer and pronounced it "delicious." Tye explained to the Science Friday host that they mix barley with the cheatgrass seeds. Barley adds an enzyme that turns starch in the seeds into sugar; cheatgrass lacks this enzyme. Once the sugar is released, yeast converts it to alcohol.

The couple isn’t satisfied with just one type of beer. Their company, Bromus Tech, is working with Lance Jergensen, an independent malster who specializes in local barleys, and Ryan Quinlan, at Great Basin Brewery, to develop several different cheatgrass beers.

Tye's ideas aren't limited to beverages. She points out that agricultural chemicals are rarely used on the wildlands that cheatgrass invades. She plans to use the spends seeds left from the brewing process to produce organic grass fed beef. You'll be able to have an organic grass-fed cheatgrass-finished burger with your cheatgrass beer.

Once they’ve perfected their line of beers and fine-tuned their restoration techniques, Tye and Joe will share their knowledge with other brewers. Tye envisions small breweries across the West harvesting local cheatgrass and producing delicious beers. "I think that Idaho cheatgrass beer would catch on like wildfire," she told Ira Flatow.

A Plague with an Upside?

My office phone rang with a missing plants report: miles of cheatgrass had disappeared in Winnemucca, Nevada. It was the spring of 2003

When the rangeland manager on the phone saw the first bare areas, he was surprised. When he found whole valleys without plants, he called the new plant ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boise. I said I didn’t know where the cheatgrass went, but I’d take a look.

I was looking for a fugitive with few friends. Weedy, nonnative cheatgrass usually blankets large swaths of the Intermountain West. This annual grass moves in after native plants are killed by fire, weakened by drought, or damaged by people or livestock. Cheatgrass sprouts in fall or early spring across the lowest, driest parts of the West. The young plants sink roots to forage for water and nutrients while many of our native plants are dormant. Before cheatgrass plants die in spring, each produces a bumper crop of seeds to continue the cycle the next year.

A few days after the alarming phone call, I stood in what had been rangeland. The area seemed to have been bladed for a  parking lot. The few surviving plants were a short hike apart. The survivors were all native perennials--and they were thriving. The globemallow, indian ricegrass, and squirreltail were guzzling the water and nutrients left after the usual crop of cheatgrass failed to grow.

At the edges of the cheatgrass die-off, the ‘dozer driver seemed to have stopped for lunch and forgotten to come back. Miles of bare soil ended abruptly in normal-looking cheatgrass. The farthest edge of the dieoff ended partway up the toe slope of the nearby mountains, as if the ‘dozer driver had avoided driving on the steepest slopes.

I had a long list of ways plants can die; I needed help narrowing down my list. I stopped at the nearest ranch and asked about the missing cheatgrass.

The couple working in the corrals was younger than the century-old ranch, but they hadn’t seen a year without cheatgrass before. “My son says it’s army cutworm. He lives up the road,” said the woman, who wore a painful-looking shiner inflicted by one of the horses.

The son, Jim, described seeing insect larvae “eating every green shoot” on a warm, dry January evening. “It was warmer than today,” he said, as I shivered in the June dusk in his front uaof his house. Jim did what researchers do: he photographed the insects and took some to the local U.S. Department of Agriculture office. The entomologist ID’d them as army cutworms.

As I drove away, I congratulated myself on inquiring locally to solve the mystery in record time. Then I did what researchers do: I got a second opinion.

“Army cutworms??” My entomologist friend’s voice shot up in surprise. “No way. Army cutworms would never eat that much cheatgrass.” She vouched for the insects--they were innocent. I needed a third opinion.

The next entomologist laughed out loud. I went back to my list of Ways Plants Can Die.

Walking to and from work, or driving to remote field sites, I went over my mental list: Frost? Yes, cold air drainage might damage plants in the bottoms of the valleys and leave those on nearby slopes. Fungal root disease? Probably not during a warm, dry winter, as fungi need abundant moisture. And how could a fungus kill ALL the plants in an area? And why would it suddenly stop killing plants at the edges of patches?

