...over-grazed lands (any place in the western USA)...
Anyone who has spent any time in public lands in the West naturally will be skeptical of this "cattle preserve grass" theory. We need more detail about why this hasn't been the case in USA public lands, and how policies could be changed to make it so. (The most obvious change would be "keep cattle off public land so the taxpayer isn't subsidizing certain beef producers".)
That said, I'm confident that cattle aren't as bad for plants as horses are. Cattle lack upper incisors, as do deer and antelope. This means they tear off the upper portion of the plant, rather than extracting the plant along with most of the root as horses tend to do.
Anyone who has spent any time in public lands in the West naturally will be skeptical of this "cattle preserve grass" theory. We need more detail about why this hasn't been the case in USA public lands, and how policies could be changed to make it so. (The most obvious change would be "keep cattle off public land so the taxpayer isn't subsidizing certain beef producers".)
That said, I'm confident that cattle aren't as bad for plants as horses are. Cattle lack upper incisors, as do deer and antelope. This means they tear off the upper portion of the plant, rather than extracting the plant along with most of the root as horses tend to do.