Here's a list of ways:

1. Overstocking and overgrazing with either domestic livestock and/or wildlife
   
   
2. Tilling native rangeland, thereby exposing fertile soil to water and wind erosion, and destroying the carbon sequestrating ability of the land
   
   
3. Replacing native range forage with exotic vegetation
   
   
4. Reducing soil fertility through intensive agricultural practices and hauling away above-ground biomass
   
   
5. Poisoning and sterilizing rangeland soil with chemical fertilizers, petroleum based pesticides, and industrial weed killers
   
   
6. Suppressing the occurrence of natural wildfire regimes and described burns
   
   
7. Depleting and polluting under- and above-ground water aquifers
   
   
8. Transforming perennial native range vegetation into annual mono-culture crops.
   
   
9. Cutting-up large tracks of undivided rangeland and converting them into small-size, subdivided fragments (parcels).
   
   
10. Promoting economic development by fragmenting rangeland regions with roads, highways, freeways, and interstates
    
    
11. Converting agriculturally and ecologically important rangeland into hobby ranches, exotic game preserves, ranchettes, country housing, rural subdivisions, and other types of human activities and development projects
    
    
12. Permanently ruining agriculturally and ecologically important rangeland with oil and gas wells, pipelines, pit mining operations, oil and chemical refiners, and other types of industrial endeavors.
    
    

Back to TRC's recommended reading