How hundreds of hungry cows are working to restore the Great Salt Lake’s shoreline

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — Many methods to save the Great Salt Lake have been introduced since 2022, when water levels hit record lows, but one potential solution involves hundreds of hungry cows.

The idea is that the ungulates will eat up phragmites, an invasive plant that has essentially taken over the lake’s wetlands. Not only do phragmites suck up critical water before it reaches the lake, the plant chokes out native species and animal habitat. It’s also an enormous fire hazard.

To combat phragmites, The Nature Conservancy is teaming up with ranchers to place hundreds of cows on parts of the shoreline owned by the environmental organization.

“Hopefully, sometime, the cows will just work themselves out of a job, they’ll eat all the phragmites down and we’ll get kind of a better handle on it,” said Chris Brown, director of stewardship with The Nature Conservancy.

Currently, the cows are being placed in areas overrun with phragmites. Since it’s difficult to put up fencing in wetlands, The Nature Conservancy teamed up with Utah State University to place shock collars on the cows, a sort of virtual fencing.

“I can draw lines around areas where there are phragmites and not build fences, and have the cows in those areas grazing the phragmites,” Brown said.

According to the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands , crews routinely cut, spray and burn phragmites around the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. In recent years, there’s been a significant reduction in phragmites around Farmington Bay.

To Brown, cows are another tool in restoring the native habitat of the Great Salt Lake, on which many migratory birds depend. He said other agencies are also turning to cattle to fight invasive phragmites.

Brown noted that cows appear to enjoy eating protein-rich phragmites. In contrast, the animals tend to leave native wetland plants alone.

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