Months later, a second witness came forward and fingered army cutworms. A researcher in northern Utah had seen larvae destroying his cheatgrass experiment.

Finally, that fall, I found an entomologist in western Colorado who had seen army cutworms devouring cheatgrass and crops in his area. The outbreak of larvae hadn’t surprised this witness, as he’d noticed more miller moths than usual the previous fall. He knew they would lay eggs that would hatch into army cutworms.

Although few people know army cutworms in the Intermountain West, residents east of the Rockies know both larvae and adults all too well.

Between its summer wildfires and winter blizzards, Colorado’s Front Range suffers semiannual plagues of miller moths. Billions of the insects invade in spring and late summer as they migrate from the Great Plains to and from high peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

The moths annoy local residents by loitering around lights, invading homes, and defecating on walls. Media describe “squadrons” of moths “attacking” and “dive-bombing” people. The insects’ unpleasant habits make it hard to appreciate the impressive journey these tiny creatures complete: on a two-inch wing span, miller moths make a thousand-mile round trip on their summer vacation.

The moths that fly through Denver and Fort Collins each spring hatched in the soil of the Great Plains the previous winter. The army cutworm larvae hide underground during the day and come out to feed at night. Sprouting fields of wheat, and other crops, are just the right height for the hungry insects.

The cutworms' nocturnal habit makes it hard to catch them in the act of destroying crops. The young larvae are so tiny that it's hard to see them at all--until it's too late. The insects earn their moniker when they reach 1½ inches and are mostly jaws. After consuming all the food in an area, the army marches off in search of more. The destruction ends when the troops stop, drop, and pupate in the soil. They emerge several weeks later as miller moths.

Although a long, wet spring can persuade the moths to linger and feed along the Front Range for weeks, their summer home is high elevation slopes around Yellowstone Park. The insects feed at night and congregate among the rocks of cool talus slopes during the day. The gatherings of moths are grizzly bear banquets. By eating as many as 40,000 moths a day, the bears get up to half their yearly energy from the maligned miller moths.

In late summer, the surviving moths turn their back on the Rockies and head back east to the Great Plains. Or do they all? Do any of the Yellowstone moths fly west? Or do "our" miller moths spend their summers in talus slopes closer to home?

Farmers in the Great Plains check their fields for army cutworms, homeowners along the Front Range recalk their windows before the miller moth migration, and Yellowstone’s bears count on the plump insects to get them through the next winter. But the army cutworm outbreak of 2003 was a surprise attack in the Intermountain West. We don’t know exactly why there were so many larvae that year or even where the adults spent the previous summer.

I blame army cutworms, perhaps working with a pathogen accomplice, for the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of acres of cheatgrass in the Intermountain West in 2003. The weather was perfect for the insects, the cheatgrass disappeared when the larvae were feeding most voraciously, and their need to stop eating and pupate could account for the sharp borders of the bare areas. (Full disclosure: some other researchers scoff at the idea.)

We haven't had a big army cutworm year since 2003--or seen big cheatgrass dieoffs. But the insects are still here, waiting for their next opportunity. Our warming climate could give them many opportunities in the future.

Army cutworms need both a mild winter and lots of eggs to reach impressive numbers. That means lots of miller moths have to return from their summer journey. When we see high numbers of miller moths in late summer, followed by a warm, dry winter, we need to start looking for army cutworms on our rangelands. When we see bare areas where we expect to see cheatgrass, it’s time to get out the seeders and reseed those areas with native perennial plants. Without competition from cheatgrass, the seeded plants will be able to establish vigorous stands that can hold the line against cheatgrass.

In August and September, I trapped and counted miller moths in the foothills of the Boise Front. Pheromones--scents that female moths make to attract males--lured males into the traps.



When I catch lots of moths in fall and we have heavy late summer rain followed by a dry winter, I'll start looking for army cutworms and watching for bare areas. The next time someone calls with a missing cheatgrass report, I'll start with my prime suspect.