I know what you mean, one of my studies in grad school (05-06) documented cedar encroachment across the hill country and central Texas using historic images starting in the 1960's. It was well documented as encroachment then and still continues. Thanks for the comment!

the springs generally surge for a short while after deforesting an area, but long term removing the ancient junipers leads to diminished spring flow. man has become very arrogant thinking we are smarter than nature. there are 5 foot diameter junipers - google juniper growth and age estimates - these are hundreds and hundreds of years old. THINK THE CEDARS OF LEBANON

There are a lot of other people who say the same thing, that springs and water storage increased post removal. One of the most well known examples was on a place in Johnson City called Bamberger Ranch (www.bambergerranch.org) Great story, check out the website. Another study called the Leon River Restoration project studied water runoff pre and post removal had less conclusive results. Thanks for the comment, I bet that's an incredible place to visit in Kerville!

Causation/Correlation. Bamberger bought that ranch when a major drought was ending with the rainfall peaking in the 90s. The springs are dry there today. I know because I live just a few miles from there.

Thanks for the kind comment! Great youtube handle!

Cedar (Juniperus ashei) is great for a ton of things, walking sticks are no exception!

I appreciate the kind comment, so glad you found it interesting!

I do the same thing! It must have been quite a different site in many places in the Hill Country. South Texas has a similar story, while some areas were dominated by brush historically, many of the areas dominated by brush today were documented as grasslands with grass as high as the stirrups on a saddle. There is a unique area inside of Fort Hood called the impact zone that has little grazing pressure and a frequent fire regime. There are large hills covered only in grass and very few trees, quite a site. Also check out the Bamberger Ranch website, much of that ranch near Johnson City has been restored over time.

Shoal Creek is a fault line running north-south thru Travis County and Austin, specifically. Everything to the west of Shoal Creek has rocky soil with a lot of shelf-limestone plates. It's great for that hike & bike trail. But NW Hills and all those western neighborhoods must have a lot of good soil brought in for lawns. East of the Shoal Creek (basically Lamar Blvd), the soils are much better - black, rich and were fertile meadows for eons.

Very true, in fact historic fire regimes invigorated grasslands by removing dead/detritus material and woody plants from rangelands. Fire keeps grasslands, grasslands.....

@@LandownerTVA PRIME CASE OF THIS IS IN THE KANSAS FLINT HILLS AREA!!

It's one of my favorite places on earth, very beautiful I agree. I appreciate your comment!

Thanks for the kind comment! I'd love to hear more about those studies, feel free to link to them. What was your PhD work on?

@@LandownerTV I'd have to do some digging to see what was published from them. I just remember talking to a few of the students working on them and their faculty advisors. They had several separate pastures in the study. Some were left completely alone. others they were doing controlled burns to replicate what would have been 100 years ago when grass fire weren't controlled. One of the faculty advisors had told me back then (100+ years ago) the ashe junipers were limited to the small canyons and creek beds and that natural fires would burn them out of everywhere else. The oaks and other trees could survive the grass fires. My PhD work involved using canopy texture patterns as an alternative method of land cover detection.

As a 4th generation native Texan, I implore you NOT to use your HYDRO-AXE!! our ground water (aquifers) are being drained by all of the fracking that's been going on (and causing more frequent and stronger earthquakes). As I was growing up in Central Texas, I never heard of earthquakes in Texas. They were that rare! The dirty fracking water is being pumped back into the ground, thus contaminating the aquifers. We need to conserve all of the ground water we can because if our aquifers run dry or become contaminated beyond use, we are in BIG trouble!

@@terrywall3287 Haha. It doesn’t use water. It’s hydraulic, they just call it Hydro-axe. It’s basically a big chipper on the front of a skid steer. In my experience the layers of mulch it creates helps recharge the aquifer.

