We all care for this land
My Day with a Rancher: Standing on the Same Turf
When Lucia Stewart, an admitted urbanite, spent two days with ranchers in the Gallatin Valley, she realized they had more in common than she thought: ground.By Lucia Stewart, 7-16-08
Last week I spent two days with 20 ranchers and 2 journalists. Everyone except the journalists wore boots and pants. Everyone except the journalists was up early. At times I felt totally out of place, yet right at home.
I know I come from a different breed, a more urban outlook. That is why I was nervous to attend the Undaunted Stewardship tour with the Montana Stockgrowers Association, knowing I would be on a tour bus, eating three meals a day with folks that I didn’t think I would have much in common with, nor really know what to discuss. As a journalist, of course I’m going to undertake the challenge, and I sure didn’t expect to be so enthralled, tutored and standing on the same ground as my weathered neighbor.
I got introduced to a way of life that is not too far off from my own. I appreciate and care for this land of Montana and the Rocky Mountains. I want it to be healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna. And the ranchers share that perspective, but they are the ones with dirt under their nails from managing the land that I appreciate.
The ranchers of Montana have a depth of knowledge of this place that is indispensable, as they have walked every inch, with decades and generations of wisdom of how to manage their property so water flows, noxious weeds diminish and our land is productive while providing the vast, and seemingly wild, open space.
I admit I haven’t been the best about hearing their side, as many “environmentalists” may not either. A few of the ranchers did claim that they are terrible about talking to and communicating with the other side, but they are trying to change that as our lands are becoming increasingly polarized with different interest groups.
We face a standstill with little to no progress on the future of our ranching community and what that means to some of the amenities that us urbanites appreciate and find essential to this land: open space, healthy wildlife habitat and local foods and agriculture.
I’m actually nervous for our ranching community and the lands that they manage, graze, care for and care about. We are facing a time when urban cities values open space and great vistas where wildlife roam free, but we do not understand what takes place on the other side of the fence.
Over the course of two day, I heard a list of threats to the viability of the ranching community that was astounding. It was more than I had imagined: brucellosis, wolves, wind energy, mining, judicature of water, sage grouse and the endangered species protection restrictions, subdivision fragmentation of the land, water quality and finding good helping hands.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in particular is in a challenging scenario. The 21 million acres in the GYE is losing the connected grazing resources, as the land becomes subdivided, public lands management plans change that alter grazing practices that no longer make operations viable, and species protection is putting restrictions on land management that also limited ranchers activities. All of these factors are constricting the profitability of the land and forces losses beyond a breakeven.
It was a wake-up call when one ranchers stated that due to the increase cost of brucellosis testing, as well as the change in management requirements in Park County, we may see ranches drop deep into the red, forcing sale and subdivision because the land value is so high, and in turn, the inevitable loss of open space in the Paradise Valley.
Our landscape is on the verge of becoming more fragmented than it already is, particularly if we loose the ranching community.
I encourage anyone who lives in the West to spend a day walking and chatting with a rancher on his land. You will walk away more enriched, more knowledgeable about land management and understand how crucial this threatened way of life is on our Western landscape.
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Again, many thanks.
If the energies of restrictions put on farmers and ranchers of the last 25 years, which put some out of business, was put into finding ways to keep them in business, maybe we'd still have more of our food grown locally rather than imported from God knows where. And maybe we'd still have more of the open spaces I enjoyed as a kid growing up the the Gallatin Valley.
It would probably help for you to learn something about the ecology of pastoralism as well as the history of livestock power politics in the Greater Yellowstone before you buy into the rancher narrative of apologetics. Having grown up in agriculture and having some experience with cattle both in the South and the West, I can tell you the Jeffersonian perspective on yeoman farmers and ranchers that you find so inviting is more nostalgia than truth.
As for the so-called cost of brucellosis to ranchers, read or re-read my column here on New West called "The True Cost of Brucellosis."
RH
Yeah, ranches like open spaces--they just don't like bison, elk, or other wildlife in those spaces.
A rancher is first in the business of growing grass and secondly in raising meat for American families. The ones who don't take care of their grass, don't stay in business long. In Oregon the state does protect farming/ranching lands by zoning and tax advantages for being productive. Montana might consider doing the same as when free range ranching gone, our whole way of life will be impacted.
