New West Book Excerpt
The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West
Author Courtney White introduces the ideas that fuel the book Publisher's Weekly called "a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism."By Courtney White, 6-02-08
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Courtney White’s new book Revolution on the Range (Island Press, $25.95) seeks common ground between the goals of Western ranchers and environmentalists. White reports on individuals who are working to end the “tribal warfare between denizens of the ‘Old’ West and advocates of the ‘New,’ with lassos on one side, and lattes on the other.” Publishers Weekly wrote, “In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism.” In the following prologue, White introduces the ideas that fuel his book.
In 1996, I had an anguished question on my mind: why didn’t environmentalists and ranchers get along better? In theory they shared many of the same hopes and fears—a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, an appreciation for a life lived outdoors, and a common concern for healthy water, food, fiber, and liberty.
That was the theory anyway. The reality was that by the early 1990s environmentalists and ranchers, along with loggers, federal land managers, elected officials, private citizens, and others in the American West, were locked in a bitter struggle with one another, exemplified by two popular bumper stickers of the era: “Cattle-free by ‘93!” shouted one. “Cattle galore by ‘94!” retorted the other.
I felt anguished because this fight had all the hallmarks of a tragedy: both sides, and all of us in between, seemed destined to lose what was most valued by everyone—the health and diversity of the West’s wide open spaces. And it wasn’t just the West: the hardheadedness of this particular fight reflected other divides in the nation at the time—the “red” and “blue” split, for instance, that would soon engulf our national politics.
The causes of the conflict between ranchers and environmentalists were more social and historical than ecological, in my opinion. Certainly, overgrazing by livestock in the arid West had damaged, and in some cases irreparably altered, native plant and animal communities, raising legitimate cries of alarm. However, other issues fueled the grazing debate to a larger extent, including class, political power, and prejudice. Ignorance played a role too, unfortunately—a point brought home in force one day when an environmental activist told me, with a straight face, that cattle were “immoral animals.”
The struggle focused primarily on the publicly owned half of the American West’s one million square miles, including the national forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges. The fundamental issue was influence.
For a century or more, these federal lands were in the de facto control of those who lived near them and worked on them—ranchers, principally—and who operated largely without oversight. After World War II, however, influence began to shift to a new breed of westerner— hikers, fishermen, day-trippers, and other types of often urban-based recreationalists. At first, their influence was largely economic, but over time it grew politically, especially as the populations of western cities boomed.
Concurrently, a concern for the welfare of nature in the form of a resurgent conservation movement—now called environmentalism— started to blossom across the nation. Increasingly, the attention of activists turned toward actual and perceived abuses of the public domain, including clear-cut logging, open-pit mining, and overgrazing. The alarms they raised contributed to a raft of consequential environmental legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and an early version of the Clean Water Act, as well as a bill creating the Environmental Protection Agency.
The downside, however, of all this activism and bill-passing was the commencement of a kind of tribal warfare between denizens of the “Old” West and advocates of the “New,” with lassos on one side, and lattes on the other. Caught in the middle were the employees of the federal land management agencies—the Forest Service (national forests), the Bureau of Land Management (rangelands), and the Fish & Wildlife Service (refuges). The “feds,” once considered by environmentalists to be in the pocket of ranching, mining, and timber interests, by the 1980s were viewed by ranchers, miners, and loggers as allies of the environmentalists instead. This meant that federal employees found themselves in the crosshairs of both sides.
Meanwhile, across the West, accelerating suburban and exurban (ranchette) growth shared the same source: former farm and ranch land. When making their case against cattle, environmental activists frequently pointed out that half of the West is publicly owned, and therefore should be managed with public goals in mind. But they overlooked the flip side of their own statistic—the other half of the West is privately owned, much of it by ranchers. Deliberate or not, by weakening ranchers, environmentalists abetted the very thing they decried loudest about the New West—its breakup by sprawl and other forms of land fragmentation.
There were other reasons to worry about the fate of ranchers besides the loss of open space. Healthy food, for one thing. As writer and farmer Wendell Berry has repeatedly observed, eating is an agricultural act. We all do it at least three times a day, which is why it’s worth thinking long and hard about where our food comes from, who grows it, under what conditions it is produced, and what the consequences are of letting a global, industrialized food system fill our bellies. The family rancher, by contrast, could, I knew, produce healthy, locally grown food under humane conditions at a reasonable price. Throw in good stewardship of the land and you have the possibility of an unbeatable combination, which is why the prospect of eliminating the family rancher, even on public land, was so distressing.
Ranchers also had legitimate historical and cultural claims to existence. In northern New Mexico, where I live, the ranching tradition stretches back 400 years—and much farther if you trace it back to Spain. Any knowledgeable historian or anthropologist would agree that ranching is an important subset of American society—and not because of its influence on Hollywood, Nashville, or Madison Avenue. Ranchers have been a critical part of America’s ethnic and historical tapestry, and remain so to this day.
Lastly, ranching mattered, I recognized, because work matters and because land matters. Although I had spent a lot of time backpacking as a youth, enjoying the recreational fruits of our robust economy, I also spent many summers surveying the desert of southern Arizona as a professional archaeologist. It was a form of hiking, but it was also work—and as a consequence I came to appreciate the value of labor on the land. I gained a physical and emotional relationship to nature that wasn’t play-based, and this made a huge difference.
For all these reasons, the conflict between ranchers and environmentalists began to look like a tragedy of rather serious proportions to me.
