Public lands ranching is destroying the Western United States
Cattle watering station near Cave Valley, NV (Photo: Max Wilbert)
By Will Falk
Public lands ranching is destroying the Western United States. It has pushed native plant species to the brink of extinction. It causes soil to erode so quickly the land cannot keep up. Livestock are poisoning and depleting water supplies, killing perennial stream flows, and are making it increasingly difficult for surface water to accumulate. Stockmen and the animals they raise have devastated populations of iconic American animals like bison, elk, pronghorn, and sage-grouse. Ranchers, ever jealous of the trees their stock cannot eat, encourage the clear-cutting of forests.
Livestock grazing is the single most ecologically destructive activity happening in the Western United States today. To stop the continued destruction of pinyon-juniper forests, to stop the continued destruction of the entire region, public lands ranching must cease.
Livestock grazing is the single most ecologically destructive activity happening in the Western United States today. … [T]o stop the continued destruction of the entire region, public lands ranching must cease.
I cannot decide whether writing this essay in the wake of Ammon Bundy’s arrest and Lavoy Finicum’s death at the hands of the FBI and Oregon State Police after their occupation of Northern Paiute land at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is good or bad. It could be good because this story has finally forced public lands ranching, or “welfare ranching,” and the policies of federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service into the public’s consciousness.
On the other hand, there is the risk that while Bundy and his angry white men waved their rifles in the faces of law enforcement complaining about federal agencies like BLM and the Forest Service, the public developed too much sympathy for those Bundy threatened. These agencies might look like the good guys against Big Bad Bundy while the agencies’ own atrocities go over-looked.
Do not feel sorry for BLM. Those of us who care about life in the region really should be angry with how these federal agencies are run. Now, I am certainly not saying we should be angry for the same reasons as Bundy. No, we should be angry with BLM and Bundy together because they play for the same team: the ranching industry.
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In my last essay, Pinyon-Juniper Forests: BLM’s False Claims to Virtue, I explained how the Bureau of Land Management lies to support deforestation across the Great Basin. Undermining BLM’s bad science took up the bulk of the essay, so now I turn to answering why BLM lies like this.
[M]any commentators have confused the Forest Service and BLM with conservation. Neither the Forest Service nor the BLM have ever been concerned with the health of the land—except where the health of the land benefits livestock production.
BLM lies because BLM exists—and has always existed—to serve the ranching industry. Simply blaming BLM for pinyon-juniper deforestation without indicting the ranching industry fails to address the roots of the problem.
Lynn Jacobs gives an excellent history lesson and shows how both the Forest Service and BLM were created to serve the ranching industry in his book “The Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching.” One of the problematic themes to emerge during Bundy’s occupation is the way many commentators have confused the Forest Service and BLM with conservation. Neither the Forest Service nor the BLM have ever been concerned with the health of the land—except where the health of the land benefits livestock production.
It is true that in the 1890s, powerful ranchers looked at range-lands and saw depletion of water supplies, soil, game animals, and economically useful vegetation. But, they never asked if livestock grazing was feasible. The only thing they were concerned with was how the declining health of the land affected their profits. Powerful ranchers watched the pie their livestock fed off be consumed by smaller nomadic herders, too. Instead of ensuring the survival of the pie, the most powerful ranchers were only concerned about gaining a larger slice for their livestock while restricting weaker ranchers’ access to that pie. Despite some conservation verbiage being used, the Forest Service and BLM were actually formed to ensure the dominance of already powerful businessmen over everyone else. This is a scenario that plays out continuously through the history of capitalism.
In 1905, the Forest Service was formed and Jacobs says that powerful ranchers were instrumental in placing it under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Agriculture instead of the Department of the Interior where it logically belonged. Many ranchers became district, forest, regional, and national Forest Service range and administrative officials and this is still true today. One of the first regulations enacted by the Forest Service set up grazing regulations, created allotments, issued permits, and charged a fee of five cents per month for each cow or 5 sheep grazed. This regulation effectively ended nomadic herding on Forest Service land.
BLM was formed in 1946, again under the influence of powerful ranchers … “In short, the Forest Service and BLM (and states etc.) functioned more as grazing industry tools than true regulatory agencies.”
