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
“If you overgraze, this landscape is quick to be unforgiving, and you’re going to be out of business,” he said.
From Washington Times ● May 15, 2017
“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
By controlling deer and elk populations, gray wolves allow overgrazed vegetation and trees to regrow, creating ripple effects that boost biodiversity and improve the overall health of the landscape.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2025
"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
It was overgrazed; rain eroded big arroyos in the gray clay, and the salt bush took hold.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
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
So, in 1934, as Depression-era dust storms darkened the skies over the Great Plains, worsened by overgrazing that denuded grasslands, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for the lawmaker.
From Salon ● Dec. 4, 2025
According to conservationists, the species has suffered at the hands of illegal poaching, overgrazing, drought, and disease passed from farm animals.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2024
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
We exhibit photos and show a video of all sorts of chimpanzee behaviors, and there is a big section on the dangers of deforestation, overgrazing, and overpopulation.
From "My Life with the Chimpanzees" by Jane Goodall
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.