By the mid-1990s, in fact, the feud between industry and activists had reached a dispiriting crescendo. Newspaper headlines reported a seemingly endless cycle of unhappy news: effigies of environmentalists hanging from street lamps; road building equipment disabled in the dead of night; federal property attacked by anonymous assailants; hiking trails booby-trapped with explosives; trees “spiked” with large nails to prevent their harvest; cattle shot; endangered species threatened by a campaign of “shoot, shovel, and shut up”; public meetings dissolving into shouting matches; shadowy militias organizing in remote locations; federal raids ending disastrously; livelihoods ruined by lawsuits; and so on.
Emblematic of the times was a lengthy brawl in the mountains above Silver City, in southwestern New Mexico. Called the Diamond Bar fight—for the 145,000-acre Forest Service allotment (ranch) on which the fight took place—it featured an angry young ranching couple, Kit and Sherry Laney, who were determined to prevail over the U.S. Forest Service, and an even angrier local environmentalist equally determined to put them out of business. Public lands are divided into allotments of varying sizes, which are generally attached to a base (private) property owned by the rancher. A grazing permit is issued by the federal agency for
that allotment and contains conditions, including allowable numbers of cattle, by which the livestock operation must abide. On the surface, the fight focused on the government’s attempt to force the Laneys to abide by certain regulations, including a recent reduction in the amount of cattle they could run on the allotment. These were restrictions that the young ranchers rejected and that environmentalists demanded be upheld. The real issue, however, was power: who would win and who would lose.
Stuck in the middle was a fumbling federal bureaucracy whose attempts at compromise succeeded only in stoking the conflict. Charges, countercharges, lawsuits, appeals, and threats flew in all directions as both sides marshaled their supporters for what appeared to be the Final Showdown over livestock grazing on public land in the Southwest. In the end, the Laneys lost. Acting unwisely on poor legal advice, they refused to sign their grazing permit, asserting that the government had no right to regulate them, which meant they were breaking the law.
When a judge upheld the Forest Service’s position, the Laneys lost their permit and their ranch, as well as their livelihood. Environmentalists were elated. A significant corner, they said, had been turned in the struggle over public lands in the West. To this particular environmentalist, however, there was no cheer in the court’s verdict. I did not join the celebrations when the victorious activists came to Santa Fe, but neither did I mourn the demise of the young ranchers, who had arrogantly thumbed their noses at public opinion. Instead, I just felt depressed. There were no winners in the Diamond Bar fight, only losers, including all the spectators. That’s
because nothing had been gained—lives had been ruined, not enriched; land had been abandoned, instead of stewarded properly; bad blood had been created, instead of hope; anger ruled, not joy.
My anguished question involved more than just bad blood between ranchers and environmentalists, however. The Diamond Bar fight fit a national mood in the mid-1990s that had suddenly veered onto the rocky shoals of partisanship, confrontation, and political brinkmanship. From the jeremiads of talk-radio hosts, which capitalized on the new rancor emanating from Washington, D.C., to repeated shutdowns of the federal government, America seemed suddenly caught in a destructive tug-of-war between Wrongdoing (them) and Rightdoing (us), with no room for anybody in between. And the more we yelled at one another, the deeper my spirits sank. Then one day something snapped inside me and I knew I had to act.
It happened on April 19, 1995—the day Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 innocent people, including 19 children, and injuring more than 800 people. I worked for the National Park Service as an archaeologist at the time, as did my wife, and I remember vividly my reaction as I listened, stunned, to the news report of the bombing coming in over a radio in the office.
At first, I was mortified, and then I grew angry, but not just at McVeigh. I was angry at the whole culture of conflict and odium represented by this horrible tragedy. McVeigh wasn’t simply a madman—he had motivation, as he explained later. He hated. It didn’t matter that the object of his ire was the federal government, what mattered was the emotion itself—the same negativity circulating around the nation at the time; the same emotion at work in the mountains above Silver City. Although some pundits later denied any causal connection between McVeigh’s act of terrorism and the partisan cultural climate in America, I knew the bombing had happened for a reason.
It happened because it was OK to hate.
I had to do something, but what? The previous fall, alarmed by the “Republican Revolution” in the 1994 midterm elections and the declared intention of its leaders to roll back twenty-five years of critical environmental legislation, I had called a representative of the Sierra Club to volunteer my services. I was quickly recruited as a foot soldier for the Club’s local group in Santa Fe and less than two months later I was sent into battle at the state capitol during the legislative session, assigned the job of fighting “takings” legislation—a complex legalistic assault on the public good by private property rights advocates. For my efforts, and to my surprise, I wound up on a stage in an auditorium that summer debating takings with the executive director of the New Mexico Cattlegrowers’ Association in front of a large crowd of businesspeople.
I have no idea who won the debate, though I recall being embarrassed at my decision to wear cowboy boots. It was an attempt at an ironic statement, but it came across as just plain silly. I also recall the empty feeling the debate left inside of me. Intellectually, I understood the need to push back against wrongdoers, as the environmental movement was successfully doing against the Republican agenda in Washington at the time, but emotionally I felt adrift.
Eventually, an unexpected opportunity to act on my anguish came. Walking into a statewide meeting of the Sierra Club one day, held in the former mining boomtown of Kingston, New Mexico (and not far from the Diamond Bar allotment), I saw a cowboy hat sitting on a table. It belonged, I learned, to Jim Winder, who lived and ranched nearby. If that wasn’t surprise enough, I was told Jim was there because he had accepted the invitation of the chair, Gwen Wardwell, to become a member of the Executive Committee.