BLM is a younger agency than the Forest Service and its roots are found in the congressional Taylor Grazing Act of 1935. Jacobs notes that the Act’s namesake, Representative Edward Taylor—a rancher from Colorado and “sworn enemy of conservationists”—pushed the bill through Congress with the express intent of eliminating nomadic herding. The Act created the Division of Grazing under the Department of the Interior and attacked nomadic herders by providing that only those with well-established, substantial private ranch holdings near public land could gain grazing leases.
The first director of the Division of Grazing was a Colorado rancher, Farrington Carpenter, who cemented the ranchers’ power over the Division by establishing local “grazing advisory boards.” The boards were elected by local ranchers. Jacobs explains that these advisory boards were “composed mostly of the same large scale, aggressive, politically savvy ranchers who helped create the Forest Service and Taylor Grazing Act and awarded themselves federal grazing permits…” The Division of Grazing was reorganized into the Grazing Service in 1939.
BLM was formed in 1946, again under the influence of powerful ranchers, when the old Grazing Service and General Land office were combined. Jacobs states that “grazing and ranching abuses and political, economic, and social injustice continued largely unchecked.” Jacobs describes the way many ranchers behaved after BLM was established. Notice how he could be describing the Bundy situation perfectly. “For many years, ranchers refused to obtain permits, pay grazing fees, or follow any regulations whatsoever. When agency personnel attempted enforcement, traditional grazing industry power neutralized the challenge by applying political, social, and economic pressure where needed. In short, the Forest Service and BLM (and states etc.) functioned more as grazing industry tools than true regulatory agencies.”
The same must be said of these agencies today.
“Soon, those who thought they were going to do something positive for wildlife learn to identify with their captors. The ones who bow down the most to industry rise to be managers.”
To be clear, there are many BLM and other federal agency employees that truly do desire what is best for life in the region. There are individuals of good heart in these agencies who strive to do the right thing. Unfortunately, BLM leaders remain captured by the livestock industry and non-stop intimidation like that expressed by Ammon Bundy make it incredibly difficult for employees charged with enforcing environmental laws to do so.
Consider what my friend, Katie Fite—a biologist and a woman with more experience advocating for the natural world against bad BLM policies than perhaps anyone in the world, has said about some BLM staff. Fite encourages us to “make a distinction between BLM the Agency and some of the staff that try to enforce protections that are supposed to exist … These people too become victims of the cattlemen—forced to lie, bury their heads in the sand, and bow to rancher thugs on a daily basis.” And, as so often happens in our dominant, capitalist culture where destruction is rewarded, Fite explains, “Soon, those who thought they were going to do something positive for wildlife learn to identify with their captors. The ones who bow down the most to industry rise to be managers.”
Fite’s insights, however, should not be an excuse. Despite the intentions of some good-hearted BLM and Forest Service staff, the operations of these agencies have been a disaster for life in the region.
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In addition to providing essential historical research, Jacobs’ “The Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching” is a comprehensive examination (602 text-book sized pages) of the physical impact of ranching on the lands comprising the Western United States. Jacobs research on what ranching does to plants, soil, water, and animals in the West paints a grim picture.
“Western rangeland is losing topsoil, mostly due to ranching, at least 4 to 5 times faster than it’s being replaced.”
Jacobs begins by explaining that grass and small herbaceous plants that cows, sheep, and goats eat form the “plankton of the land.” These countless trillions of small plants form the base of the complex food web that supports all of life in the Great Basin. These plants provide oxygen to the atmosphere, nourishment to animals, and maintain soil, water, fire, and atmospheric dynamics. Tragically, according to Jacobs, “Livestock grazing has destroyed the plankton of the land in the Western United States—and around the globe—more extensively than has any other human pursuit.”
Next, Jacobs notes that soil has been called “the soul of life itself” and reminds readers that “without adequate and fertile soil, most terrestrial plant and animal life ceases.” Of course, he means human life, too. Jacobs writes, “For over 100 years livestock grazing has been the major cause of both increased soil erosion and decreased soil fertility on Western public land. Most soil loss and damage is a result of livestock stripping off and trampling vegetation…”
To make this even scarier, Jacobs cites United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Soil Conservation Service (SCS) reports to estimate that “Western rangeland is losing topsoil, mostly due to ranching, at least 4 to 5 times faster than it’s being replaced.” Meanwhile, ranching industry servants like BLM are working to put more cattle on the land. It does not take a mathematical expert to conclude that if ranchers have their way, rangelands will run out of topsoil.
