Developments in Brief : Plant Blight Strips Rangeland in Utah

A mysterious blight has stripped more than 1 million acres of Utah rangelands and now is beginning to affect thousands of acres of shrubbery in neighboring states, Utah State University researchers say.

They fear that the botanical scourge may cause game animals, birds and other wildlife dependent on the vegetation to die out.

USU range ecologist David A. Pyke said the shrubs most affected by the mysterious blight are sagebrush, shade-scale, bitter brush, four-wing salt bush, greasewood and winter fat.

Scientists began to notice the disappearance of shrubs in some small areas in 1983, but the condition had significantly worsened by mid-1985.

“Since then, the shrubs have continued to disappear at an alarming rate. Ordinarily, healthy young shrubs replace the old, dying ones, but in these areas there does not appear to be any young plants to take the place of the old ones,” Pyke said.

He said scientists have not found the reason for the shrubs’ disappearance, but speculate that the cause may be a disease caused by fungi; an outbreak of grasshoppers, crickets or other insects, or the rising water table caused by heavy rainfall the last several years, which may be damaging the shrubs’ roots.

“The strange thing is that the shrubs look good above the ground and then they suddenly wilt, droop, lose their leaves and die,” Pyke said. “If the shrubs continue to disappear, it will have a tremendous impact on the state’s cattle and sheep ranches and on wildlife in general.”