A rancher on the statewide Executive Committee of the Sierra Club?
And a Republican to boot! What was going on here? Jim boasted that he ranched in a new, ecologically friendly style. He bunched his cattle together into one herd, he said, and kept them on the move so that any particular patch of ground would be grazed only once a year, mimicking the manner in which bison covered the land. He didn’t kill coyotes. In fact, he didn’t even mind wolves, because bunched-up cows can protect themselves. There was more: because he ranched for rangeland health, Jim said, he got along great with government employees, he had more water in his streams, and most importantly, he was making money.
It sounded too good to be true.
Curious about this newfangled ranching, in early 1996 I joined a tour of the Winder family ranch Jim had organized for his fellow Sierra Clubbers. Attending as well was an antigrazing activist named Tony Merten, who had recently transplanted himself from Colorado to a remote part of southern New Mexico. I didn’t know it at the time, but Tony was the prime suspect in a spate of cattle murders in the area. It would be an investigation with tragic consequences. Whether from fear of a potential indictment, mental instability, or a deep sense of despair for the fate of the planet (or all three), Tony would commit suicide a little more than
a month after the tour of Jim’s ranch.
On that day, however, it quickly became clear to me that Tony’s mission was to provoke Jim into a confrontation. He obnoxiously challenged nearly every positive statement Jim made, whether it was about cattle, grass, or termites (a favorite subject of Jim’s). It didn’t work. Jim parried each attack with a patient explanation of ecological principles and a fine sense of humor. In fact, it was obvious that Jim knew far more about the environment than any environmentalist on the tour, myself especially. He was far funnier too.
Impressed, embarrassed, and perplexed, upon my return home I picked up Beyond the Rangeland Conflict: Toward a West That Works, a book by environmental activist Dan Dagget. In it, I learned that there were other ranchers of Jim’s stripe across the West—people managing for healthy ecosystems through progressive cattle management and collaboration. The book confirmed what I saw on Jim’s ranch: thick grass, healthy riparian areas, young plants, wildlife, open space—all the things I said I wanted as a conservationist. Of course, I saw livestock too.
The anguished question began to grow.
Inspired as much by his performance as by his knowledge, I called Jim up and asked him if we should try to create a neutral forum where anyone who loved the land, wildlife, and cultures of the Southwest could meet, look, learn, and listen. He enthusiastically endorsed the idea. We were joined by Barbara Johnson, another Sierra Club activist. The three of us quickly decided that there was no point in engaging the extremes on either side of the grazing debate. Instead, we would walk to a new field, beyond the continuum of argument, where we would wave our arms and ask people to join us. Jim called this place the “third position.”
I called it the New Ranch.
I wrote a definition: “The New Ranch describes an emerging progressive ranching movement that operates on the principle that the natural processes that sustain wildlife habitat, biological diversity and functioning watersheds are the same processes that make land productive for livestock. New Ranches are ranches where grasslands are productive and diverse, where erosion has diminished, where streams and springs, once dry, now flow, where wildlife is more abundant, and where landowners are more profitable as a result.”
The New Ranch became the foundation for an exploration of our larger goal: “to explore our common interests instead of argue our differences,” in the words of Bill deBuys, a conservationist and leader in the collaborative movement in New Mexico.
Exploring common interests was an idea gaining traction at the time. In pockets across the West, groups of ranchers, federal managers, and environmentalists had been attempting to start meaningful dialogues. One highly successful effort was located in the “bootheel” of southwestern New Mexico, where a diverse group had come together to put ecologically beneficial fire back on the land as well as to shield private lands from the predatory attention of subdividers. They called themselves the Malpai Borderlands Group.
We called ourselves The Quivira Coalition. On Spanish colonial maps of the Southwest from the 1600s, “Quivira” designated unexplored territory.
Following the lead of other “common ground” efforts, we vowed to avoid lawsuits and legislation, sticking instead to the grassroots— literally the “grass” and the “roots.” It was our belief that the grazing debate needed to start over at the place it mattered most—on the ground. We knew it was a gamble. When we organized our first workshop in a church in Santa Fe in June 1997, we sent out notices to every moderate rancher, environmentalist, land manager, and scientist we knew in New Mexico. Then we crossed our fingers. When fifty people showed up, we knew we weren’t going to be alone in our little field.
In the years that followed, as the grazing debate faded in the region and as hope and trust began to grow alongside the wildflowers and bunchgrasses, an answer to my anguished question began to reveal itself. Ranchers and environmentalists could get along, and in places did, especially where the dialogue started with soil, grass, and water. Peace, in other words, was possible; and as a result, progress was possible as well.
But there was more. In fact, a new anguished question had begun to grow.
It started with a map I saw of a 500,000-acre watershed in southern Arizona. It was a map of rangeland health, meaning it viewed the land from a functional perspective—from the angle of soil, grass, and water. According to the analysis represented on the map, significant amounts of the watershed were in poor condition, including big portions of a national wildlife refuge, which had not been grazed by cattle in sixteen years. “Goodness,” I thought to myself after studying it, “how much of the rest of the West is in this condition?”
This issue hit home one day as I walked up a deep arroyo (wash) on a ranch in western New Mexico. As I came to the boundary between the private land and the Forest Service property, I saw a barbed wire fence, complete with fence posts, suspended ten feet above my head, stretching across the arroyo. I knew from a conversation with the rancher that the fence was built in 1935—and the posts rested on the ground. In less than seventy years, in other words, the system had unraveled—washed away.
