All following photos in the Poison Creek allotment in Owyhee County Jarbidge BLM lands.
Slickspot peppergrass is an imperiled plant of the sagebrush biome found only in southwestern Idaho.
It's habitat is being destroyed by public lands livestock grazing and trampling impacts. It grows in
small, bare soil mini-playa areas in a sagebrush matrix.
Cattle trampling destroys the fragile smooth surface and layers of the slickspot. The smooth
surface also often contains a protective microbiotic crust layer with lichen components. This trampling
damage makes the slickspot susceptible to weed and cheatgrass invasion. Here, alien weedy clasping pepperweed
and bur buttercup invaders are shown.
Biologists who have conducted long-term studies of slickspot peppergrass have also found that cattle trampling
buries slickspot peppergrass seeds too deep to germinate, and the plant then is eliminated from slickspots..
This photo shows typical trampling damage to a slickspot.
BLM post-fire seeding of large hybridized grasses for cattle food also destroys slickspots by running heavy
equipment over them and seeding cattle food grasses densely. BLM also allows grazing to resume in burned lands far
too soon for recovery of species.
Water pipelines are ripped across sagebrush habitats to intensify damaging cattle use. This causes new
destruction and loss of slickspots as well as other native flowers that are required by the insects that
pollinate slickspot peppergrass.
a LEPA plant that barely escaped The Half Ton Beast
The villains ... cattle manure also smothers slickspot surfaces and releases nutrients that cause weeds to thrive ... these slickspots have been invaded by weeds, and much-trampled ...
resulting in long-term loss of habitat.
