overgraze
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Etymology
Origin of overgraze
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The trick, Dobson said, is making sure that the cows don’t overgraze, which could deplete the soil and release greenhouse gases stored within it.
From Salon ● May 10, 2019
Officials say the horses overgraze the land and negatively impact the environment, a problem compounded by the extensive drought.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 2, 2015
“They tend to overgraze the vegetation around water sources,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2015
"You could overgraze an arid land and convert it permanently to desert—that's a local threshold," Kareiva explains.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 7, 2013
Hardin’s idea explains why public bathrooms are so gross, why people litter, and, according to his original example, why farmers will let their cows overgraze communal fields.
From BusinessWeek ● Jul. 26, 2012
Finally, four days after Bamberger took his company public, in 1969, he bought the land of his dreams: 3,000 horribly overgrazed and eroded acres of derelict ranchland in Johnson City, Texas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
The group claims the invasive deer have destroyed natural habitat — including vegetation found only on the island — and exacerbated the risk of soil erosion in overgrazed areas.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2024
"If an auroch or mammoth overgrazed, then the plant alkaloids would make it not feel very well," he says.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2023
Sanctuaries such as Tsavo East National Park in Kenya had emerged as “overpopulated, overgrazed wasteland,” he argued, as elephants and rhinos struggled to find food and eventually starved by the thousands.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 26, 2020
Some trucks carried hay bales which farmers dumped into dusty corrals or into minuscule overgrazed plots for horses and sheep.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
According to a 2019 study by the Nairobi-based African Forest Forum, Sudan had already lost nearly half of its forested land since 1960 due to agricultural expansion, firewood collection and overgrazing.
From Barron's ● Feb. 19, 2026
It’s time for those in Appalachia — and the whole nation — to really ask ourselves, in all our overgrazing of resources and ideas and principles, if we have exhausted the commons.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2025
According to the WWF, snow leopards hunt ibex and blue sheep, which stops these animals from overgrazing and helps to preserve grasslands so villagers can feed their livestock.
From BBC ● Apr. 20, 2025
While overgrazing is not yet a widespread occurrence across the Western Atlantic, it already occurs in subtropical to temperate waters around Australia and in the Mediterranean.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 6, 2024
Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