Poor grazing management played a role, undoubtedly. When the ground lacks a vigorous cover of healthy vegetation, its exposure to the erosive effects of pounding rain and rushing water dramatically increases. But my work with Jim Winder had taught me that cattle could be managed in a positive manner for the health of land. Jim—and others—taught me that cows weren’t the problem, poor management was. Things could be different.
Looking up at the fence suspended above my head that day, I began to ask questions: How do we restore this land to health? What are the tools? How do we pay for it?
Fortunately, a pattern of answers was already visible. The work of the New Ranchers demonstrated that sustainable and regenerative land management was not only possible, it could be profitable too. At the same time, new restoration methods had been developed, which also worked within “nature’s model” of land health, providing relatively simple and cost-effective strategies for reversing ecosystem decline.
In short, peace making led me to see how healthy land and healthy relationships could be restored, one acre at a time.
The chapters in this book—representing a personal journey—are my attempt to illustrate how ranching and environmentalism are changing in the West, and with them, the West itself—and with the West, the nation too, possibly. The people profiled not only ask questions of their own, they also form part of a pattern of solutions. Linked together, they are part of an intriguing mosaic of human creativity, energy, and hopefulness.
This is a book about relationships—among people, between people and land, among ecological processes—and their resilience. When I first started writing the essays that eventually led to this book, I wanted to do nothing more than hold up what I considered to be my most valuable discoveries. Over time, however, I realized that the discoveries were not nearly as important as the relationships that lay behind them. I came to see that, whether in the American West or beyond, healthy things—cattle, wolves, watersheds, communities, economies, nations—depend on a foundation of healthy relationships. And often the key to enhancing the resilience of those relationships is to create a field beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing.
I’ll see you there.
From Revolution on the Range by Courtney White. Copyright © 2008 by the author. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
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Comments
I too have been encouraged over the years with ranchers who walked the talk about stewardship and rotational grazing, but I've seen some gawd-awful pieces of cow-burnt ground in the West.
For every "New Rancher" out there, it seems (emotionally, at least), that there's a dozen or more ranchers out there who wouldn't recognize over-grazing if you rubbed their face in a patch of cactus. They might acknowledge that a neighbor could do better, but they've got an endless string of excuses as to why their BLM or FS allotment looks gawd-awful and always has, back to grand-daddy's day.
The BLM and FS have always been grossly compromised, and the only time they've been comfortable about their comfy relationship with the ranching community was back before they had to worry about them durn tree-huggers and their lawyers. They are caught inbetween and political employees have undercut federal scientists, biologists and range cons whenever they've tried to do right thing and operate on the basis of science.
Right-wing ranchers enjoy playing the enviro/fed victim card while they're also cashing in those government checks.
For a true case of chutzpah, research the sad saga of Frank Robbins (formerly of Thermopolis, WY and now settling near Missoula), his battle with the BLM (which was resolved by the Supreme Court) and the money he received from the USDA over the years. Like many ranchers, Robbins hated being told what to do, but he loved federal money.
The idea of "holistic" grazing has been slung for decades - the principle challenge remains the same and it remains unanswered: provide an example of a grazing regime - an economic model - in the semi-arid to arid American West that is both ecologically sustainable and economically practical on its own two feet (i.e. that doesn't demand significant public subsidy - both direct and indirect). You can't - there isn't enough water - precipitation - nor is there a demonstration of the industrial will to practically and generally employ such a model on the scale necessary to fulfill its empty promise. that's because the majority of public lands are grazed to fulfill and acquire bank note obligations (they must maintain too many cattle on public lands to fulfill unwise loan obligations already made), maintain influence over water/land, and collect government subsidy --- NOT produce food for Americans' bellies (how could it when federal public lands account for an insignificant 2% of forage for livestock production in the US). That's the existing model as it stands. there is no such ecological/economic model describe that has any practical chance of being applied - it's economically impossible, it's ecologically infeasible, and culturally impractical.
Look no further than New West contributor George Wuerthner to address the "Cows versus Condos" farce :
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/cows_or_condos_neither/C38/L38/
White is correct in the assessment of agency folk being held between a rock and a hard place. Unfortunately, the particulars are off --- the question is not so much about BLM or FS staff caught between ranchers and environmentalists as it is about BLM and FS staff being caught between the cultural inertia of the past century (i.e. livestock predominance w/ regard to "use") and the law - the public's demand for accountability and the rationally administered baseline environmental standards as codified by public-interest law. "Environmentalists" have been demonstrating that this "use" of our public lands is not fulfilling its obligation to the public trust as established by these laws. It's the law - and our society has an answer for those that break it. The question becomes - is it wise to make a decision to future generations and to the public to dilute the law ? - to lessen those publicly codified environmental standards - to do little more than stall what is an inevitability brought about more as a function of economic necessity (gas price, feed price, globalized markets, climate change, drought, social change, advancing scientific awareness of extent of damage, burgeoning environmental awareness etc.) than anything else. Should we stall this - give the myth another decade ? Or is it time that we acknowledged that whether it is directly conspicuous - we need these ecosystems vibrant and functioning now - for water, for recreation, to give proper regard/appreciation to the diversity of life we have been given the good fortune to experience and the obligation to reasonably perpetuate -- because if we don't make the best effort now to mitigate our contribution to stressors on the environment, then tomorrow it may be a warmer climate - and the systems that provide services that we take for granted now will be tired and denuded - they won't hold as much water, it won't be as clean, there will be fewer wildlife in both diversity and population (as we've been seeing since the beginning), and our lands will be sources of absorption of heat rather than the mitigation of such. Desertification.
