This can be healthy up to a point, creating fire breaks that reduce the damage of future fires, says Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University.
It was a time of drought, which increased tensions on the rangeland.
The Halversons are one of four families in Montana behind a new effort called the Montana Grasslands Carbon Initiative, which seeks to pay ranchers to fight climate change by letting the grasses grow tall across their rangelands.
But now the great prairies had all been overgrazed or carved into farms; there was little suitable rangeland left to occupy.
So much good rangeland unharnessed by wire fencing the Flying U boys had not seen for many a day.
Two by two the riders, mere moving dots at first against a monotone of the rangeland, took form as they neared the common center.
It was getting dark when Ida Mary finally announced jubilantly that someone was coming from the direction of the rangeland.
It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was doing something unbusiness-like and foolish.
To Tom that seemed fair enough,––a give-and-take game of the rangeland.