@atomicsmith Pardon me for not knowing about different large machinery. It was a logical mistake given that the prefix of "hydro" routinely means water, i.e., "hydroelectric." BTW, I have seen high-pressure water systems that deliver water under such high pressure that it can cut wood, so it was a natural assumption on my part.

@@terrywall3287 You don't know shit about fracking, it doesn't contaminate aquifers.

@@bobbygetsbanned6049That’s right Bobby! And even if it did, man’s gotta make a liven! 😊

you actually can use juniper berries for food in a couple ways that I've found. If making gin isn't your thing (lol), you can wash and dry the berries and grind them up to flavor meats. Smoked or dried meat flavored with juniper is very tasty, I think. It's a potent flavor so it doesn't take much. I've also used the ground berries to flavor game stews. The dusty coating on the outside of the juniper berry is actually yeast bacteria! Which means that you can use them to make sourdough starter! Plop a few berries in a flour/water mixture like usual, feed it for a few days, and you've got yourself a potent sourdough starter.

From what I’ve seen, huisache is mostly coming up on land that was cleared for pasture decades ago and has since been allowed to go ungrazed. One of the biggest mistakes some ranchers made was clearing pastures completely instead of leaving a few oak stands. The oaks play a vital role in the water cycle, and without them huisache is the only thing that can survive. Most land owners aren’t willing to invest the time and money to reestablish oaks…

That's a great historical perspective, thanks for sharing! I didn't know a lot of that but I was aware the vast sheep and goat operations operating in the hill country. I very much appreciate your comment!

Sounds incredible, I've traveled through that area a few times and can't wait to get back. Thanks for the comment!

Thank you for the kind comment!

It's interesting how some people really react to it and some, such as myself, don't have issues. I'm surrounded by them my whole life and rarely have an allergy attack. Not that I can test it, but I'm curious about how much it would help to consume tea made from the nettles or to do a steam of them.

The same thing happened to me when I first moved to Austin. I had sinus infections, fever, sneezing, runny eyes for 2weeks and after that I never had it again because I got immune to it

@@bunnywhite6513 Then why don't you just shup up with your opinion on this disease of a plant. If you don't know the torture people go through every year because of this damn juniper pollen then you need to shut it. This disease of a tree is overgrown and out competes other native vegetation and trees because these scummy "land owner" corporations don't care about the land. When it is all disrupted this worthless tree outcompetes everything else and sucks up all the water. This is now an economic and public health issue. How much money is lost in productivity because people get sick over this poison tree? Just because it doesn't affect you and they are "pretty to look at it" doesn't mean they are not a problem.

I grew up in East Texas too. Right in the middle of the Piney Woods. I also have a Fungus growing in my lungs. You guessed it, Pinewood Fungus. I love east Texas. Ever hear of Weldon, Texas?

Have to agree. The pollen is capable of closing my throat !

You're lucky to be able to live out there, I'm jealous, that's a great area. Thanks for the comment!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I love hearing that!

Hey Elizabeth, thanks for commenting. You’re comment sounds a bit argumentative although we’re saying the same thing. I’m certainly speaking about Blueberry Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei) as I mention that subspecies specifically in the first 30 seconds of the video. I never said they ONLY occur inside canyons, I say they were mostly confined to the canyonlands and steep hillsides, which is thought to be true. The BaIcones Canyonlands run the length of the Balcones Escarpment and even have an identically named wildlife refuge. I would not speak in absolutes as you’re indicating. Perhaps I should have better clarified though, that when I speak about the Texas Hill Country I’m speaking to a broad region of central Texas (which I showed on a map) composing of about 25 counties which together represent a number of varying ecological sites each of which respond differently to disturbance. Certainly, fire frequency would have varied across the entire area. I also mention this landscape as dynamic and I’m quite familiar with the work of Fred Smeins as he was my major professor in graduate school at Texas A&M where I studied “Cedar” encroachment on the Leon River Restoration Project. It is difficult to pack all of this information into a short video that’s digestible to the average viewer. I’m sure you can appreciate given you wrote a book about them. In hindsight, I can always look at ways I can improve how I communicate some of these facts so I appreciate your feedback. Although, I would argue that nothing is materially incorrect. I wish you the best and look forward to interacting with you again.

