Dear editor:
The recent article regarding cheatgrass is not a new one. Cheatgrass has been a bone of contention for ranchers for over 50 years.
But Weed and Pest was just newly created and they didn’t address it. Now it’s out mostly of control throughout much of the state.
Dennis Sun is correct, treating the emerging areas is a good start, not only to keep it from spreading more, but to hopefully help the wildlife, like the mule deer mentioned.
And he is correct in saying Rejuvra shows promise. But showing promise is a generalization.
What is not mentioned in Mr. Heinz’s article is the very large cost of Rejuvra.
To spray the entire burn area in Johnson County, it would have been $8 million dollars. That money comes from taxes and grants that are funded by other taxes, regardless of the agency that sprays.
In a state that is cutting back taxes and cutting back costs, this equates to cost prohibitive.
Especially when weed and pest districts have enabled ranchers to not do more of their part by only asking them to fork out 20% in cost sharing. So, allocated funds disappear very quickly.
The smaller ranchers that have a much higher average of negative impact get completely ignored. Unless they can gather their neighbors and make it worthwhile for a spray, it’s not even on the radar to the weed and pest districts.
90% of an 100 acre pasture is pretty detrimental. And these small parcels are where controls can be truly studied.
Rejuvra is also very new and it is not known yet what the long term effects of its residue in the ground will be.
They know it will kill the new sage brush seeds and had to be sprayed far away from where those were already spread in the burn area.
Kind of like a Covid shot that wasn’t thoroughly tested, maybe we should do much more research before we try to save the Mule deer habitat with a chemical that could be very dangerous.
There are other ways to try to control it. Only problem is, they take hard work and many years of dedication. Legacy ranches understand this.
Reportedly, the Padlock Ranch has a proven system using intense rotational grazing. They have even won environmental stewardship awards. They showed invasive grasses are thwarted when pasture is appropriately managed.
Maybe we should research holistic methods and not just throw more money and chemicals at it, especially when money in Wyoming is at the forefront of all talks right now.
I understand wanting to save our pastures. I have one greatly affected by cheatgrass.
But our tax dollars need to be carefully allocated and fiscal responsibility in government, especially on the county level, is not a strong suit.
Did you know many of your county weed and pests with multi-million dollar budgets don’t even employ people with a fiscal background? That’s a letter for another day.
Respectfully,
Crystal Zimmerschied, Rozet
