IT'S ABOUT TIME OBAMA DID SOMETHING GREEN
New National Monument Is an Idea Worth Considering
Instead of having kneejerk reactions to a new idea, think about it for a moment. Declaring a big chunk of prairie as a national monument could be a great idea, environmentally and economically.By Bill Schneider, 7-15-10
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| Two scenic shots of the spectacular prairie environment that could become Montana's new national monument. Photos by Rick Graetz. | |
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Back in February somebody leaked seven pages of a “vision document” conceived within the Department of the Interior and created quite a political uproar. OMG! Top brass in the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service (all Interior Department agencies) and a few green groups were actually discussing the idea of creating 14 new national monuments using the same end-run strategy employed by President Bill Clinton when--only three days before turning over the keys to the White House to George W. Bush--he used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the 377,000-acre Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument in north central Montana and 12 more monuments in other states.
Now, it appears as if President Obama might do the same thing, even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar claims it’s all “false rumors.” But in an excellent analysis (click here), Great Falls Tribune capital bureau reporter John S. Adams verifies that Interior Department higher-ups have indeed been seriously chatting up the monument idea. Salazar should have been proud to admit it.
Now, all those people who didn’t vote for President Obama, particularly western republican politicos, have their shorts jerked up tight over the idea. They consider it an abuse of presidential power and insist that any monument designation must first have a local consensus and then be passed by Congress.
First off, let’s be honest about motivations. Republicans want this congressional process because they know it won’t happen, and since the Obama administration proposed it, they have to be against it. Democrats will maintain a neutral stance, publicly, but in the end, they’ll let it happen because it’s coming from their President. Conservationists and scientists in agencies support using the Antiquities Act because they know it’s the only way it can happen.
I say, we should all keep our guns in their holsters until we consider the real ramifications a new national monument.
For starters, I’m betting this political state of affairs resembles that of 1910 when Congress went against the will of the local business community by designating Glacier National Park--and we all know how that turned out for local businesses. Now, a hundred years later, I wonder if the chamber of commerce still considers that “land grab” a bad idea.
Secondly, we might as well go right to the pivotal issue, the impact on federal land grazing allotments leased by local ranchers. Nobody proposes taking over or having any effect on private land, but ranchers fear, as they should, that the monument designation will affect their public land grazing privileges.
Hopefully, proponents won’t shy away from this issue or pretend grazing privileges won’t be affected because they should be affected! In fact, these grazing allotments within the boundaries of the new monument should be phased out or retired or purchased, as they should, incidentally, on the already designated Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument.
I realize that by saying this I’m risking giving a few local ranchers heart attacks, but stockgrowers have had their way with most of our public lands for the past century, and the time is long overdue for a few places where natural systems emerge as the management priority. Besides that, increased economic benefits from tourism and new government jobs should more than compensate the local economy for any loss from reduced public land grazing activities.
Interestingly, while up in Canada fishing this June, our guide had grown up on a farm in a tiny community adjacent to Canada’s new Grasslands National Park just over the border in Saskatchewan, contiguous to the “non-proposed” monument in Montana. We asked him how that went down, and he said lots of locals opposed the park, but then new jobs and money started flowing into the struggling rural community, and locals can already see the positive benefits. Surprise! Now, everybody is happy.
The same will happen in Montana, so local business leaders, tourism officials and politicians, think about it. This could be a rare opportunity for economic growth so hard to come by in declining rural environments. Give the monument idea some serious consideration instead of automatically opposing it because the evil federal government is lurking behind the scenes. Call your senators and representatives and ask them cool their jets and consider supporting the new monument.
As far as the environmental impact, well, that’s a given. Creating a Grasslands National Monument south of the border to link up, physically and ecologically, with its Canadian counterpart would be the fulfillment of a pipe dream long held by scientists and conservationists--the protection of a large section of prairie that can be, as much as possible, returned to its natural state.
But how can we get it done? Nowadays, all politicians from both parties worship “local consensus.” This means all stakeholders get together and agree on a plan so their political representatives can carry it without controversy. In this case, though, such a process has little chance of success. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that local ranchers and their trade groups will never agree to a new monument.
That leaves the Antiquities Act as the only realistic option. If our senators and representatives don’t like it, well, tough cookies. Many of us have lost our confidence in Congress. The system has become so politically divisive and convoluted that it’s next to impossible to do anything controversial, regardless of the positive economic and environmental benefits.
We can have an extensive public involvement process. Everybody can have his or her say, but we should suffer no illusion about a consensus emerging from this process. After all the shouting ends, Obama will have to just do it.
