This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In grasslands across the American West, four-legged fire prevention crews are busy at work, helping keep wildfire risk under control. These cattle, goats and sheep stomp down tall grasses as they munch their way through plants that could otherwise burn, lowering the risk of catastrophic fires in the process.
When livestock are intentionally used for wildfire control like this, the practice is known as targeted grazing. And it's gaining attention as severe wildfire seasons push firefighters and public land budgets to the brink. Strategically removing trees, shrubs and grasses can help alter the trajectory of future wildfires, but it is complex and expensive work that often involves intentional burning, herbicides and heavy machinery to thin forests or create fuel breaks.
Livestock can do some of this work instead, simply by grazing in the right places. Current leaders of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are pushing for more targeted grazing in national forests and on other public lands as part of the 2025 Grazing Action Plan and its accompanying directives.
As rangeland scientists who study how to effectively use livestock grazing to manage wildfire fuels and invasive plants, we see potential but also limitations to this strategy. Targeted pyrograzing can help manage wildfire risk well in certain contexts. Livestock do not eat or trample large woody trees, but most wildfires burn in grass and shrublands that livestock can help maintain.
Beef cattle, for example, consumed around 600 pounds of vegetation per acre (670 kilograms per hectare) across nearly 34 million acres (nearly 14 million hectares) in California alone in 2017. In places such as Santa Clara County, California, grazing is now a formal part of wildfire management plans. The goal is not necessarily to prevent wildfire altogether but to reduce flammable vegetation enough to avoid fueling catastrophic wildfires.
Removing hazardous fuels through livestock grazing and trampling can help slow a fire's spread so firefighters can stop the fire before it enters communities or reduce its intensity so ecosystems are able to rebound afterward. In some cases, grazing can be more practical or cost-effective than other fire risk reduction methods. For example, intentional burning is dangerous where there is so much vegetation that fires would burn too hot and fast to control.
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