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Reviewed by:
  • Cheatgrass: Fire and Forage on the Range
  • Christopher M. McGlone, Research Specialist
Cheatgrass: Fire and Forage on the Range. James A. Young and Charlie D. Clements. 2009. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Cloth, $44.95. ISBN: 978-0-87417-765-7. 352 pages.

Beginning with Charles Elton’s seminal work, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants (1958), many books have been written on biological invasions. Rarely, however, does a book focus on a single non-native species. The recent publication of Cheatgrass: Fire and Forage on the Range by James A. Young and Charlie D. Clements highlights the enormity of the impact cheatgrass has had on the western United States. Cheatgrass is a major invasive species, having invaded approximately two million hectares of the Great Basin Desert and Interior West (Bradley and Mustard 2005). The severe impacts of cheatgrass on indigenous plant communities, ecosystem functions, and fire regimes are well documented in nearly a century of research articles and government publications. To quote the authors, “Cheatgrass has . . . come to personify the concept of alien invasion” (p. 1). While condensed publications on cheatgrass have been written, no comprehensive work has been published to date. The release of this book is both timely and pertinent.

The book begins with a chapter of anecdotes on the history of cheatgrass invasion in the Great Basin, predominantly focused on Nevada, and the interaction of the ranching and farming community with the species. The stories include a rancher whose cattle, starving after a particularly rugged winter, survived owing to the timely germination of cheatgrass; a farmer “cheated” of his wheat crop by cheatgrass; a fire crew killed in a sagebrush blaze in a place later invaded by cheatgrass; and many more. This creates a promising start to the book. Both authors have a long history of association with the Great Basin Desert and relate numerous anecdotes throughout the book that are the high points of each chapter.

Unfortunately, these anecdotes are insufficient to sustain what is otherwise a rambling and unfocused work that is repeatedly undermined by poorly substantiated and often self-contradictory scientific claims. In the third chapter, “Preadaptation for the Great Basin,” the authors present several factual points that run contrary to published literature, yet fail to present modern research to support their statements or justify why they reject the findings of other authors. For example, the authors claim about cheatgrass that “the western edge of its natural range is the Balkan Peninsula, with perhaps adventive populations occurring as far west as Spain” (p. 40). Typically, however, the native range of cheatgrass is reported to include the western Mediterranean region of Europe and Africa. In fact, Novak and Mack (2001) discovered genotypes in the western United States with source populations from Morocco, Germany, [End Page 395] France, and Spain, all areas west of the Balkan Peninsula. Additionally, the authors cite seed and wool contamination as the main sources for cheatgrass introduction into the states and contaminated crop harvesters, immigrant farmers planting contaminated seeds from the Old World, and promiscuous burning as the causes for the species’ rapid spread. While this is likely true, no mention is made of contaminated packing straw for goods shipped from the Old World and freighted around the continent by railroads. This has been credited as the reason cheatgrass occurs in all 48 contiguous states in the United States and most of Canada (Mosley et al. 1999). While neither of these points is fatal to the book, they are typical of flaws that pervade the work.

As the book progresses, however, the authors make several assertions that are of far greater concern. The chapter on “Genetic Variation and Breeding Systems” is particularly difficult to fathom. The authors admit that research has shown cheatgrass to be self-pollinated and that multiple introductions best explain the genetic variation among cheatgrass populations. They then cite a handful of studies showing variability in winter hardiness, height, lemma pubescence, and herbicide resistance to discredit the multiple introduction theory. They conclude their discourse with the statement “molecular genetics techniques should be able to determine the existence and potential consequences of environmentally induced outcrossing in cheatgrass populations” (p. 135). Molecular evidence, however, has...

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