More Cows To Improve Rangelands?

Morning Edition:

Conventional wisdom tells you that if ranchland ground has less grass, the problem is too many cows. But that's not always the case. It depends on how you manage them, if you make sure they keep moving.
"Plants actually respond to grazing. It actually stimulates growth in some ways," said William Burnidge, an ecologist with the Nature Conservancy. Burnidge runs the Conservancy's Colorado grassland program, which includes a 14,000-acre nature preserve and working commercial cattle ranch, the Fox ranch...
Here's how planned grazing works: A detailed chart drives every decision made on the ranch. At the beginning of each season, you plot out your moves on the map, like a Monopoly board. If the grass is better on the eastern part of your ranch, the cattle should stay there longer, but not too long. The cattle have to keep moving. The animals' hooves push on the soil, helping it to retain more rainfall.
The most common word tied to the planned grazing movement is "mimicry," as in mimicking the wild herds of large mammals that used to move across the Great Plains in tightly herded packs.
"You're only ever approximating what wild animals did when there weren't any people or fences to tell them what to do," Burnidge said. "But it's reasonable to think that they tried to stay on the forage that was best for them at the time."
What makes the Fox Ranch unique is its approach to documentation. The idea of planned grazing isn't new, but the Nature Conservancy wants evidence that it works before telling other ranchers to try it out.
The godfather of this grazing technique is Allan Savory, the creator of a few organizations that tout the ability of these methods to restore grasslands and pull ranchers across the world out of poverty. If his name sounds familiar you might have seen his TED talk from earlier this year. The video went viral, currently at almost a half-million views, and introduced a whole new audience to the concept of holistic, or planned, grazing.

Sounds crazy to me, but maybe the counter-intuitive strategy might work.  On the other hand, here's a story about New Mexico's grasslands turning into desert.