There is nothing healthier to eat (protein wise) than natural, grass fed meat. People need to get informed as that is the meat we should all be eating as it has the same Omega-3 as salmon which is so highly touted and also endangered.
what did you notice about the upland vegetation on grazed allotment vs that of ungrazed ? what did you notice about the soils on grazed land versus ungrazed ? the want for our West to be "healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna." is an admirable thing - but that want, and the proclaimed intention of livestock producers to agree, are not adequate and enforceable standards capable of making it so. That want, and the proclaimed intention of livestock producers to agree, have been the case for decades - and that perspective has enjoyed the Lion's share of media play all that time - and yet our wildlife habitat and ecological condition of the land continues to degrade. Why?
The wild itself threatens livestock
it's interesting to me how the livestock industry has been readily able to list off the perpetual threats to its "viability" for decades. It is similarly interesting to note that many of those things in this article, uttered in the same breath as " I want it to be healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna. And the ranchers share that perspective" is accompanied by a list of threats to Livestock's viability: "sage grouse" "brucellosis testing" "wolves" "endangered species protection restrictions" "water quality" - it seems that there's a disconnect between those two statements --
Why are these things threatening to the livestock industry ?
The reason is that Livestock has been a pervasive cause of the damage that makes necessary the protections afforded these common values.
It's been the same line for decades - "We want wildlife and healthy habitat" says the rancher ~ with the caveat that because livestock have been and continue to be scientifically demonstrated to so degrade these very things, any measurable protections necessarily conflict with the "viability" of their enterprise - and must be diluted, denuded, reformed, or abandoned altogether.
"We want wildlife and healthy habitat" ~ but none of the legal protections, verifiable monitoring criteria, or "stewardship" of the less conspicuous but critically important systems that serve as the ecological conditions necessary to make that want so.
What was the rate of utilization on the grazed lands ? How about soil permeability from riparian all the way to upland ? What plants were prevelant ? Were there a lot of fences ? Roads ?
"Open space" is not necessarily wildlife habitat - and when the want for happy relations, more bloated subsidy than has already been wasted (estimate around $1/2 billion annually when all production activities the public pays for are accounted for across the country), and diminished protections for public land ranchers eclipses an objective regard for some of these questions - and many many more -mentioned above - those of us who are asking the questions about the condition of ecology - rather than the viability of the bankroll of the user - notice a pronounced negative thing if what we want, on our public land, is diverse fish, wildlife and the complex healthy habitat necessary to make those things so.
I encourage anyone who lives in the West to spend a day walking and chatting with an ecologist on public land. You will walk away more enriched, more knowledgeable about land management and understand how crucial this objective regard for natural systems is to our Western landscape.
I'm not sure how many they have pending at this particular time, perhaps you could enlighten us. I think preventing control of wolves and preventing drilling for our own oil/gas are a couple at present.
you are right - it's is HUMANS who put up the fences and put the livestock on desert lands - the animals themselves are not responsible. It will be HUMANS that take them off.
For people who think by being a vegetarian, they touch the land more lightly, this does not have to be so. It's not only difficult to get enough protein with just vegetables but even they take up land to grow. Grassfed beef is healthier for the animals and the consumers. The issue is don't overeat it. Raising all livestock in feedlots is not healthy or anyone.
I favor protection of the land period because it benefits the rancher and the sightseer but it's not fair to make one use the highest use and the other of no value. If environmentalists go too far with their desire to keep the open forests free of anything but hikers, they will lose their battle. This country is still a democracy... for now.
Everyone has an impact and we may find out that human use ultimately does more damage than human use.
BLM and FS monitors the land closely when it is grazed. this article by Mary Flitner for Writers of the Range explains how closely it is monitored. I have posted photos of the fflowers on the land she writes about.
http://www.redding.com/news/2007/dec/31/flitner-ranching-still-has-place-public-lands/
http://www.pbase.com/mariond/image/81217276.jpg
I took some last week growing out of one of those nasty cow pies, but I haven't processed them yet. Thanks for the compliment. By the way some of the leesees up there have been using this same ground since the country here abouts was settled in the 1880s and 1890s. Abused land would not look like this after 120 years.