"Poor management" is as much a consequence of prolific fencing, water developments, and other practices employed by "progressive" ranchers as it is a consequence of negligence. Displaced environmental consequences are not mitigated consequences. Abundance of fencing for 'rotational' regimes and distributed water developments may not result in the same environmental damage as does over-utilization of particular foliage and congregation, but all those water developments dry up the springs and seeps critical to wildlife - the fences inhibit wildlife migration and kill particular wildlife - ecosystems don't work the same. The damage may be elsewhere - but it is not gone.
As much as we'd like to believe that there is a way to avoid controversy, as easy and popular as it may be to marginalize - in the public mind - those scientists/environmentalists with the integrity to describe the natural world in objective terms - the damage that is being done - uninhibited by the restraint of this viscerally motivated inability to be disliked --- it is time to consider the possibility of a new ideology clouding the minds of conservationists. An ideology whose standard is less about conserving wild places, wildlife, and ecological systems - and more about the aggressive attempt to contrive middle ground and fabricate a world where we feel comfortable avoiding our obligation to cut through the century + of damage and decades of the failure of this very promise the article re-iterates - and describe the condition of our natural world in real and objective terms - so we can begin to heal it.
"Holistic" grazing and "progressive" ranchers have been promising ease for decades --- this is nothing new - where are the practical results ?
Courtney White fails that test.
This is all for a naturally renewable resourse, grass. The federal lands dependent rancher provides about 20% of the feeder cattle going into our feedlots today. If that is only 2% of total beef production I would hate to see what a hamburger would cost today if it weren't for our federal lands rancher. Somebody's figures are screwed up somewhere.
As for ranchers cashing their federal government checks, I don't know any of them doing that except maybe the old folks cashing their Social Security checks. The hate and spew of the anti consumptive user of the federal lands is amazing in the amount of dis-information and lies they regurgitate.
Most federal lands rancher water development has done nothing but proliferate water for wildlife rather than drying up springs as Brian would suggest. Wildlife numbers, especially ungulates have increased expotentially during this era.
There seems to be a common theme with most anti-consumptive users and that is, things were prisitine and some kind of utopia before European settlement of the west, and they yearn for those glorious days of old. According to the writings of Lewis and Clark things might not have been quite so hunky dory back in those days either.
Oh, and you might have noticed nary a mention of public lands. The term public lands and that every citizen owns his little portion of it are a misnomer. Federal grazing permits were established mostly even before Forest Service and BLM even came into existence. They are bought and sold on the open market and recognized and taxed by the IRS, and although the federal lands managers would have you believe they are just a privilege, they are a vested right in the split estate of the federal lands.
I think most rural residents here are cognizant of the importance of wise use management of the lands and at the same time know and feel the importance of custom, culture and our local economies which are dependent on the natural resource. As author Timothy Robert Walters said in his book "Surviving The Second Civil War", "Living in a world where natural resources are off limits is not an intelligent concept. Food, clothing, homes, automobiles, and everything else humans (including preservationists) take for granted in the course of daily living, come from the earth. Health foods and vitamin supplements originate from the earth. Rubber, copper, paper, salt, penicillin, propane, cotton are products of the earth. If it can't be grown, then it must be mined, with one exceptionl-plastics....
There is a movement afoot to expel everyone from western rangelands, no matter for their reason being there. I don't like the radicals on both sides of the battle either, but you Mike seem to be no different or maybe I'm just reading you wrong. Do you want all consumptive users off the federally controlled lands?
If I have a twisted ego as you claim Mike, then there are a whole lot of us folks in the west that meet that definition. I don't know enough about you to make any rash judgemental blasphemeys agaisnt you, but if you are a centrist as you indicate then I don't know what your beef (no pun intended) is?
Another standard would be "fiscal responsibility" and the activity objectively fails that test as well.
Klumker & Mike,
Do you believe me to be "extremist" and thus 'illegitimate' because of the position that I take ? Does that determination derive from your better knowledge and consideration of objective sources/experience/study than mine ? Or is it that I come down on one side of your conjectured spectrum and that fact alone - sources/experience/study be damned - disqualifies my reason from your consideration ?
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Courtney White's attempt to re-iterate what has failed the test of time and of practicality is a flare that is fueled by a want for middle ground more than a demand for responsible accountability to the future trustees of our shared public lands. It fails not because of anything that can be better said - but because the more we learn (science), test against the existing rule of law, and consider the fiscal responsibility of our choices, the more find we are describing a square peg (livestock) against a round hole (semi-arid to arid public land, wildlife habitat, wildlife, free market principles, etc.).
I am happy to have that debate with anyone who is willing to spare the crutch of ideological projection.
The overall health of our federal public lands may be better than it was 100 years ago - perhaps it is enough to halt the debate ? - No, that they are better than before does little to nothing to support the idea that our lands are well now and it does nothing more than indict the conditions of the past. Indictment of the past ought not serve as vindication of the present condition of things. The question becomes, is the administration of those lands' health up to par with the standards established by law in the meantime ? That question is being answered "NO" time and time again. Another question, does the demonstrable condition of things in the past muffle the lessons that we learn today - as science advances - about the extent of the damage being done (one example : we know a lot more today about lentic and upland systems and their contribution to the vigor, health, and interdependence of wildlife communities than we did a decade ago). Because things were worse back then, does that mean we should not consider these new findings and the implications these findings have on managers' legal obligations to wildlife and habitat values given livestock's particularly degrading affect ? No. There are so many examples.
