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Courtesy Photo/Image
Three diverters, spaced appropriately on a range road.
(click to enlarge photo)
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Road erosion on rangeland and pasture roads in the West is a challenge many ranchers deal with. Robert Kilian, Area Range Management Specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Miles City, Mont. wanted to come up with a solution. He says, “Road erosion on rangelands has been a pet peeve of mine for years, and there’s really been no guidance for landowners on what to do about it.” Instead, landowners often have to fix the road annually, or they just move a portion of the road over to go around the eroded gullies. He adds that weed establishment tends to increase in areas where roads have become degraded. Thus, Kilian began to visit with ranchers about coming up with a solution. He wrote a grant in 2006 to receive funding from the Montana GLCI to demonstrate rubber water diverters as an alternative to minimize rangeland road erosion. Kilian explains that rubber conveyer belting is used in strips 15 inches wide and 16 feet long. Each strip is mounted to a treated 2x4 board, a trench is made across the road at an 11 degree angle and the belting is buried so 1-1/2 to 2 inches remains out of the ground and help divert water across the road. These diverters are placed about every 80-100 feet depending on slope, along the road where erosion occurs. On the first ranch where Kilian tested the practice, about 10 rubber water diverters were installed along 1,000 feet of road that had about 4-1/2 percent slope. Kilian reports that the rancher was repairing that stretch of road annually to mitigate the impacts of runoff, but since the diverters were installed the road has remained stable and no maintenance has been needed. “This equates to not only a time savings but a financial savings as well for the rancher,” says Kilian. He adds, “The diverters have worked well so far, and the beauty of them is that you can drive over them and barely know that they are there,” says Kilian. Kilian says he’s seen similar rubber water diverters used by the US Park Service and in other states. “They are not new, but NRCS hasn’t pursued them as a conservation practice for pasture and rangeland roads,” says Kilian. He adds, “Our goal is to test this practice and then get it written up and included in our Field Office Technical Guide as an approved practice. And, eventually we hope it may be an approved cost-share practice, because installing these diverters can be fairly expensive.” Kilian has worked with another rancher on installing the diverters on about 2,000 feet of road that had erosion problems. He says they are now waiting for a thunderstorm to test how well it will work.
Kindra Gordon writes for the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative. For more information about the rubber water diverters, contact Robert Kilian in Miles City, MT at 406-232-7905 ext. 114 or e-mail Robert.kilian@mt.usda.gov. For more about GLCI visit www.glci.org. Reprinted with permission from the Sept./Oct. GLCI News.
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