From a political standpoint (and it’s all about politics, correct?), it seems like the President can’t lose. Six of the 14 proposed monuments are in key swing or “purple” western states where Obama needs a couple of more points in 2012--Arizona (Northern Sonoran Desert), Colorado (Vermillion Basin), Montana (Bitter Creek and nearby grasslands, referred to as “Montana Plains"), New Mexico (Lesser Prairie Chicken Preserve and Otero Mesa), and Nevada (Heart of the Great Basin). Six are in fairly secure blue tates--California (Bodie Hills, Modoc Plateau and Berrysessa-Snow Mountain), Oregon (Cascades Siskiyou and Owyhee Canyonlandss), and Washington (San Juan Islands). The remaining two are in the internally red Utah (Cedar Mesa and San Rafael Swell) that will never turn blue regardless of what Obama does, so there’s nothing to lose.
So, it seems, the President and Democrats come out ahead. Plus, let us not forget that, to date, Obama has done pathetically little to appease the millions of environmentalists who voted for him to get some relief from the Bush administration’s endless attack on environmental laws and regulations. If Obama throws down the gauntlet and creates these 14 monuments, disenfranchised Democratic and independent voters might actually vote for him again in 2012, and most people who oppose the monuments voted against him in 2008 and will do it again whether or not he uses the powers granted the President under the Antiquities Act.
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Comments
Although there's a good argument that the park is more responsibly run than the club.
While four months of tourism (based on a ROAD's opening and closing) and eight months of shoulder season, GNP is not a main driver of the larger and shrinking Flathead (American and Canadian) economies.
Now that the Canucks have backed off on mining and petro, with the hopes they can still do forestry, well, from Sparwood to Franz to Fernie the little brick towns did just fine. They'll do less well now.
South of the line, the leases being sent back, when word is that there IS substantial gas in parts of the Flathead (but it's politically untouchable for the foreseeable future), plus the fact the North Fork is certainly going to all burn flat before it gets harvested....all that will be left is that four months. And transfer payments. What a bright future.
Never mind that on the EAST side, the season is like four weeks in spring, and eight weeks in fall for hunting. Wow, that's just peachy. Never mind that the communities affected are darn fine places with fine people now. In fact, while I really groove on Eastern Montana when I have a chance to go, it is the people connected to the landscape that make the trip worth it.
Ed Quillen put it kind of like this...he prefers the non-tourist tour because you run into folks who don't care if you have money to spend, they're just pleased to have your company. And the feeling is mutual, by golly.
Oh yeah, let's just buy them all out and send them down the road -- to replace them with pretty much nothing but yurts and one or two cappuccino vendors?
Sad.
Another help would be to put all non profits except public schools on the tax rolls.
Bingo. In relation to the Montana grasslands, the only way we're going to get wild bison onto the landscape is to clear out cows on a major scale and replace them on federal land with truly wild bison--not ear-tagged domestic private bison, as the American Prairie Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society are trying to do in accordance with the Ted Turner influenced, neo-feudal Viejo policy.
Best way to do that--legally boost the protective status of the land from "multiple use" resource exploitation to single use "conservation." Refuge status would be best, but Monument status would be a way station toward Refuge status. Tie the Grasslands into the Missouri Breaks National Monument and the Charles M Russell NWR and that's a lot of land for wild bison. Then tie in the Native American Reservations that are now strung in an isolated manner along the Missouri. It would be bison heaven.
One thing. For God's sake keep the National Park Service out of it. The NPS would be sure to mess it up. Maybe it is time for a separate, conservation oriented National Wildlife Refuge service.
RH
I am strongly opposed to the acquisition or more land into federal ownership unless and until the federal government clears the full total of maintenance backlogs, reopens the campgrounds it has closed for lack of funding, and demonstrates that it has a successful ongoing maintenance programs for all units and their amenities.
Further, I will remain opposed to all new designations and acquisitions unless and until our forests and rangelands are maintained in their statutorily authorized and required manner. Lack of appropriate forest maintenance is turning our federal forest lands into bug-infested fuel-overloaded tinderboxes. Rangeland management taken out of the hands of responsible users and pulled into urban offices also has disastrous results.
When privately held land goes into federal ownership, the federal government does not pay taxes. Instead, there's a program called Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT). It's a program that's almost never fully funded, and it consistently fails to pay what local government would receive were the land still in private hands. Worse still, this year's PILT payments were delayed without adequate prior notification to the receiving counties. A two-line statement buried in the Department of Interior website simply does not substitute for a detailed explanation. Instead, we are left with the feeling that the government's financial troubles are far deeper than reported in the media.
