Challenges in rehabilitating degraded Winterfat communities

Authors: Clements, Darin; Harmon, Daniel

Submitted to: The Progressive Rancher
Publication Type: Popular Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/17/2025
Publication Date: 2/6/2025
Citation: Clements, D.D., Harmon, D.N. 2025. Challenges in rehabilitating degraded Winterfat communities. The Progressive Rancher. 25(2):23-25.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Winterfat, also known as white sage, first came to the attention of North American botanists in plant materials collected by the expeditions of Lewis and Clark. Using this plant material, pioneer botanist Federick Pursh described the shrub as winterfat, Euratia lanata. The first generation of range managers identified this species with the widely occurring and highly important species of the western range suitable for grazing and browsing. Federick Pursh did not realize that similar shrubs occurred in Eastern Europe and into central Asia. After an intermediate period of a scientific name change to Ceretoides lanata, winterfat was changed to Krascheninnikov lanata in honor of Russian botanist Stephen Krascheninnikov. Winterfat is a member of the Chenopod or Goosefoot family that includes such landscape characterizing species as shadscale, four-wing saltbush, Bailey’s greasewood and black greasewood. Winterfat is not only an important browse species to livestock, but also wildlife species such as bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain elk, pronghorn antelope and desert tortoise. The nutritional value of winterfat is rated as above average, with crude protein levels ranging from 14% during winter months to 21% during spring and early summer months. Winterfat occurs in semi-arid to temperate regions of North America from Canada down to Mexico in many different plant communities. In central and eastern Nevada, many winterfat communities are experiencing extensive die-offs and are being replaced by the exotic, invasive and noxious weed halogeton. Halogeton, also a member of the Chenopod family, is an annual weed that is poisonous to sheep. Most range scientists believe that halogeton is not killing winterfat, but rather moving into areas where winterfat has died out, although halogeton may compete with the recruitment of winterfat seedlings. Halogeton accumulates salt in the plant tissue and is also leached from the roots back onto the soil surface, increasing soil salinity and pH levels which negatively affects the germination potential of many plant species, including winterfat. We performed weed control practices through mechanical and chemical treatments followed by the testing of plant materials in an effort to replace halogeton and improve range conditions. The seeding of winterfat was not successful, whereas Siberian wheatgrass, Russian wildrye, 'Immigrant' forage kochia all showed promise compared to Indian ricegrass and bottlebrush squirreltail. Restoration or revegetation of winterfat communities is critical to support the sustainability of these grazing lands, wildlife, and the range livestock industry. It is important to recognize the challenges in attempting to restore or revegetate degraded rangelands in harsh environments. It is also important to recognize degradation early on; perhaps the threshold was passed in front of our very eyes and these belated restoration or revegetation practices would have been more successful if they had been attempted at an earlier stage of degradation. Our approach has been to experimentally investigate the challenges that resource managers are likely to endure when attempting to restore or revegetate degraded winterfat communities and to find ways to overcome these challenges. By applying numerous approaches to small scale plots and learning from those experiments, we can better inform resource managers of challenges they will face, and hopefully they can learn from our efforts and avoid the costly failure of some of these restoration or revegetation efforts on thousands of acres of degraded winterfat communities.