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FARM & RANCH
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
NOVEMBER 2020
New mantra for battling eastern red cedar
Expert urges state’s farmers, ranchers to be more proactive
collapse” from a man- agement and utility standpoint. Current recommen- dations call for a more proactive approach. Twidwell is a University of Nebraska-Lincoln as- sociate professor in rangeland and fire ecology and was a pre- senter in a Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition Traveling Road Show, with stops from Bloomfield in northeast Nebraska, Taylor and Thedford in the central Sandhills and Imperial in the southwest corner of the state. The coalition is made up of ranch- ers and landowners, and the road show was also sponsored by UNL Extension, Nebraska Cattlemen and Sandhills Task Force. Shelly Kelly, a ranch- er near Broken Bow, is the executive direc- tor of Sandhills Task Force, a non-profit or- ganization with vested interest in preserving and enhancing the vi- tality of the Sandhills and ranching profit- ability. “We were the first organization (sev- en to eight years ago) that was working with landowners on low infestations lev- els” of cedar trees in Nebraska, and “Dirac’s research really backs up our approach,” Kelly said. When tree numbers and seed production are at low levels, “we can clear cedars and it only costs $10 to $40 per acre,” and “you don’t have nearly the regrowth.” However, “heavier infestations
eastern red cedar in- festation — light in some areas, more seri- ous in others. The “core” is any area of grazing land that is not infested with the broad, dense evergreens that can grow over 40-feet tall and form impenetrable thickets. “Ranchers are busy and the old guid- ance used to be that we would wait ‘til (ce- dars were) a serious problem. That doesn’t work well long-term,” Twidwell said. Let it go long enough, “large- scale rangelands
By GEORGE HAWS For The North Platte Telegraph
The sun was high in the sky on Nov. 11 as Dirac Twidwell drove through the Sandhills on his way to Thedford. It was one of several stops that week, on a “road show” across the state, ral- lying the ranching community with what he called a new man- tra: “Protect the core, defend the core and grow the core.” As he drove the two-lane highway, Twidwell paid close at- tention to the level of
Diane Wetzel / The North Platte Telegraph Volunteers monitor a prescribed hillside fire on April 8, 2014, as part of a controlled burn at Box Elder Canyon south of North Platte. The Loess Canyon Rangeland Alliance worked with property owner Rich Bringelson to burn 220 acres to clear the grazing land of eastern red cedar trees.
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