Mule deer could lose half their northeast Wyoming habitat to cheatgrass without help, study says

When thin shoots of cheatgrass are the first plants to green up in the spring, mule deer might nibble the tops like any of us might idly crunch last week’s pretzels still sitting on our office desks.

Come early summer, though, that same cheatgrass turns into brown, leggy strands. At that point, mule deer want to eat it as much as we want to consume the cardboard box containing those stale pretzels. They just won’t do it.

In fact, they dislike cheatgrass so much that mule deer will avoid an area completely once it contains about 20% of the annual invasive grass, according to a study published in early September in the journal Rangeland Ecology and Management.

The study’s authors, all from the University of Wyoming, compared movement patterns from 115 GPS-collared mule deer with range map