Okay, let me say from the beginning that an excessive amount of anything may not be the best situation. It certainly applies to Ashe Junipers but be careful as it also applies to you and me.
Ashe Junipers have been around central Texas for a long, long time. Yes, over the years it seems as if its territory has expanded and taken over some rocky slopes, but not so much native grasslands. This is probably true as fires, cedar cutters, and grazers are all working to keep their numbers in check. Open, grassy fields are the last to see an invasion of Ashe junipers because the grazers keep them in check---besides that, birds are the main vehicle for transporting the seeds and birds pass the seeds when sitting on tree limbs, not while flying over the grasslands.
Fire as a means of control is out of the question because of the danger of property damage and the cedar cutters went out of business when steel fenceposts were developed. Now the only means of control is the highly powered machine that grinds them up as they stand there, and yes, create quite a bit of litter for nature to take care of over a period of a decade or so. Cedar wood does not rot very easily.
Why have these Junipers taken on such a bad reputation? It is not all that clear, but the push against the juniper started about twenty years ago by some self-proclaimed naturalists saying that they were invasive and deleterious to the growth of other more favorable trees.
Perhaps the most commonly heard complaint is that Ashe Junipers robbed the other plants, grasses as well as trees, of much needed rainfall. Let's take this argument in segments. Yes, Junipers can shield light rain from entering the soil by virtue of their canopy effect. Studies show that rain of about 1/8 of an inch stays on the foliage, never reaching the ground. Probably so, but 1/8 inch of rain is not valuable to any of our grasses or trees as it will evaporate from the ground rather quickly.
Now let's take on the criticism that Juniper's root structure pulls soil moisture away from grasses or trees. Have you seen the root structure of a Juniper? It's not much to look at---being shallow rooted and not very large. After all, the transpiration rate of water from the foliage is low and therefore the Juniper does not need much of a root structure to stay alive. All this supports the idea that the Juniper is not a water hog.
Dense stands of Juniper can and do become so dense that grass is totally blocked from growth. Not good, but thinning cures that problem. Which reminds me, Ashe Junipers can be managed to grow just like a typical tree. We find that cemeteries have used the Juniper trimmed up so that it provides a shady canopy, just like an oak. Here is a photo of an Ashe Juniper in the Wimberley Cemetery. There are many trimmed like this one. The cemetery on Purgatory Road also has these same trimmed-up junipers scattered among the gravestones.
On the other side of the ledger, there are some surprising data that indicates that some plants form a symbiotic relationship with the Juniper. One such plant is the Madrone. From our own experimentation in this area in Bandera County, we could get Madrone seeds to germinate and grow best under the spread of an Ashe Juniper and only the Ashe Juniper.
And then, there is the need for the Ashe Juniper to provide the favorite nesting material the Golden Cheeked Warbler (where are the environmentalists when we need them---now that the pipeline is installed?) A recent article in the newsletter of the Texas Land Conservancy featuring El Coto de los Rincones Preserve has this comment: At Los Rincoes, the importance of the juniper-oak forest was recognized before the Golden Cheeked Warbler was listed as an endangered species in 1990. Golden Cheeked Warblers return to the canyons of Los Rincoes every March. Warblers most often nest in the oak, but gather their nesting material from the Ashe juniper, so you can see the importance of the combination of oak and juniper.
That mere fact is enough to justify the existence of the juniper among the oaks.
We still don't know who started the ball rolling to rid the land of the Juniper but following the money may reveal the origin. John Galley, (1905-1997) a geologist, said "There are two kinds of geologists, ones that like science as a study of the earth, animals or other aspects of the natural environment, and ones that get rich from it." This differentiation applies to naturalists, biologists and conservationists as well.
Perhaps if we dig deep enough, we might just find that the fanaticism for ridding Texas of the Ashe Juniper originated with those who had purchased these huge machines that grind up the Juniper in a matter of hours, thus turning the green of the juniper into the green of money.