Sorry for sounding like I was attacking you--I should have started by saying this was a great video!! I just wanted to point out a few things and was caught between zoom meetings. The reason I mentioned ERC is people call all junipers in Texas and beyond "cedars." I keep trying to get people to use a more site specific common name. I've even decided to drop the word "cedar" and start calling junipers growing on limestone karst country ""limestone junipers." These can include Ashe Juniper, J. ovata, the J.asheixJ.ovata hybrid variations (more tree-like--doesn't start off as multi-trunk bush), and J. pinchotti. You said "cedar" was not documented to be part of those landscapes outside of those canyonlands back then. You said they were mostly confined to creeks and Canyonlands. You did not mention steep hillsides (that is unfortunate). BUT...by canyonlands, did you mean the entire eastern half of the EP? Or did you mean canyons? As for fire every 3-5 years...I strongly disagree. There is still no tangible evidence. I managed some land outside of Dripping springs about 20 years ago. There was a n area with healthy soils. The grass was all KR and being regularly grazed. We removed every woody plant growing up and added some compost amendments here and there. After 20 years of no grazing, fire, or mowing -- no woody plants have spread into this area, even though they srped everywhere else. Healthy soil with dense, tall grass, megafauna, microbes, etc.---that's what sustained grasslands and kept out woody plants for longer periods of time. With holistic grazing, I believe healthy grasslands on limestone can thrive for 20-30 years before fire is needed.

​@@LandownerTV At 4:02 said Cedars were "not documented to be apart of landscapes outside of canyon lands". Yet there are many explorer notes which contradict your statement, many in the book Cedars Wanted Dead or Alive, a good read. I think another reason they are spreading so quickly is they are the only plants that can grow on our highly degraded soils.

​@@elizabethmcgreevy Hey Elizabeth, you’re right, I should’ve said it wasn’t a major part of the landscape as opposed to not part of the landscapes. I try to make these videos as accurate as possible, but it can be difficult to get every phrase correct even when I script it properly. Especially when I’m still not very confident in front of the camera. As for fire frequency I appreciate the fact that you strongly disagree, in fact there is still argument in research circles about what the frequency fire was historically. There is no tangible evidence because there was no documentation from pre-European settlement. We can only look at how these landscapes react to fire now and compare them to the best documentation available from the time of the first Spanish and other European settlers, we can then try to deduce what frequency of fire could have contributed to what they saw. I’ve heard your book references some of these accounts so I look forward to reading it. I did say every 3-5 years and admittedly that would have been on the more open areas of the hill country and not the steep canyon lands. I specified that this was the frequency of rangelands not specifically any part of the hill country, I should have elaborated much more here. However, it is generally believed that “frequent” fires maintained the grasslands of the Edwards plateau. Early researchers did speculate that it occurred in 20-30 year intervals to prevent woody encroachment but later researchers put it at occurring at

Fire at whatever the frequency certainly played a role in keeping the brush at bay. The lack of fire now is allowing the brush including all species of cedar to be the dominate weed and in time will grow into a situation where Texas will be like California where we have massive uncontrollable fires causing much damage. This is already happening but I believe will be much worse in time. I also believe that when the large fires do happen that the landscape will be mostly bare as the cedars will be killed but there is not much else to take over so the process will repeat. This is a problem not limited to the hill country as it is a problem here in north Texas also.

In the DFW area during that time of year, they show a satellite view of the pollen blowing up here from the hill country for all the allergy sufferers locally during the weather broadcast portion of the news.

That's interesting, I never knew it had so many uses. I bet that's a great business, people pay you to remove it and you can make money on the back end with products. Brilliant! Thanks for the comment.

So true!

