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High winds continue in the Great Plains, rancher faced with soil erosion issues

A Nebraska Sandhills rancher says high winds across the Great Plains have created grazing challenges she’s never dealt with before.

Jaclyn Wilson of Lakeside tells Brownfield says wind and drought have created erosion issues.  “We’ve got sand drifts, especially over on the background lot, but dad has talked about (it) and not seeing it in ages. That’s something new.  We’re going to have to run a blade on the outside of our bunks to remove the sand drifts.  That’s something we’ve never seen.”

She says she’s restoring grasslands through her pasture rotation program. “We’ve really worked on the quality of vegetation over the years, especially for instances like this year where all of a sudden have a lot of erosion.  We’re trying to get rushes or slough grass down as fast as we can (and) putting cattle in for some compaction there to hopefully prevent any further erosion.”

Wilson says recent rainfall has brought much needed relief but high winds have continued this week. “There was a warning that went off in the middle of the night that we were getting 80 miles per hour winds going through,” she says. “These sustained, unprecedented, large strong winds are completely unusual for this time of year, and we’ve had it all spring.” 

Wilson made her comments on Brownfield’s latest roundtable about the 2022 Drought in the Great Plains