Nevada Ranches Devastated by Fire Season

PINE VALLEY, Nev. — LeRoy and Sandy Sestanovich ran their eyes over the Nevada range land his family has ranched for half a century. It looked like a charred piece of toast.

There was no life, only the blackened skeletons of juniper trees and the scorched stumps of sagebrush. Up a canyon lay the remains of one of their bulls, a dried-out hide draped over bones in a hauntingly stark image of death.

In what is by far the worst fire season on record in this arid state, some 1.6 million acres of northern Nevada burned this summer, an area twice the size of Rhode Island.

No lives were lost and few buildings were destroyed. But federal grazing land used by scores of ranchers was incinerated, along with food and shelter for all manner of wildlife.

“People just don’t understand unless they’ve been out there,” said Chris Healy, public information officer for the Nevada Division of Wildlife. “They also think in a couple of years it’s going to be OK. But you know what? It’s not.”

Steep canyon slopes are nude, ready to send mudslides and flood waters onto roads and valley ranches during winter storms.

Some 1,500 wild horses are being rounded up for adoption or removal to other areas because there is nothing for them to eat on much of their traditional winter range. Dust storms have caused two highway deaths. Hundreds of miles of fence need repair and livestock water systems need to be fixed.

So many acres burned that federal authorities can’t get their hands on enough of some seed types to replant the baked earth.

And vast stretches of Nevada scrubland are sitting empty, waiting for the invasion of cheatgrass, a central Asian plant that is slowly transforming parts of the Great Basin, replacing the classic gray-green of sagebrush with brown, dried-out stalks that burn like tinder, setting the stage for more huge wildfires.

“It’s an ecologic disaster and it’s an open-ended one,” federal research scientist Jim Young warned of the steady creep of cheatgrass across the scrubland. “There’s a groundswell that something has to be done. But nobody knows what to do.”

Young, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said that in the 1960s, less than 1% of the state’s 19 million acres of sagebrush land had cheatgrass growing on it. Now he estimates a quarter of that acreage is dominated by the exotic grass, which was introduced to Nevada around the turn of the century.

Cheatgrass is largely blamed for the accelerating cycle of wildfires in Nevada. The amount of federal Bureau of Land Management acreage burned since 1990 is more than all the land burned during the previous 44 years.

The worst of this year’s firestorms swept over the northern part of the state in early August, when dry lightning strikes ignited the desert floor and hot dry winds pushed long fronts of flames across the scrubland and up into the mountains.

100-Plus Wildfires Overwhelmed Crews

At one point more than 100 wildfires were burning at the same time, overwhelming firefighters.

Blazes raged around the Sestanovich ranch in Pine Valley south of Carlin for five straight days. “I’ve never seen one that lasted that long and was that thorough. I really couldn’t believe that it was keeping on like that,” said LeRoy Sestanovich, 47.

Winds kept the fires away from his ranch buildings and his private, hay-producing acreage. But funnels of flame roared across the two federal grazing allotments on which he--and his father before him--have run cattle.

Three-quarters of the 25,000 acres of range land that he leases from the BLM is now utterly useless. Stripped bare of plant life, scrubland and juniper-studded hills he has roamed since childhood are barely recognizable to him.

Along with the bull, 14 calves and 17 cows burned to death. Others are still missing. “We just can’t find them. We don’t know if they burned,” Sandy said as she, LeRoy and a University of Nevada extension agent drove slowly through the wasteland that used to feed 250 head of cattle.

The more than 200 cows and calves they saved by herding them down a wash ahead of the flames are now munching on a neighbor’s allotment 15 miles away--at some expense. The Sestanoviches expect it will cost them roughly six times the monthly $1.35 they pay the BLM for each cow and her calf they run on their own allotments.

Selling Cattle to Pay for Hay

A bit to the north, in Carlin, fourth-grade teacher and rancher Rita Stitzel lost thousands of acres of her federal grazing allotments to the fires and predicts she will have to buy $20,000 to $30,000 worth of hay this winter to feed her herd. Like the Sestanoviches, she expects her operation to survive. “The good news is we’ve been there for 30 years, so we don’t have a lot of debt,” said Stitzel, who sold off 75 head of cattle to pay for the hay.

