In the summer of 2015, a wildfire scorched 280,000 acres along the border of Idaho and Oregon. The spark came from lightning. The tinder came from cheatgrass, an invasive plant from Asia whose dry, straw-like stalks are almost too perfect as kindling.
“After cheatgrass invades,” says Matthew Germino, an ecologist at the United States Geological Survey, “spaces are much more prone to wildfires.” And cheatgrass has been an enormously successful invader, crowding out native plants and leading to ever more and bigger wildfires. [...]
Until now, no one has tried to use bacteria to tip the entire complex ecology of Western rangelands. Crop fields are relatively simple; they’re monocultures. And the soil bacteria that microbiologists know the most about tends to be soil bacteria in crop fields. “There’s a huge area of semi-arid rangeland and it’s not been studied nearly as well,” says Germino. He’s not sure if the bacteria will work on rangelands, but that’s the whole point of doing the experiment. [...]
If the bacteria works and cheatgrass goes away and wildfires die down, another set of consequences come into play. One of the casualties of frequent wildfires is the greater sage grouse, a bird that has been a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. If things get worse for the sage grouse, a listing could close off its habitats to grazing or recreation, which are common in rangelands. “It would greatly decrease the ability for humans to work in these rangelands,” says Germino. These tiny bacteria can have a big effect on land in the West.
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