When a county bears the burden of significant levels of federal ownership (62% in the case of the county where I live), delayed or less-than-fully-funded PILT payments represent a serious financial impact on already over-stressed budgets, and can easily result in the loss of funding for crucial local programs.
So . . . no new national monuments, no new land acquisitions, and no further special designations until the federal government can demonstrate that it can meet its maintenance and financial obligations connected to its current holdings.
Take care of what it already has, and then come talk to me, adult-to-adult.
As for the comments on public lands being "de-economized." It's all subsidized, all of it. Without subsidies, none of the traditional businesses extracting natural resources pencil out.
Most of the most acrimonious public lands conservation debates, including this one, concern public lands in the states of MT, WY, CO, NM, AZ, UT, NV, and ID. The total population in these states accounts for a bit less than 7% of the population of the US. When you consider that this region is actually one of the most urbanized regions in the country and that a good portion of the urban population, even in this region, favors this kind of public lands conservation, then you're looking at much less than 7% of the total US population in your "local control" counties. This means that over 93% of the ownership stake for federal public lands in these states belongs to American citizens from outside the region. Given the higher per capita education levels and the resulting higher earnings and taxes paid by this over 93% share of the ownership of these lands, the over 93% of American citizens who do not live in MT, WY, CO, NM, AZ, UT, NV, and ID actually pay an even higher proportional share of the maintenance and ownership costs of the public lands in those states.
There simply are not enough people in the "local control" counties and they simply do not pay a high enough share of total federal taxes to give them more than a tiny token proportional ownership share in those federal lands and, when the government subsidies they receive are subtracted, their actual economic contribution is even lower. They can try to loudly assert something to the contrary; but, such assertions are just attempts at a rude sort of misrepresentation.
It seems like I and others like me are always being forced to sit through the assertions of people like you who preach democracy and the sanctity of equity ownership and property rights and then claim the right to protest this or that policy of public land use on the grounds that it is "local" to you; but, under the tenets of your own preaching, you really have only a very, very, very tiny minority share in those property rights. Imagine a situation in which the owners of much less than 7% of the stock of a corporation were to march into a stockholders' meeting and demand to overrule the clear and expressed wishes of those who held the other over 93% of the stock. I’m sure that, if this situation were presented to you as a hypothetical, we would never hear the end of your ranting about how the fiasco went against the American way of life, free market capitalism, and civilized property rights; however, in this case, a case in which you are the piker, the minority, the bolshevik, you suddenly twist your tune and demand that the bolsheviks be allowed to rule.
Do you understand any of this; do you understand why you have no credibility and can't be taken seriously?
The reason that the government folks should engage in an adult-to-adult discussion is that they are our employees. They work for us, and they occasionally forget their obligations to the people who pay their salaries. In the case of the potential monument designations, they failed to meet that obligation. Further, they have been asked by several of our elected officials in the U.S. House and Senate to provide copies of the full document that goes along with the pages that were put into the public place. They have failed to comply with that request, an option that they simply do not have under federal law.
It is possible for them to have adult-to-adult conversations with us. I've engaged in several of those conversations. It's not all that difficult.
Apparently you are not fully aware of the full range of the lands and locations involved in this particular list. In addition to the states you mention, you need to add Washington, Oregon, and California, and perhaps a few others.
I can appreciate that those living in highly urbanized regions favor the kinds of federal lands conservation that are under discussion. The problem is, that very few of these folks are more than marginally aware of just what such conservation approaches mean to the lands where they are applied.
I'm not sure why you brought in the topic of "local control" counties, nor did you share what you mean by that term. I certainly wasn't talking about that kind of thing. What I was talking about in my post was the need for the federal government to budget for the responsibilities of providing at least marginally adequate care for the millions of acres it already owns. I also pointed out several ways in which the government is failing to meet its responsibilities in that regard.
As a private citizen, I am required to pay my taxes. I don't get to decide what those taxes should be, and what I'm going to pay. That's essentially what the federal government is doing with the PILT program. By not paying on time, and by not paying anything close to what the county would receive in property taxes if those federal lands were privately owned and used in a similar manner, the counties end up with far less revenue for their budgets to do things like provide education, health services, social services, infrastructure, and pay and benefits for the county employees.
This is an experience the counties where most Americans live simply do not have.
