As record wildfires in the Texas Panhandle finally begin to die down, ranchers are still scrambling to keep their remaining cattle fed after blazes tore through vast swaths of grazing land.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire, 74% contained as of Thursday, has scorched over 1 million acres of land in the heart of Texas cattle country. Thousands of cows, horses and other livestock have died as some farmers have seen their entire operation burn to the ground.
As firefighters make headway in containing the blaze, ranchers are turning their attention to the long road ahead to recovery. Incinerated grasslands and hay supplies have left farmers with few options to feed their livestock.
"There's just nothing left there for them to eat," Jana Hance, a relief coordinator based in Montana, told local paper Great Falls Tribune. "It all burned."
As farmers from neighboring states rally to provide hay donations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is offering assistance including indemnity payments and low-interest loans to purchase feed. The agency is also opening up some acres under the Conservation Reserve Program to provide emergency grazing options for ranchers affected by fires.
Burned grasslands should recover "fairly quickly," Karen Hickman, grassland ecologist at Oklahoma State University and president of the Society for Range Management, wrote in a blog post. Grasses are alive during the winter and only "the dead part of the plants above ground burned."
"These are really resilient ecosystems," she wrote. "But the immediate concern in the coming weeks is for cattle producers to find ways to feed and water their livestock while the rangeland’s native plants regrow.”