This may be obvious, but when plants, soil, and water are destroyed, animals will be destroyed, too.
Water, an essential element of life anywhere, is even more precious in the semi-arid regions of the Western United States. According to Jacobs, livestock grazing harms both water quality and the amount of water absorbed, retained, and released slowly as surface flow. He describes what has happened since the arrival of livestock, “When stockmen seized the West and livestock numbers skyrocketed in the late 1800s, water tables immediately began dropping in most grazed areas. Steadily since then many thousands of surface waters have vanished…by far the major force exhausting Western water sources has been and remains livestock grazing.”
This may be obvious, but when plants, soil, and water are destroyed, animals will be destroyed, too. Again, this is as true for humans as it is for pinyon jays, grizzly bears, and bison. Jacobs states that botanists estimate that the the loss of one plant species in a natural community affects the life processes of, on average, at least 15 animal species. As livestock eat up native grasses ranchers and the BLM replace them with exotic grasses. The animals depending on those native grasses suffer. Jacobs lists buffalo, elk, whitetail and mule deer, bighorn sheep, and pronghorns as the native animals most noticeably affected by livestock.
Most people are aware of the atrocities visited upon buffalo who were pushed to near total extinction in the latter years of the 19th century. Jacobs details the role the ranching industry played,“That the buffalo’s demise was due mainly to the US campaign (led largely by stockmen) to subjugate the “Indians” by destroying their livelihood…is well-documented.” He goes on to explain that cattle competed with buffalo by overgrazing their forage plants, introducing disease, and “occupying nearly all their former range, effectively eliminating opportunities for re-establishment.”
[T]housands of elk in Yellowstone National Park starved to death in the winter of 1988-89 in large part because elk are no longer able to migrate to lower elevation forage lands occupied by cattle.
Ranching has produced similar disasters for elk who now occupy less than 15% of their former range with populations of perhaps 10% of their original numbers. Jacobs references a horrific event where thousands of elk in Yellowstone National Park starved to death in the winter of 1988-89 in large part because elk are no longer able to migrate to lower elevation forage lands occupied by cattle. Comparable stories exist for big horn sheep, pronghorns, and deer.
Pronghorn sprinting across the Cave Valley floor (Photo: Max Wilbert)*********
This essay series is about protecting pinyon-juniper forests, so how does ranching affect pinyon-juniper forests?
Ranchers hate forests because trees make poor food for livestock. Just how badly do ranchers hate pinyon-juniper forests? Ronald Lanner in his book “The Pinyon Pine: A Natural and Cultural History” estimates that between 1950 and 1964 three million acres of pinyon-juniper forests were converted to grazing lands while between 1960 and 1972 the Forest Service and BLM cut over a third of a million of acres in Utah and Nevada alone. In the preceding sentence, the term “converted” means the forests were destroyed by chaining and seeding. As I’ve written in earlier essays, “chaining” is performed when a battleship anchor chain is stretched between two tractors which are driven parallel to each other over the forest floor. The chain uproots everything in its path.
[T]he conversion process requires that cultivation and seeding take place … [A] process which includes drills that punch seeds into the soil’s surface and driving machinery to apply seeds, herbicides, and other chemicals to the land deeply traumatizes the natural communities where these activities are performed.
After the forests are chained, the conversion process requires that cultivation and seeding take place to force land that was once forested to support livestock forage. But, as you might expect, the seeding process which includes drills that punch seeds into the soil’s surface and driving machinery to apply seeds, herbicides, and other chemicals to the land deeply traumatizes the natural communities where these activities are performed.
Allison Jones, Jim Catlin. and Emanuel Vazquez describe the destructiveness of chaining combined with mechanical seeding in their essay “Mechanical Treatment of Pinyon-Juniper and Sagebrush Systems in the Intermountain West: A Review of the Literature.” In addition to the sheer violence performed when plants are ripped up by their roots, the machines involved is extremely destructive to the soil’s biological crusts. Essential mosses and lichen, for example, are torn up as the machines drive over the land. Soil erosion intensifies after chaining and seeding. Natural water run-off patterns and accumulation zones are disturbed. In short, ranchers hope the conversion process will produce a short-term gain for livestock production at the expense of the land’s long-term health.