I really don't understand where you get the impression that rural America is sparsely populated by people who aren't as well educated as those who live in urban areas. Many of those rural areas have more PhDs and other advanced degrees per capita than many of America's urban regions, particularly now that the Internet allows people to be more flexible in their work practices.
When you say:
"There simply are not enough people in the "local control" counties and they simply do not pay a high enough share of total federal taxes to give them more than a tiny token proportional ownership share in those federal lands and, when the government subsidies they receive are subtracted, their actual economic contribution is even lower. They can try to loudly assert something to the contrary; but, such assertions are just attempts at a rude sort of misrepresentation."
. . . all I can say in response is that you seem to be rather misinformed. What government subsidies are you talking about? I certainly don't get any subsidies for my work in natural resource policy design and the peer review work I am engaged in. No federal contracts, either. That's not a misrepresentation, that's just the reality I live with. By the way, there are a lot of federal subsidies for many businesses in urban regions, too . . .
Looking at my post, I don't see where I was talking about democracy, equity ownership, or property rights. I'm conversant of all of those topics, but wasn't basing my comments on any of them. I don't recall forcing you to sit through my comments, either.
I rather think that your use of a hypothetical stockholders' meeting is pretty much irrelevant to the comments I was making. Apples and oranges, as it were. Following that up with the projection you used was a bit off-target, too.
You don't have to take me seriously. I can appreciate that you don't think I have credibility in this discussion. I hope that you can appreciate that others' mileage may vary.
I believe national monuments have more flexibility in management of outdoor recreation, and I'm betting that the Montana Plans National Monument, if it ever came to be, could allow bicycle use on existing roads and trails. I checked around a little bit on this point and found that management varies somewhat from monument to monument.
It this case, I'm sure bicycling is an existing use, but a very minor use in this area.
Also, national monuments are often considered "national park-lite" and the first step to eventual national park status, but I do not believe that next step needs to be taken.
I personally would strongly favor allowing existing non-motorized use such as bicycling and walk-in hunting.
Bill
No one ever considers the potential danger to the land & wildlife by those who leave their waste behind, and all of the meds and drugs that those humans are dumping on the ground with their waste.
None of this of course, deals with the loss of winter habitat to wildlife by eliminating ranching.
It sounds like good for enviros and bad for everyone and every thing else.
For every 10 acres taken out of MT for a monument let there be 1 acre taken out of some of the parks in the cities. After all buffalo use to run free in Virginia to out west. Then many more people could see them up close and think of the carbon foot print saved as they could walk to the buffalo, oh yes, put the wolves and the bears in with them. The only reason this land here is as good as it is, is because the rancher and farmer has taken care of the land. If you don't take care of it, it will not produce so you, the people in the cities can eat.
-- bill wants to get rid of cattle grazing subsidies. Of course Bill knows that prarie that doesn't get grazed by large ungulates soon degrades. Any range manager knows that. It's just not common knowledge amongst the media/enviro establishment. Somethings got to graze it. It's only natural isn't it? Bill really wants to get rid of "grazing subsidies" for cattlemen and give the supposed "grazing subsidies" to "buffalo ranchers'.
--It's tired to trot out the old "and they opposed Glacier park and look how wonderfull economically it turned out" justification for new "monuments" (didn't wuerthner just use that a week ago). Glacier and Yellowstone were "jewels".-this is a cool landscape-but it ain't no "jewel". No tourist from New York, or Minnesota for that matter, is gonna waste his summer vacation going here. Not unless he's already seen every Jewel in the West. By then he's too old to "non-motorize it".
--Shouldn't Matt Koehler, who is "outraged" over the Tester Partnerships lack of Transparancy, be "outraged" at the lack of "transparancy" the Obama admin. and enviro's have shown over all this. Secrecy indeed!
-- Eventhough the New West only represents about 18% of the Real West. Eventhough it's an enviro propoganda blog masqueradeing as news (and Bill is the most conservative!). I have noticed it brings out more and more insightfull conservative commentators. Great stuff above.
Then there is the land that Baucus gave TNC & The Trust fo Public Lands $500,000.00 of our tax dollars to buy form Plum Creek. I believe TNC is now selling part of that land to the state of Montana for a state park so they collect more non taxable to them, taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile the taxpayers are struggling to survive while the so called non profits are raking it in with both hands by wringing those taxpayers dryer and dryer.