Great article BTW. We need far more dialogue and interaction between ranchers and more urban folks who are interested in land-use issues and maintaining open spaces. We do have a lot in common in that we both have a great love for the beautiful wide-open Montana landscape and the heritage of this state.
Glad to know you don't believe in history or science. People are generally ignorant of those two subjects; that's why they can't or don't see the damage that livestock and the livestock industry have done to land and wildlife.
Just how much are ranchers doing for bison, for example? Or for wolves and grizzly bears? Of late, Montana's ranchers have decided to target elk as alleged sources of brucellosis for Montana's brucellosis incident. There's no proof of this, of course, but the cowboy culture has never held truth in much regard.
The answer is that there doing nothing positive for wildlife. "Open spaces" doesn't mean much without the wildness that wild animals bring to it. Cattle are a pretty poor substitute for the animated landscape.
RH
When I see our Gvt. Officials Do completely stupid things in order to control something, and waste OUR hard earned money to do it, in order to keep their enormous budget to blow. (when West Nile, Hantavirus, Mad Cow are more serious of a disease, and they aren't out there killing every Robin or field mouse or mosquito) I have a problem with that.
I've lived and am living both sides of this fence, but never the Gvt. side, just as someone trying to make a living raising cattle, and someone that enjoys and is honored to live among some of the Purest of our 'Creators' gifts. I can't understand why there needs to be a line drawn between the Rancher and the 'advocate' when the only real FALSE problem is brought on by the Gvt. in the name of 'disease'. A disease that is no more deadly than Osteoporosis, is known how NOT to get it (unlike Osteo.)
If the Department of Livestock and the Board of livestock would spend that money they get in their budgets ON the livestock, ie. vaccines, testing, etc. Do you think there would still be an issue? There will NEVER be Bison all over the landscapes again, and we all know it. Does anyone know how many ranches, head of cattle are in the GYA? I know there is less than a thousand (domestic) on the West side of the Park in Gallatin County. And THOUSANDS of acres with elk and deer, plenty of room for some Bison.
I Salute the Rancher in Wyoming refusing to slaughter his herd. As a beef eater, I would boycott MT beef but I would love to buy some of the WY. rancher's 'infected' beef.
What's going on here in Wyoming is that ranchers have finally had to make a decision and make it publicly--what's more important: grass or disease. The elk feedgrounds protect ranchers' grass on public and private lands while maintaining brucellosis in elk at high levels in western Wyoming. Ranchers have been able to play both ends against the middle for a long time, and act as if brucellosis is a serious disease, but they can no longer get away with that falsehood. They know that brucellosis is no big deal and they've known it for a long time. What's different now is that they have to admit it publicly.
The action by the rancher in Daniel--refusing to slaughter his herd, which will cause Wyoming to lose its brucellosis free status for the second time in four years--is an acknowledgement that brucellosis is no big deal and that the APHIS rules are obsolete and draconian. It's also an acknowledgement that losing brucellosis free status is no big deal either. The claim that it's an economic disaster for the livestock industry is false, as I've demonstrated elsewhere on NewWest.
What really counts, as it always has, is grass, and the power to control grass. That includes the power to control elk in Wyoming and bison in Montana--the power to keep elk and bison from range that is reserved for cattle.
The problem then is the political power of the livestock oligarchy to control land use and wildlife for its own benefit. The only way we're going to get better land use and wildlife management in the Greater Yellowstone--the only way we're going to secure range for elk and bison, not to mention wolves and bears--is to destroy the political power of the livestock industry to control the range.
That's why it's "wildlife versus livestock," and there is no "win-win." If wildlife are going to win, livestock have to lose. So called "win-win" strategies are doomed to failure, because they accomplish nothing but enhance livestock industry control over land and wildlife but cover it up with comfortable platitudes about cooperation and good will--as reflected in Lucia's story. But there's no good will involved, only greed and selfishness.