But, after all this damage is done to force the land to be something it doesn’t want to be, does chaining and seeding actually lead to increased livestock forage?
But, after all this damage is done to force the land to be something it doesn’t want to be, does chaining and seeding actually lead to increased livestock forage? Ranchers and BLM often claim that clear-cutting pinyon-juniper forests will release native perennial grasses and forbs (that livestock consume) from competition and lead to more productive populations of native grasses and forbs.
Jones et al. say that this doesn’t often happen. They write, “It is true that treated sites often show increases in herbaceous vegetation compared to pre-treatment conditions, though long-term studies indicate that often the benefit is short-lived.” What happens, in reality, is that non-desirable shrubs respond more quickly than native forage species to the removal of the forests. The shrubs fill the niche created when the forests are destroyed more quickly than the native forage species. It seems the ranchers are shooting themselves in the foot.
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[M]y memories of the golden sunshine filtered through the silver nettles of pinyon pine trees, the glimpse of blue pinyon jay feathers winging past bundles of juniper berries, and the joy experienced seeing pronghorn sprint across a Great Basin valley floor demand that I understand the forces threatening all these [and] work to stop their destruction.
It is my hope that this Pinyon-Juniper series will shed light on the ecological deterioration of the Western United States. The West (apart from the California coast and several scattered urban areas) is a large place, sparsely populated by humans. Most humans who do live here live in urban areas. The destruction happening in rural, federally managed lands is rarely placed in front of us.
My understanding of all this began with a short visit to beautiful, ancient pinyon-juniper forests. Though I sit here at my kitchen table in a brand new condo in Park City, Utah with artificial, electric light falling around me listening to my favorite Phish jams playing on Spotify, my memories of the golden sunshine filtered through the silver nettles of pinyon pine trees, the glimpse of blue pinyon jay feathers winging past bundles of juniper berries, and the joy experienced seeing pronghorn sprint across a Great Basin valley floor demand that I understand the forces threatening all these with destruction. Armed with this understanding, the forests and all the life found in them demand that I work to stop their destruction.
Will Falk
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I live in Santa Fe,NM. Our Pinions have been ravaged by the pinion beetle.
Once beautiful hillsides are now barren, except for junipers which seem to be covered in mistletoe and in decline.
I have pinions on my property, some very old. Some have been killed, some dying. The pinion jays are not as plentiful
The thought of BLM purposely killing these magnificent trees, sickens me.
Thanks for sharing the news from New Mexico, Sue. BLM’s policies really are sickening.
I live in southern New Mexico near where some chaining took place at least 4 decades ago. I agree that nothing was accomplished even for livestock. The erosion is ongoing and more junipers have sprouted now than were ripped up then. The grass is still sparse. There is a lot of inedible woody snakeweed and bare dirt. The chaining just made a mess. The brush piles where they pushed all the debris are still there just like they left them.
I live on the western edge of the Great Basin on 40 acres surrounded by mostly blm land. Fortunately for me we live in a Scenic Area viewshed so there has to be much discussion between agencies before they can do anything.
I did not know the history of the FS or the BLM. I will be more alert now as this is my home and my back yard.
So much of this information the BLM applies equally to the Forest Disservice. I worked for them in the eighties and I saw first hand how promotions and rewards went to those who most kissed the ranchers’ asses.
Here is a brief three minute video from the SAGEstep group that will give you some of the ecological rationale and context for the federal land management agencies’ decisions re: juniper reduction and invasive species treatments. It would take congressional action to eliminate grazing from public land which, though not impossible, is extremely unlikely in the near term future. I suggest SAGEstep and the Joint Fire Science Program as jumping off points for interested readers to educate themselves on the government’s efforts and perspective.
http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2013/12/the-web-of-life-dr-fred-provenza/
Here is a well respected expert in animal behavior, Dr. Fred Provenza, presenting a lively talk on human-animal-plant-soil interactions and sustainability.
Grazing itself is not the problem. It is disingenuous to claim that there are only two sides to this issue, pro- and anti-grazing. The problem is common to us all and it is an economic system that incentivizes and rewards habitat degradation. Non-profit groups who plague these government agencies with incessant litigation are diverting truly scarce human and financial resources away from the real, important landscape work that many honest employees would much rather prefer to do.