“The happiest days of my life were spent following the buffalo [cattle] herds over our beautiful country. My mother and father and Goes-ahead [Jason], my man, were all kind, and we were so happy. Then, when my children came I believed I had everything that was good on this world. There [was] plenty of good fat meat for everybody.” –Pretty Shield
The first step in an invasion is to dehumanize and dismiss the indigenous people. My enjoyment of beautiful Glacier National Park will always be tempered by sharing the suffering of the people that had first to be removed.
"Chief Mountain is my head. Now my head is cut off. The mountains have been my last refuge." –Chief White Calf
Our area already has a Refuge. It is thick with introduced noxious weeds that the federal government doesn’t have the funding, manpower, or incentive to control. The Weed Coordinators tell me that we ranchers are over 95% successful at halting the march of the weeds at the Refuge boundary. Our family is fighting a patch of knapweed brought from the Refuge by elk. Our neighbor is fighting a patch of leafy spurge. By cutting each stalk individually with scissors and treating every plant one-by-one, we are keeping the range clean. Thanks to dozens of volunteer hours every year by every family, there is still a native sagebrush grassland.
The New West is intent on copying the sins of the Old West. Once the families that care for the land are gone, this area will look like the rest of the New West. But the people who want to feel good about knowing there are bison 200 miles away won’t mind that those bison are knee-deep in spurge and knapweed. They won’t miss the plants and insects and amphibians and reptiles and small mammals and birds that they drive extinct. Mourning their passing will be left to those who stewarded them for generations and must share their fate.
Vickie,
It's not what you want. It's what visionaries like the great green troll father want YOU to do.
Anyone with a clue knows in their heart that a bison reserve would be an epic bust on the order of the Lewis and Clark zero. I mean, high dollar tourists don't want to inhale Kipp Bottom muskeeters.
And when was the last time a federal fiasco was ever undone?
I bet even APF knows it. Their plan is to buy it up with Hollywood money, then cash out to the federal government for taxpayers to support in perpetuity. If Malta and Zortman dry up and blow away, all the better. It's for the environment.
Look, West Virginia doesn't have many national monuments of any size or much public land of any kind; it has coal mining. Like any other extractive industry, some of the people working in that industry are engineers or other specialized professionals; they sought out and often sacrificed for long times to get serious educations and training; they have good jobs as a result; and when like in all extractive industries, the bust follows the boom, they will find other jobs relatively quickly. But, most of the people working in the West Virginia coal industry, like most of the people in any extractive industry, have jobs that aren't much better than tourism jobs. The people in those jobs didn't seek out or sacrifice to get serious educations or training and when like in all extractive industries, the bust follows the boom, they won't find decent replacement jobs quickly. In fact, look at the severity of boom and bust cycles in extractive industry; look at the health and safety impacts; look at what your idea of a good rural economy did to Libby; and then look again at the impacts of that restaurant full of tourists.
The truth is that, if you think that you're entitled to a good job without working to prepare to compete for one, then you have no moral or ethical business taking on the role of a family breadwinner in any case, tourism or otherwise. Someone whose highest qualifications are to be a barista has no business in the primary role of feeding, housing, and raising a family anywhere anymore and never did for that matter and, in that kind of case, it really doesn't matter what the local economy is based on.
What an intelligent person wants for their rural communities is the highest possible education level for each and every person in the community and, once you have that, you'll have a chance at a better economy and a better quality of life; but, you'll also have a community where the leadership of the community won't be buying what you think you want to sell. Visit some of the places that I'm talking about; visit pleasant little Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and see for yourself. It takes a focus on education, not just tough talk and emphatic assertions of common wisdom, and it takes a willingness to sacrifice your instant gratification in order to sustain that focus on education long enough to reap the benefits.
No, Dave, a marketing degree isn't what I'm talking about.
Your assumptions about someone working as a barista equaling a lack of education and/or ambition tells me more than a little something about you and where you live and I'll be that you don't live in the rural west. Get real, Mike, there aren't many jobs in a tourist-based economy that can tap into the potential of the average barista (college-educated, white, middle-class). The rural west does NOT need more tourism. It needs a diversity of economy.
So let me see, your idea of a perfect rural community is one where the majority is well-educated and works happily in the tourist industry (restaurants, hotels, sporting goods, gas stations, and yes, coffee shops) to support the vacations of the people who REALLY own the west - those persons with ambition and the drive and determination to do well in the cities.
Oh, yeah, we want more of THAT mindset in the rural west.
Laughing out loud, Green Father.
Ya mean the home of nuke engineers? Trust me, Malta would be just as educated and amenity-stocked if it was the headquarters town for a massive government science effort. Kind of like the Tri Cities?
That's such a specious comparison it defies comprehension.