@@LandownerTV "reading their little newspapers..." made me LOL, however. Good topic well-delivered! 🐦‍⬛🦉

Thanks for the comment, That's a good point, I'm not speaking about every single area in Central Texas. Certainly there were areas covered in oaks all over the place.

I appreciate your comment! Also very good point about Cedar having a value in building and holding soil when herbaceous vegetation is gone. An interesting fact is that a couple of studies out of Texas A&M have found that cedar can build soil as fast or faster as grassland communities. Unfortunately, much can be washed away on slopes or areas with little to no ground cover.

Thank you, so glad you got value from the video!

They weren't all Hispanic either. Many cedar choppers in central Texas were Czech and German immigrants like my ancestors. For a time the term "cedar chopper" was a slur used to refer to country people with little education and few technical skills, kind of like you might use hillbilly, but it was a living for many back in those days.

Thank you for commenting, very glad you enjoyed it!

You're welcome, I appreciate your comment!

Check out Lockhardt

Glad you think so!

Thank you! I appreciate the comment!

That's a beautiful area what county are you in?

I am a native Texan, you nailed that one. Thanks for your kind comment, I love hearing if people enjoyed the video!

Glad you enjoyed the video!

Overgrazing threatened the topsoil, which causes erosion. Heathy stands of grass will compete against cedar, supporting wildfires that help control the cedars;

@@timothykeith1367 Yes! Unfortunately most ranchers in the state of Texas know next to nothing about rangland ecology, at least where I'm from. Large parks in the state could be a valuable resource not only for native plants and wildlife but as a means of teaching and increasing awareness of the environment. Unfortunately, for as big as the state is, there are very few large of these natural preserves outside of the west. Most land is privately owned. That's part of the reason why most Texans see the land as just another resource to exploit, not to preserve or improve.

You're right, but the forests were small and not very dense generally.

@@JurisNaturalism1776Yes, areas of old growth cedar differ greatly fron stands of young cedar. Anyother factor to consider is the drop in water tables and aquifers. Generally they have been much higher. The future of these water tables and aquifers in the Hill County is pretty grim. Hundreds of residential neighborhoods are being built around the hill country. Many by out of state and even foreigb developers. There is no assesent of the ecological impact or the impact on already existing communities. These are large, densely built neighborhoods with no access to municipal water so every house has a well and septic.

Where did he say *only* grass and canyonlands?

Thanks for the comment, I'm so glad you found it helpful

If you cut them at the base, they don't grow back. I used to cut cedar.

There are 2 species of cedar. Redberry will grow back after being cut. Blueberry will not.

In f.b.g

Great eyes, that is old baldy shown from Garner. I took that picture on a family trip. I wish I was related to the 2Morrow ranch but that’s just a coincidental name. It’s an amazing area and I bet it’s incredible to have a place out there. Thanks for the comment!

Yep.

Very glad you enjoyed it!

Hey Zach! Thanks for the comment, I love hearing that you're looking to learn more about land management. There are a ton of great resources for grazing management online. Here are a few you can start with. agrilife.org/sanangelo/files/2017/08/Grazing-Systems-for-Goats-on-Small-Acreage-1of2-Jim-Muir-2.pdf texnat.tamu.edu/about/ranchers-reference-guide/grazing-management/ agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/educational-materials/ agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/about/district-offices-regional-centers/ - you can check here for local advice www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/landuse/rangepasture/ Here is a GREAT book on brush management. www.tamupress.com/book/9781585443550/brush-management/ Let me know if you have any more questions. Michael

Salt cedar is another invasive plant seen in environments that are a bit dryer usually.

The species is called Blueberry Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei), it is a juniper. Most people know it as cedar, that's why I refer to it that way in the title of the video.

Thanks for the big compliment!

Where might one find "ceder?"

We need more native grasses

Also cedar trees block native grasses from getting sunlight

It's dry because there are millions of people sucking water out of the aquifer. The dryness has absolutely nothing to do with the Junipers and everything to do with anthropogenic changes to the central Texas environment.