2% of the forage consumed by livestock comes from federal public lands. That's the number. Those 20% of livestock - a number for which I am not sure of - are then fed forage bought at the market rate - like everyone else. Removal of that 2% of forage would have little to no affect on the price of beef in America --- nothing compared to say - fuel prices or the flux of the international markets. The idea that the price security of beef is maintained by access to federal forage is another of a host of myths spread. The largest public lands ranchers, constituting the majority of AUMs have operations up and down the commodity chain anyway - they grow their own feed and are right now profitting at the smaller producers expense. To remove federal forage would mean that those mega-producers would be moved to use that feed with their own stock rather than extort the inflated prices out of smaller operations - as they are doing now.
Livestock producers cash direct subsidies - as is the case especially with wool producers, but there are other subsidies that public lands ranchers - "welfare ranchers" - enjoy. These indirect subsidies include the blading of otherwise unnecessary roads, fence building, water development, wildlife abatement (predator control etc.), weed abatement, federal forage rates at ridiculously below market valuation ($1.35/AUM) etc. etc. etc. These "indirect" subsidies constitute the tax-payers' pickup of production and cleanup costs that private ranchers do not enjoy. That's welfare - in fact, one might say that is socialistic. Figures vary from $500 million to $1 Billion annual in subsidy that public lands ranchers siphon from the public dole when indirect subsidy is accounted for.
Water developments drain water from seeps and springs - a water development is not a lentic system - that game ungulates may benefit from a water development does not change the fact that diverse wildlife do not, especially when one considers the utilization around those developments. The suggestions that water developments are better suited to sustain wildlife than the wild systems otherwise in place is absurd. To suggest that greater ungulate numbers result from water developments is also absurd - predator controls and habitat manipulation are likely responsible for the agricultural production of ungulates on public lands --- that's not wildlife. This is to say nothing of competition for forage that ungulates undergo --- cattle degrade winter range, utilize forage, and degrade riparian habitats that would otherwise sustain more diverse wildlife on public lands. State wildlife managers document the degradation of mule deer and elk habitat by way of cattle utilization every year.
Public land is public - we all don't own a little piece, we all own all of it. Livestock production was encouraged before the DOI & FS as a function of the need to colonize the west. If we want to talk history, it went hand in hand with the genocide of indigenous peoples, the extirpations of bison and other species, etc. For much of this country's history, livestock reigned supreme on what is now public lands - it still does. When we refer to "public land" now, we refer to lands that all of us share - in common - and thus, federal law prescribes the administration of "use" of those lands in a fashion that does not degrade the commonality of interest vested in these lands - the public interest. There are a diversity of values to protect. The idea that there is a "right" rather than privilege to use federal public lands has been shot down by court after court - it's just not the case except in the minds of those who believe themselves to be more equal than the rest of us -- quite often, the public lands rancher.
Klumker is right about a movement afoot. But it is not so much about expelling ranchers from public lands as it is about a burgeoning appreciation for the trust bestowed upon our generation. That trust involves the preservation of wildlife, its habitat, and wild places. The movement involves employing an objective administration of that trust. That one tries to parse these questions in terms of ideology is testimony to the fear that these folk have for the impending political and economic environments - the need for it to be about "extremists" versus middle-of-the-roaders. It will not be some conspiring environmentalist in a dark apartment in New York city that brings about the end of this use of public lands. It will be the confluence of economic necessity (globalized markets, increased fuel price, increased feed price, fiscal responsibility), the culmination of scientific understanding (biological soil crusts, lentic systems, genetic viability, appreciation for interdependence, precipitation, biodiversity, ecosystem services, the warming of our west - drought, etc.), the adherence to our civic responsibility (willful enforcement of already existing law, objective employment of already existing scientific understanding, fiscal responsibility, equitable treatment of diversity of "uses", etc.), and the readjusting social priority (kids aren't staying on the ranch, people not buying into the dualism and divisive rhetoric of "extremist" versus middle-of-the-roaders).
In trying to escape the fundamental questions that environmentalists are trying to get at when critiquing this scientifically and economically - now objectively understood - incompatible use of public lands - feel-good conservationists have erected an illusionary wall of their own - they've hypocritically engaged in the very rhetoric of division that they claim to transcend by projecting rationalists as "extremist" and by discarding those willing to look deeper at the objective lessons that the natural world is teaching about our relationship with it. These apologists have placed themselves squarely on the 'side' uniquely at odds with the impending economic, political, ecological, and social forces described above that will foster this new relationship - a west where everyone's custom and culture lives or dies by the terms equitably considered and objectively tested.
What's most ironic is that folk like Klumker's attempts at "middle-ground" by way of marginalization by characterization of the "radical" or "extremist" conspiring environmentalist puts himself on the side of his own contrived wall squarely at odds with the objective forces that will end the activity in the near future, and the "radical" squarely on the side consistent with them.
You base most of what you say on the premise that livestock grazing anywhere in the arid west is bad and only natural free roaming herds of buffalo and the like, are the only good kinds of grazing.
Grass is a naturally renewable resource and a huge one at that. Irregardless of what you drum up as statistics and feel good assumptions and high ideals, livestock grazing plays an important and beneficial role in this day and age, with todays innovative grazing practices and range management techniques.
