How The Desert Blooms

A desert looks dead, but it has life that can bloom when the conditions are "right." Most deserts have rainfall patterns that come only two or three times a year, and then it comes VERY intensely. Thunderstorms give rains to the desert, and they only rain in parts of a very large expanse of land. The most important factor for life to bloom in the desert is to have the rain soak quickly and deeply into the ground so that it will not evaporate as soon as the sun comes out after the storm. When the water is in the soil, it may then come back out on the surface in springs, keeping the soil wet most of the year. When we have springs like this, the green area is sometimes called an "oasis."

In Nevada, in the Great Basin of the United States, most of the springs have dried up after the essential life that helped the water soak into the soil was disrupted by humans. They did not understand how the many species worked together to help the desert bloom. We are now beginning to learn how important the many species are and to understand better how they work together.

Many years ago cattle disrupted the ecosystem, and caused the desert to lose its health. People did not understand how to use the cattle to help the ecosystem, and the problems began because of people. The cattle just acted like cattle, and were not the real cause of the problems. Now we can let the cattle act like cattle, but we can make it easy for them to do helpful things for keeping the desert healthy. Then the desert becomes a very large oasis.

Some of our friends, Tony and Jerrie Tipton, are cattle people who work with the US Bureau of Land Management to bring health back to the desert. The pictures show some of the examples of how cattle can be used to help the desert bloom. In one area that is managed by the BLM they brought in cattle, hay and water. There was no grass for the cattle to eat or water for them to drink. However, when they were allowed to be helpful, the cattle brought life back into the desert.