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Steve Monsen Livestock’s Role in Spreading Weeds and Pinion-Juniper Steve Monsen was born into a family that had raised livestock in Sanpete County, Utah, since the 1850s. And he might have continued in his family’s profession had his father not persuaded him to attend college. Mr. Monsen then went on to earn a BS degree from Brigham Young University in botany and range science where he also pursued graduate study. He began his career with the Utah Fish and Game Department. Then in 1968 he joined the USDA Forest Service’s Intermountain Research Station (later renamed the Rocky Mountain Research Station) at Provo, Utah, where as a botanist he participated in many rangeland restoration projects. Mr. Monsen received the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Society for Range Management in 1991. He retired from the Forest Service in 2002. Cattle and sheep have grazed throughout the Great Basin, the largest of America’s deserts, since the mid-19th century. Steve Monsen explains how overgrazing by these animals has disrupted vegetational communities and their fire regimes, resulting in native vegetation vital to wildlife being replaced by a variety of noxious, toxic, or otherwise useless weeds. Recorded in August 2004. Read the edited transcript of Steve Monsen’s entire interview here. |