Never mind the real problem with an educated population with nothing to do....the Middle East? Lots of sons with presitigous American and European degrees -- they ain't makin' coffee at the Caff Shak, no sir.
(Speaking of return visits, these comments certainly give the impression that the pro-monument crowd has never been here, whereas the non-Eastern Montanans objecting to rural ethnic cleansing have visited long enough or often enough to learn something about the land and people. Words cannot convey our gratitude for your kind support.)
We volunteer many hours every year to keep this area clean and accessible to visitors and pour a yearly fee into the US General Fund for the privilege of assisting you. It is amusing to hear someone that wants to drive my children off their great great great grandmother's range accuse us of wanting this area “just for me”!
Guess the writer talked to the 'local' students that are here for a few months every summer, or the few that are employed seasonally here. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!!! Did you not see the for sale signs??
The ONLY ones that are happy are those that sold to the park.
The grazing fee that ranchers pay on their fee land is a very steep tax (up to 25% of the property value as calculated from IRS taxes). However, legally, only half of this grazing fee is supposed to go to the government. Half the rancher's fee goes into a Range Improvement fund for the rancher. This is the so-called "welfare" that ranchers enjoy. We have collected decades of receipts and federal project reports for our ranch and found that the money we paid into the Range Improvement fund and the money spent by the BLM for range improvements on our ranch match almost to the dollar. Our half of the grazing fee (as well as thousands out-of-pocket) has gone to improve wildlife habitat, improve riparian vegetation, and promote grassland health. Hopefully the government has done as well with its half.
Under our management, natural systems have thrived. Deer and other game were very rare when this homestead was established. My grandmother and mother had reservoir-irrigated gardens a half mile or more out of sight from the house. Once the rainless summer began, those gardens were the only green spots and the only available water for miles. Those gardens were vital to the family's survival and required the best care. The gardens were not deer fenced. Today, there is nothing surprising about seeing bunches of mule deer or antelope whenever one ventures out onto the surrounding prairies. The populations are healthy and numerous. (But our garden, just outside the window, is fenced to keep out deer!)
As another example, the government surveyor in 1913 described Shotgun Coulee, on our ranch, as having "... little or no vegetation... There is no water... the soil is too poor... There is no grass to amount to anything for range purposes." Over ninety years later, in the same coulee, a hunter commented, "I have never seen so much grass, we tried to walk in the bottom of the coulee, but decided to climb back out."
As a third example, Lewis and Clark's journals complain of cactus along the Missouri. Think how much harder it would have been for them to pull their boats through willows and dead fall. The Milk River had no cottonwoods when the homesteaders came. The rivers were the only water sources, so wildlife habitat was limited during dry periods, and the rivers were heavily browsed and trampled. We install small, upland pits that hold enough runoff to water cattle and the prairie plants and animals, including game, birds, amphibians, insects, small mammals, and reptiles.
As a fourth example, my grandfather removed his entire herd from the ranch during the drought in the 1930s. He returned with one sixth of the herd when the rains finally fell. He had had to sell the others to buy feed for those that remained. The 1980s were drier than the 1930s in this area, but the range had built up enough resiliency, thanks to good management, that actual stocking rates (and wildlife forage) were only marginally affected. There was no second Dust Bowl.
The federal government has a less impressive record managing natural systems. The CMR wildlife refuge is choked with salt cedar. Hordes of starving and diseased bison are trying to escape their jailors in Yellowstone Park. I've heard from both a university professor and federal range specialist that the National Bison Range is being overrun with leafy spurge and knapweed. Until the federal government can show some success managing the myriad natural systems they already own, they should not be handed more.
Biodiversity is not just a word. It is actually important. It is not too hard to figure out why many managers, each directly responsible to and for and dependent upon a relatively small area, is a recipe for diversity. A million acres (like the CMR), uniformly neglected by distant federal employees with no financial stake in ecosystem health, is a recipe for disaster. Biomonoversity, not biodiversity, is the result. High-paying government jobs obviously are the stuff of green dreams. However, when you are dealing with a debt-ridden employer, wouldn't a taxpaying stockgrower with a proven environmental track record make more sense? We've made this place worth stealing, but it still needs the maintenance we provide on a daily basis.
Today, northeast Montana has a "spectacular prairie environment". The land and wildlife are healthy and thriving thanks to a century of stewardship by people that love them. Destroying this ranching heritage will destroy Eastern Montana's ecosystems, not improve them.
Again, this is one of the best pieces I have read about the truth of the matter.