RH
Today federal lands I see are well managed. It's a matter of moving the cattle and watching that they don't overgraze. There are scientists working for the government overseers also. There are books that play both sides of this coin for how no cattle should be there and showing the worst abuses possible and the other side of those where the land is well maintained. Ranchers who abuse their allotments should lose their lease and let someone else have the land the next year who will better value it for the future.
Late last summer I was on a driving trip through Eastern Oregon. I wrote what I felt about Oregon's cattle country in http://rainydaythought.blogspot.com/2007/08/cattle-country.html. I used a few of my photographs there to show rangeland and what I felt about the fact that it was still there. These are in late August and some might think some of the land looks abused (the longhorns) but it's a holding field next to a small ranch and cattle were being fed hay (Even with irrigation, my own piece of land in Western Oregon can look like that by late August when it's been dry). Whatever its use, it was private land and if a rancher puts their animals in a holding field, it doesn't look so good after awhile.
The cattle along the stream bank were on land managed jointly by the reservation and BLM. You can see it's not being misused and the water was as clear as any can be. There were not too many cattle put on the section and likely they were moved when needed.
The thing is most objections to cattle grazing on public lands come from the past examples. There are still private holdings that look pretty pathetic but you look across a gravel road and see good land, well managed with cattle. Users who abuse their own land are soon out of business and they should be off the public lands also if they don't take care of the grass.
I do not see the idea of buffalo running free on land across the west as any reasonable idea. If you have been around buffalo, you know that they take down normal fences as well as gore people who happen to get in their way. The dream of some that wildlife is superior to ranching goes against the grain to those like me who ranch on a small scale but also many others who like to know their beef is still raised in a healthy environment-- which is not a feedlot
I agree for the most part except the individual small Rancher, (there are a few as seen with Rainy). I still feel it's APHIS not the small Rancher, when it comes to disease, The Board of Livestock, then the Department of Livestock. The individual Rancher is just the pawn in the control thing, and some (I guess) still can't see the cow for the manure on her. I guess what I'm trying to do is 'wash' the cow, get the 'small' ranchers to see how they are being used, and screwed.
In Montana on this side the grass can't be an issue becuase there are no public grazing allotments. But on your end I guess there still are.
If they trucked that hay in to feed the cattle instead of the Elk, they would eliminate the disease breeding grounds, and the cows would have plenty to eat. Grazing a field is cleaner than a feedlot no matter how you 'butcher' it.
otherwise you are so right. There is no huge financial loss, and even if there were, why couldn't the 'natives' buy up the 'infected' meat when it's time to butcher? Let the Rancher continue with his 'ranching'. Let the 'budget' cover most of the testing if not all the testing etc. costs.
Politically, one issue is that "the small rancher" hardly exists. Most of the small ranchers I know in Wyoming are right here in Crowheart. Unfortunately, the little guys and gals have zero influence on the livestock industry--the DOLs, the APHISs, the Stockgrowers, the Cattlemen, the Farm Bureau, the meat packers, etc., and that is what we are having to deal with--not the little guy with a couple hundred head. It's a power issue, and we don't get anywhere by collaborating with the power brokers.
The only way to think of what's happening to bison, elk, wolves, grizzly bears, other critters, and the land itself, is that we're dealing with an entrenched and well-funded power structure that's interested in one thing: power. There's no other way to think about the problem except in range war terms, between wildlife and livestock.
Look at the lies going around with government sanction that elk caused the brucellosis incidents in Montana. You and I know know there is zero evidence for an elk source, and good circumstantial evidence for a cattle source. Yet, the press, after all the letters I've written to reporters explaining why elk aren't the source and why cattle are the most likely source, continues to parrot the DOL/Stockgrower line that elk are the problem. This is not an ordinary problem amenable to compromise. It's either wildlife or livestock.
RH
One has to be practical. The root problem for wildlife is politics, and to solve the problem one has to change the politics, which is livestock politics. That means taking on the livestock industry, no holds barred. Until people are willing to do that, we'll never see bison welcomed in Montana.
Yes, Ranchers raise cattle for their livelyhood that is how they are able to stay on the land, but what they don't tell you is how many wildlife live and thrive on the same land where cattle graze. Do a little research about if elk to see if they prefer to graze lands never grazed by livestock or if they perfer to graze where cattle have. I think the results will surprise you.