Abstract: Transition from an open wooded grassland state to a shrubby woodland state, and the reverse, is driven by the agents of prolonged rainfall events, drought, fire and grazing. We altered the grazing regimes over a 10-year period at 10 widely spaced sites in the north west of the Murray Darling Basin, to examine whether a transition can be achieved by resting from grazing alone. The three grazing regimes were: tactical grazing, continuous grazing and no grazing. Statistically significant year x treatment interactions for grass density were found at only three sites and for shrub density, at six sites. Provisional conclusions from the data are that tactical grazing has a role in the transition to grass dominance in semi-arid woodlands but the change is equivocal.