The relative importance of cattle grazing in subtropical grasslands: does it reduce or enhance plant biodiversity?

Summary Livestock grazing enterprises have potentially threatening effects on the conservation of plants in grassy subtropical eucalypt woodlands. Commercial levels of grazing could cause local extinctions of sensitive native species and/or reductions in abundance and species richness in native pastures. We studied the nature of grazing impacts on the diversity and composition of herbaceous plants and used a natural experiment to analyse the effects of disturbances (cattle grazing, soil disturbance, water enrichment) and environment (lithology, slope position, presence of trees) on plant community composition in eastern Australia. We sampled pastures and reserves at 191 sites over an area of 3000 ha. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to explore the relative importance of disturbance and environment in accounting for floristic variation and to examine individual species responses. From individual responses, we identified seven response groups relating to grazing. The factors analysed explained small but significant amounts of floristic variation, and there were interactions between soil disturbance, water enrichment and grazing. We explored the hypothesis that grazing increased species density at small scales but decreased it at landscape scales, due to the elimination of grazing‐sensitive species. Our data did not support the hypothesis, as there were similar numbers of species that increase with grazing (increasers) and species that decline with increasing grazing (decreasers) in the assemblage. However, there were more native decreasers and more exotic increasers in the assemblage. Synthesis and applications. For land managers to retain plant diversity on grazed landscapes, it would be desirable to provide all levels of grazing pressure across the landscape, including areas protected from livestock grazing. This would apply to all plant communities where both grazing increasers and decreasers are present. Extensive areas supporting grassland with a tall tussock structure that is selectively grazed are most important, as all plant response groups have some representation and ecosystem function is retained under moderate grazing. In terms of regional conservation planning, the protection and enlargement of areas protected from livestock grazing is important in the study area, as these occur on only about 4% of the landscape and are threatened by on‐going disturbances and land‐use intensification.