Good to hear about the cattle. Grasslands worldwide evolved with fire and grazing. Not continuous, but cyclical as when herds large and small seek out and graze areas that have recently burned and bypass the areas waiting for the next lightning fire. The Komarek brothers from Tall Timbers showed the high correlation between the distribution of North American grasslands and areas with high lightning frequency. The study is a landmark in fire ecology. Now we know the same principals apply to huge areas in the western United States including mountain forests, chaparral, sagebrush, and pinyon juniper. Here on the northern prairies, grasslands or wetlands (basically wet grasslands) suffer the Smokey Bear Syndrome just as those habitats, with the affliction most severe on public lands, some with few large herbivores of any type, native or domesticated.
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