History is history and we are way beyond the "genocide of indigenous peoples". Change is inevitable and times are changing as has the west. Grazing management techniques are being improved all the time and grazing is compatable with wildlife conservation. Your preservationist attitude and beliefs don't hold water.
The old welfare rancher diatribe you profess doesn't hold water either. For some enlightening reading go to the New Mexico Range Improvement Task Force (a division of New Mexico State University) web site. They blow holes through your misguided and commonly held "welfare rancher" beliefs.
Federal lands dependent ranchers (most are not big corporate type fat cats as you would try to have people believe) are under heavy fire, and have been for the last 25 years, by extremists who want to change the way the federal land is managed. Period. Your theory that it will only be economics and other benign factors that determine the fate of grazing in the west probably has some merit but make no mistake, the biggest single factor will be the willful tactics of many of the federal land managers with the backing of the extreme environmental movement, by way of lawsuits, endangered species minipulations and many other tactics to rid the land of those "damned old ranchers".
Brian you try and talk (write) a good story but your assumption that you are right, and the middle of the road conservationist like Courtney White is wrong, rings very hollow. You need to do alot more research on the benefits and compatability of livestock grazing in the arid west, and the benefits it brings to the ecology and the economics of the west. But is sounds like your mind is already made-up. Those of us down here in the trenches run into that attitude all of the time. At least Courtney White is making the effort.
The premise is that there is not an economic model whereby livestock grazing on arid to semi-arid lands in the West can economically and ecologically sustain itself let alone the values pursuant to our obligation of trust toward commonly held lands - public lands - and do so on a generalized level adopted by enough in the industry to justify the public's further investment in the activity. We may be able to point to individual operators who pleasantly surprise us on a given season - but what when drought hits ? how much external resource was sunk into the operation - including public resource - tax-dollars ? could an operator start from flat and survive economically while grazing "ecologically" ?
Grass may be a renewable resource - but this response feeds into exactly my point. The rich diversity of life is not summed up in its totality when describing "feed and varmints". Grass grows back - this is true. But when the grass along a stream bank is utilized in summer or fall then that grass will not stabilize the soil along the bank come spring run-off. Down-cutting, loss of meander, loss of water-holding/water-cooling characteristics. The faster flow of water does not support trout along the same stretches as once was the case. The lowered water table eventually drops below the roots of the willows - which die - and the shade that once cooled the water is lost - trout need cool water. The utilized grass does not feed/cover as many bugs/insects - trout need rich bugs/insects to eat. Rich diversity of birds lose habitat, and the beaver, a magnificent creature capable of restoring the functionality of the riparian habitat by damming up the stream - slowing things down again, has fewer willows with which to do so. The once bountiful diversity of life along and within that water, the place in the desert that the vast majority of wildlife is dependent upon, is denuded and with each species displaced/lost - another piece of the potential for that interdependent system to support and restore itself is lost.
So what ? Fence it off ? Fair enough - then when we look at the riparian/stream-bank indicators we'll see a pretty picture - but the pretty picture is not so much indication of a functional and vibrant system as it is a displacement of the effects of the denuding impact onto other systems that we disrupt to similarly imperiling effect - variables that aren't on the checklist - and that's the important thing - right ? To say nothing of the point of the fence being to obstruct cows from the water - would you suggest that the cows are the only animal obstructed from that source of water when a fence is built ? So many more examples of the damage done by fencing.
That is the promise of the "holistic"/"progressive" grazing regimes - the "New West" - to attempt to displace the conspicuous consequences of the activity away FROM the indicators for which we have the bureaucratic/regulatory responses in place now ONTO other biological/ecological relationships which we are now learning contribute critical functionality to the whole, but for which those relationships have yet to be emphasized/codified into management/regulatory responses. This of course, being the best case scenario of everyone - or just a significant amount - of producers actually adopting the measures.
Tom, if you'd like to converse about the importance of grass in uplands I'd be happy to do so - but I think the point is made, maybe not - but the impact is not strictly on the grass - admittedly, a renewable resource. The impacts take place with less-than-renewable plants, animals micro-biotic crusts, introduction of invasives, etc. etc. and the systems that rely on the integrity of the many members of the ecological community. Because these systems evolve in semi-arid to arid landscapes, it can take decades for them to restore - if at all - once again, there's not enough water.
Tom, I suppose that we'll have to agree to disagree on the ability of my arguments to hold water. I suppose on your contrived ideological spectrum I am among the "radicals" or the "extremists" - that's fine with me, so long as the characterization does not detract from the reason, the science, the law and the pertinent standard to hold objective regard for the responsibility we have as stewards of a trust - an obligation to leave future generations the vibrant wildlife, wild places and integrity of systems capable of preserving those values. I would encourage you to substantiate your claims with well-thought reason rather than conjectured ideological projection. I refer to my comments on that riff made above.
Tom, there are many in the trenches on this one - "radical" and not.
Brian Ertz
Western Watersheds Project
http://www.westerwatersheds.org
My so called contrived ideological spectrum is on the side of wise multiple use and conservation of our sustainably yielding natural resouce. You can call it what you want but sound science and many studies have proven the worth of livestock grazing to keep the so called ecosystem healthy. This is true even in riparian areas and arid to semi-arid landscapes. Courtney White brings alot of this out in his book and is trying to provide the middle ground for our society to move on into the future.
