If you own land in the Texas Hill Country, you are intimately familiar with Ashe Juniper—commonly known as "Cedar." While native to the region, decades of fire suppression have allowed cedar to hyper-proliferate, transforming open savannahs into dense, impenetrable cedar brakes.
These thickets do more than just block your view and ruin your allergies; they are literally drinking your property dry.
The Cedar Water Crisis
A single mature cedar tree can consume upwards of 30 gallons of water per day. When you multiply that by hundreds or thousands of trees per acre, the impact on local hydrology is catastrophic.
Cedar trees also feature incredibly dense canopies. When it rains, the tightly woven branches catch a significant portion of the rainfall before it ever reaches the ground. This water quickly evaporates back into the atmosphere, meaning the underlying soil never receives the moisture. The ground beneath a cedar brake is often completely bare, baked dirt.
The Phenomenon of Water Reclamation
When landowners finally decide to clear the cedar—a process colloquially known as "Cedar Eating"—the environmental response is often miraculous. Within months of clearing a significant cedar brake, landowners frequently report springs beginning to flow again, dry creek beds suddenly holding water, and dormant native grasses exploding back to life.
Why Mechanical Mulching is the Best Approach
While prescribed burns are effective, they are highly risky and difficult to permit. Hand-cutting with chainsaws is grueling, dangerous, and leaves the ground littered with branches.
Using a forestry mulcher to "eat" the cedar is the safest and most effective method. The machine grinds the highly flammable cedar into a fine mulch, eliminating the fire hazard while simultaneously laying down an organic mat that will help hold the newly reclaimed groundwater in the soil.