Officials unload sheep last month in Carson City as part of an effort to reduce weeds and create a firebreak along the western edge of Carson City. Between 800 and 900 sheep will be used to graze cheatgrass along a three-mile strip. The city pays for the transportation of the sheep to the site, and a local rancher donates the use of his sheep for the project. Photo by Cathleen Allison / Special to The Review-Journal.
Sheep go right to work last month grazing on cheatgrass.
A sheep grazes along the western edge of Carson City, eating cheatgrass as part of an effort to reduce fire fuels in the area.
CARSON CITY -- In the western hills here burned by the 2004 Waterfall Fire, officials are using a time-tested and environmentally friendly approach to protect homes from another conflagration: sheep and their healthy appetite for vegetation.
About 1,400 sheep and ewes were let loose in April on the hills, which are now green with grasses that could pose a fire danger later this summer. To the sheep, the hills are one big salad bar with cheatgrass the main item on the menu.
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So for the next few weeks the "baaa baaa" of sheep will be heard in the hills above town with the more common sounds of coyotes yipping and Canada geese honking as they fly overhead.
The animals will spend about a month on the hills, where the wild lands bump up against homes, eating the grasses and creating a firebreak.
"The purpose is not to fatten up the sheep, it's to reduce the fuels," said Juan Guzman, open-space manager for Carson City. "So instead of moving very slowly they are moved almost constantly from one place to another."
The Borda Land and Sheep Co., which historically grazed sheep up Kings Canyon in western Carson City, is providing the sheep and shepherds at no cost, Guzman said. The city paid only the cost of transporting the animals from Topaz on the Nevada-California line, he said.
The project was a complex one to put into operation because of the many agencies involved, Guzman said. The U.S. Forest Service, the Nevada Department of Wildlife, city fire officials and many others were consulted. Private landowners are also involved.
Wildlife officials wanted assurances that plantings to support the deer population in the burned-out areas would not end up as sheep feed, he said.
John McLain of Resource Concepts, Inc., a Carson City consulting firm that helped prepare the sheep grazing plan, said the sheep can perform fire control in areas too steep for mechanical equipment.
"It's kind of a natural biological process, putting the little harvesters out there," he said. "They are light of hoof and very adaptable to this. It's just another way to harvest excess biomass."
The firm is monitoring the success of the grazing effort and will report to Carson and other officials how much grass and vegetation was consumed. Areas fenced off from the sheep will be used for comparison, McLain said.
"The sheep will establish an area of reduced fuels," he said. "If fire comes, and it will return, we will have a zone of defensive space out there."
The "most wanted" of the grasses is called cheatgrass, which dries out quickly and can pose a fire danger. The grass grew in thickly after the 2004 fire.
There is a brief window in the spring when the plant is still green that it is good for forage, McLain said.
The Waterfall Fire, which started as an illegal campfire on July 14, 2004, up Kings Canyon, destroyed 17 homes and burned 8,600 acres of brush and forest. Dozens more homes were threatened while the fire burned for several days.
The city and U.S. Forest Service, with many other agencies, have spent time and money on several programs to restore the burned area, from tree plantings and grass reseeding to erosion-control projects.
JoAnne Skelly, the Carson City-Storey County extension educator of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, said use of the sheep is preferable to many people trying to control the grasses by chemical means. It's also cheaper.
"It's a very good partnership," she said. "It is really a very environmentally friendly and progressive move on the part of the city to take sheep grazing into the fuels management program."
Franklin Pemberton, community affairs officer for the Carson Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service, said that as money for fire prevention dwindles, inexpensive alternatives such as the sheep grazing project will become more important.
The key for this project is to keep the sheep moving so they eat the grasses down to a 2- to 3-inch stubble, he said.
That keeps the fire danger down while allowing the grasses to continue to grow and provide erosion control, Pemberton said.
Guzman said that when the sheep were unloaded from trucks on April 18, nearby residents came by to help guide the sheep into the hills to the west and not down into traffic in urban Carson City.
