News Plants

Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush

Highly flammable cheatgrass and similar nonnative plants dominate one-fifth of the Great Basin

Cheatgrass

Cheatgrass (pictured) is invading sagebrush rangelands in the West, choking out native plants and causing more frequent wildfires.

Jaepil Cho, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

By Brianna Randall

No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is called cheatgrass because it dries out earlier than native plants, shortchanging wildlife and livestock in search of nutritious food.