The Department of Agriculture has declared five northern counties disaster areas, making ranchers eligible for low-interest loans and grants. Cattlemen are selling some of their livestock and paying neighbors to graze cattle on private pasture or unused portions of federal allotments that escaped the burns.

Of the 1,600 cattle ranches in Nevada, up to 100 were significantly affected by the fires, said Betsy Macfarlan, executive director of the Nevada Cattlemen’s Assn. “For some people, it could be the end.”

All but 369,000 acres of the 1.6 million burned acres are federal land. A common concern of ranchers is the BLM’s plan to, in many cases, close the blackened acreage to grazing for two years to let it recover.

“Keeping us off for two years is a real economic hardship,” said Stitzel, who like others argues that winter snows and spring rains will bring back forage next year.

“One year isn’t enough,” replies Mike Zielinski, a BLM soil scientist. The cattle “would uproot the seeds.”

To stabilize soil and try to thwart the advance of cheatgrass in the most susceptible areas, the BLM plans to reseed nearly 500,000 acres with perennial grasses and some shrubs, both from the air and with range land drills that dig furrows in the ground and then drop in the seeds.

But the effort is being hampered by a shortage of some seed types and even of range drills. “We’re maxing out the seed market,” said Jo Simpson, chief of BLM communications in Nevada. So desperate is the government for some kinds of shrub seeds that it is recruiting volunteers to collect them from the wild this fall.

Moreover, there is some controversy over what is being sown. Along with the grasses, the BLM intends to plant such shrub varieties as sagebrush, which provides vital shelter and nesting habitat for wildlife but is disdained by cattle--and many cattlemen.

“I think it’s absolutely ludicrous for the BLM to plant sagebrush,” fumed John Falen, president of the cattlemen’s association. “Can you imagine Nevada in the most extreme conditions being without sagebrush?”

Perhaps, says, Jim Jeffress, a state wildlife biologist.

During his nearly 30 years on the job, Jeffress has seen cheatgrass spread across the desert, placing “a stranglehold on the country” and outcompeting native vegetation.

Where muted shades of sagebrush once stretched to the horizon, tawny seas of cheatgrass now roll across basin floors.

Without sagebrush, he says, there would be no wildlife. And for all its spareness, this land of basin and range supports a rich diversity of animal life, from shrews and hares to mule deer and bighorn sheep.

Cheatgrass greens up in the spring, when both cattle and wildlife will eat it, but for much of the year it is virtually unpalatable, Jeffress said. Resembling a dried-up, midget wheat strain, cheatgrass soaks up the nitrogen in the soil, is poor wildlife cover, and, most ominously, burns beautifully.

“You have this dry fuel base; it’s burning the country up,” Jeffress lamented.

Driving through the Denio fire area, northwest of Winnemucca, he stopped at an expanse of basin floor that earlier this summer was dotted with sagebrush. No more. It was as barren as a Southern California beach, its naked soil rippled by the winds.

Then he steered his jeep up into the Pine Forest Range, through an area that had been abundant with wildlife, including quail, mule deer, pronghorn antelope and sage grouse. It looked like a sooty moonscape.

“Groceries are kind of spare around here,” he said. Since the fires, he has seen little life in these 6,700-foot highlands, though on this day a small herd of antelope trotted into view, nibbling on a few isolated green patches of grass that escaped the inferno.

Harsh Winter Could Kill a Lot of Wildlife

Aerial and hand seeding will be done in the area to encourage regrowth. Also, part of the range was untouched by the fire. Still, when animals head down to the basin floor to escape bad winter weather, there will be little for them. And Jeffress’ division does not intend to put out any food.

If it’s a harsh winter, animal and bird populations will suffer. And if cheatgrass overtakes the burn areas, they will suffer even more.

While cattlemen argue that more spring grazing would help keep the cheatgrass under control, scientist Young is not sure of the answer.

Researchers have yet to develop a native grass strain that competes well with cheatgrass at the seedling stage. So in the meantime, Young says the best that can be done is to sow exotic perennial grasses such as crested wheat, which provides food for livestock and doesn’t burn as readily as cheatgrass.

“It’s an ecological Band-Aid,” he said.