@@ViragoRiveragreed!

@@ViragoRiverthat’s not true. When cedar and mesquite were removed from waterways and creeks the water came back. They also are very flammable. One spark the whole “forest” of cedar will go up in flames. I wouldn’t want cedar anywhere near my ranch

Yes they are, you're correct!

Ignorant comment.

Thanks for commenting! You are right, cedar has it's place and provides a ton benefits. Including providing shelter for a number of species of wildlife, cover even when areas have been overgrazed, and it's been shown to produce soil at a higher rate than some grasslands. Getting rid of it is not a solution because it's native, has it's place, and has been here for a long long time. Even those anecdotes are scratching the surface of the benefits it can provide, you may have inspired me to make a video specifically outlining it's benefits. The reality though is that it is invasive and it can certainly take over a field in 10 years. This is not the case in every field nor does it happen in every instance, it's just a possibility that in can and does. There is a TON of research to support this, including the research I conducted in my master's thesis that tracked cedar invasion in the Texas Hill Country on the Leon River Restoration Project. There is also research around this topic performed on the Agrilife Research Station in Sonora, TX and even a more recent study I link to below here. This study called "Characterizing the encroachment of juniper forests into sub-humid and semi-arid prairies from 1984 to 2010 using PALSAR and Landsat data" shows that 65% of the Juniper Forests they observed were not present 15 years before.... Check it out. (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0034425717305680).

@@LandownerTV I suppose that what I meant by "it isn't invasive," is that it is native. Unfortunately, I cannot read most of that study due to not being able to sign in with (I am assuming) a college institution login. But even in the beginning and the conclusion, it is cited that the topic of cedar (or rather juniper, we just call it cedar colloquially) is quite contested. And 40km^2 is not rally that much, based on it's coverage. I already stated that it DOES take over. It is just that people aroynd the Edwards plateau make it out like in 10 years your whole field will be covered. Which is just silly. As I stated prior, the thing that juniper does for us (besides feed and home many many animals) is the same as it's downfall. It drops needles (again, not sure if this is the correct term) and kills off grasses. However, in doing so, it provides soil. But, this is a catch 22 often, as if there is no grass to hold on to that soil, it simply is washed away by rain, and only benefits creeks and lowlying area. My point being, when cultivated in tandem with a selection of native prarie grasses, it can actually help to build soil, along with the grasses. Resulting in a lush prarie, rather than just a rocky hilltop. 🤣 I just think that it's place is misunderstood, and it has been unduely vilified. Especially around here. (centex area) It does plenty of GOOD as well, and I think that our suppression of fires, while good for us and animal populations) have had adverse affect. If grasslands containing juniper were allowed to burn (say, if we didn't live here) I think that the balance would remain far more in order. It is a very ignitable tree. And the fires would cull it and stunt it's growth. Point being, it is only really invasive because we live near it, and try to prevent it burning all our houses down. 🤣 Thusly, we must manage both it and the grass in the grasslands with quite a bit more vigor, same as we cull deer, to keep it's rapid expansion from hurting native species as well as itself. Idk, my 2c. I actually spent off and on a year or two looking into this pseudo-myth. And while I don't have a degree, let alone a masters...I still think that due to my exposure and lots of time dedicated to researching and questioning the "truths" about juniper that I have a "better than average" knowledge and thusly, take. But, I could always be wrong. It happens every day. I just think that the standard teachings both loosely in school, and colloquially, are quite flawed. Please do make a "benefits of juniper," video. I would be quite interested.

Absolutely! I’d be happy to help you out, feel free to send me an email at Michael@LandAssociation.org

I sent you an email exactly the way you spelled it. Let me know of you have any info. Thank you in advance! Best wishes! 😊

Hey there J Sixx! I’d be happy to help you out. Feel free to shoot me an email at Michael@landassociation.org