Many of your arguments while sounding noble and carry alot of scientific analysis behind them are tempered by your job and connection with the Western Watershed Project (WWP). After only a couple of minutes on the home page of WWP, one gets a crystal clear picture of the mission and purpose of your organization. Quotes from Aldo Leopold on wilderness and especially by John Robbins on beef and other meat production tempered by the your close relationship with the Biological Diversity Center and Forest Guardians (now Wild Earth), immediately peg your organization as among the eco-preservationist groups who will stop at nothing to bring about total and complete change and management of the un-appropriated federal lands and the way natural resources will be managed into the future. Using litigation and legal roadblocks, primarily using the Endangered Species, is the modus operandi of your organizations. Your web-site points this out very vividly.
Now the argument basically stops being about what is truly best for the land and the people here but a battle royal over who will control the vast natural resource. Of course your job will be to use science and sense of what an ecosystem really is all about. Alston Chase, scholar and author of "Playing God in Yellowstone", refers to the perceived equality of all beings in an ecosystem as "biocentrism". He dismisses the idea as bogus because ecosystems are "mathematical tools" used by scientists to analyze "energy feedback loops". They cannot be drawn on maps. No one can define one. And, says Chase there is no evidence that an ecosystem left undistrubed would ever reach some kind of equilibrium. It's all a ploy to control more real estate, lots more.
Example? The Wildlands Project conceived by Dave Foreman and put into play by Deep Ecology extremist Dr. Reed Noss. We thought this whole idea was crazy in the beginning, but now it is coming into reality and together with all the great wealth, propaganda and lies and even criminal activity behind the movement, the battle lines have been drawn and the trenches on both sides are filled with people battling for what they think is right.
Your group's close association with the likes of Michael Robinson, Sam Hitt, Robin Silver, Dave Foreman, Dave Parsons and yes Jon Marvel bring you into the forefront of radical environmental extremism, and therefore in my estimation are very biased and are truly not wanting good science to prevail in this battle. Or maybe you are just somehow being used as a dupe by your superiors to make a good argument to make their movement look legitimate. Or perhaps you truly believe in your cause, but most of the people living and making their living here in the rural west, wether it be wet, arid or semi-arid, believe we can co-exist while maintaining a healthy environment and a functioning in-tact ecosystem, for generations to come.
"In 1996, I had an anguished question on my mind: why didn’t environmentalists and ranchers get along better? In theory they shared many of the same hopes and fears—a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, an appreciation for a life lived outdoors, and a common concern for healthy water, food, fiber, and liberty."
I thought the same thing in the mid-1970s. The problem is this, the ranchers (and more generally the livestock industry) and the environmentalists DO NOT SHARE many of the same hopes and fears.
Most ranchers have no respect for nature unless it is firmly under their thumb, little concern for healthy water, fiber and food. By "liberty", they mean "their liberty" and not mine.
There is no basis for a discussion between conservationists and most ranchers.
White begins with a false assumption. What follows, therefore, fails.
Your absurd assumption that "Most ranchers have no respect for nature is firmly under their thumb, little concern for healthy water, fiber and food...." is ludicrous! Just the opposite is true! Most ranchers do care for all of the above and more, and by far most of them are progressive stewarts of the land making sure that the resource will sustainably yield their life long labor of love, and in many many cases multiple generational care of the land. Anything less and they are out of business. It is as simple as that. Poor managers don't last long as well as ranchers who aren't utilizing the vast and ever growing science of range management improvements afforded by our colleges and research stations. New Mexico State University is at the forefront in this research and helping ranchers adapt to the "New West" and make sure that their grazing operations are compatable with the environment, including healthy wildlife populations and the wise use and conservation of the natural resource.
Were it only so that poor stewards were soon out of business. With the wide array of government subsidies awful ranchers can, and do, pummel the land for generations. Furthermore, the more they go into debt, the worse they get too.
The bank comes around and says, "I see uneaten grass here. Don't expect good terms on your next loan when you are not using the resources fully." When the bank or agency finally pulls the plug on them, things are totally ruined.
Your bias towards the livestock industry is very apparent. Your understanding or lack thereof is obfuscated, uneducated, and prejudiced.
From the old tired saw of the so called "welfare ranchers" to the actual reality of today's federal range managers (Forest Service & BLM) and how they tightly control and regulate the numbers of animals grazed, how long they graze and how much forage is allowed to be taken and at what times of the year.
Things are very different out here on the range where I live than apparently exists in your little world or mind set.
Maybe you need to take a tour through much of the west and see the successes and maybe take a walk in the shoes of the majority of these ranchers who are good stewards of the range. At the same time you might just get a first hand look at what the true enemy of the rancher's economic and environmental viabilities are. This is the movement to totally change who controls the management and use of the un-appropriated lands. Consumptive users of the federal lands are all pegged as a scourge to the new age worshippers of the creation. Logging and mining are basically gone , ranchers next and hunters are not far behind, thanks to people like you Mostly Mike.
Note the book Western Turfs, The Politics of Public Lands Ranching by Mike Hudak. Herein are chronicled the experiences and stories of 15 public lands managers from former BLM state directors to Forest Service biologists. The sad, pathetic preservation of cattle ranching in the west gets the truth from the horses mouths—the mouths of the people who participated in and witnessed this train wreck for entire careers, now speaking out.
The insight of 12 more conservationists in the book leaves no doubt of the longstanding pathology of a very different homeland security issue now slogging into its 200th year of abuse.