What are advantages and disadvantages to overgrazing?

Answer 1

Ovegrazing is allowing an animal to come back to an area to graze before it has fully recovered.

There is nothing advantageous to overgrazing in terms of pasture productivity. However, in terms of wildlife populations, it's a way (however cruel) of managing large populations of large herbivores, and encourages them to move on to other potential food sources instead of staying in one place like what is commonly done with domestic herbivores.

Thus, this leaves us with a lengthy (and albeit incomplete) list of the disadvantages of overgrazing:

• Decrease in productivity of the pasture, leading to desertification and eventually turn the pasture into a dirt lot very similar to a feedlot
• Increase in possibility of soil erosion
• Plant numbers decline and eventually die off, leaving, eventually, little to no food for animals
• Soil nutrient quality declines, leading to lower overall productivity of the range or pasture
• No food for animals from the pasture lead to poorer productivty of the animals, which leads to starvation then eventually death from starvation.

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