Interference with the government’s ability to do its job is not going to lead to solutions. There is great potential for collaboration and creativity to allow people to pursue their livelihoods AND sustain biodiversity, but not when everyone is distracted by polarizing arguments.
galaxy300,
Livestock grazing is a terrible problem. Grazing is simply incompatible with the rest of life in the semi-arid regions of the Great Basin and other parts of the West.
You wrote: “The problem is common to us all and it is an economic system that incentivizes and rewards habitat degradation.”
You are correct that the current government protects an economic system that incentivizes and rewards habitat degradation. But you are wrong that this is a problem common to us all. For the majority of human existence (close to 300,000 years), humans lived sustainably with their land base. They lived in a manner that could be carried on for countless generations. Recently (the last few thousand years), a few cultures developed agriculture and domesticated animals. Through exploiting the land for short-term benefit these cultures grew to dominate the rest of life on the planet. Traditional peoples around the world have always resisted these cultures. To say that the Shoshone or the Paiutes or the Washoe are responsible is for the economic system that dominates their land is a colonizer’s lie. Genocide and the destruction of their lands by settlers may have forced many traditional peoples to participate in the economic systems destroying the planet to survive, but they did not create this problem.
You wrote: “Interference with the government’s ability to do its job is not going to lead to solutions.”
You misunderstand what the government’s job is. Beginning specifically with BLM and the Forest Service, I explained in this article that these agencies were created by ranching barons to protect the ranching industry. This is objective fact. So, when BLM or the Forest Service clear-cut forests “to improve rangeland health,” when they mow over sage brush steppe, and when they kill wolves, they ARE doing their job.
Interfering with destruction becomes a moral imperative.
Now the United States government exists and has always existed to protect those who run the economy from the rest of us. Looking into the past, how many examples do you need of government sponsored ecocide to see this? Would Philip Sheridan’s campaign to slaughter buffalo in order to subdue the Sioux prove my point? Does George Washington’s nickname “Town Destroyer” given to him by the Iroquois he sought to eradicate prove my point? To understand this in the present, imagine what would happen if those injured by the methane leak in California or the water in Flint, MI sought true justice from those responsible. The government, of course, would react quickly and decisively to protect those in power.
Will- as the author I was really hoping you would chime in, I appreciate it. I was thinking it’d be cool to have a chat. If you want maybe we can email?
“You are correct that the current government protects an economic system that incentivizes and rewards habitat degradation. But you are wrong that this is a problem common to us all.”
Another way for me to phrase this would be to say that if you are a person who has a job, uses electricity, drives, eats food produced via industrial ag, lives in a building, etc., in other words if you are a modern civilized human, you are just as “guilty” of degrading habitat as any rancher because by extension you are, however unwittingly, participating in a now-globalized socio-political-economic system that is inherently destructive because it is based on non-scientific economic models which promote infinite economic growth that is incompatible with life on a finite planet (etc. I’m sure I’m preaching the choir on this point here.)
I absolutely hear what you’re saying about our culture representing only a fraction of human existence and I agree that the way we live is not the way of humanity itself. Indeed that knowledge is the source of whatever crumbs of hope I have left for the future. Yes, unfortunately, after ten thousand years, the people of our culture have colonized and killed off almost every other culture to the point where our culture* now represents the majority of humans on the planet. Our cultural juggernaut has grown so massive and overwhelming that it is impacting and threatening the continued existence of humanity in its entirety, not to mention thousands or millions of other species.
I absolutely hear what you’re saying about government subservience to greedy and violent interests.
As easy as it is to become sad and to despair, I refuse to define this state of affairs as a tragedy or place the situation in terms of good vs. evil. I believe arguing and fighting is a complete waste of time, and time is something we may not have much of left either along with clean water, charismatic megafauna, tenuous socio-political stability, breatheable air and so on.
If we wish to have a future, we need to divert attention, energy, time, and money away from so many of the frivolous and/or counterproductive pursuits that thrive given the current, global socio-economic-political system. The question (for me) is how can we encourage dialogue, i.e. thinking out loud together? How can we join together and become educated and respectfully acknowledge each other’s perspectives while we work towards common solutions to problems that threaten everyone’s survival? How can we get creative to work around the barriers to success? What loopholes can we discover or create to help us reinvent our society so it is more compassionate/diverse/sustainable/insert whatever values you hold dear here?
Rather than a reactive and divisive approach, I am extremely interested in a proactive stakeholder approach that brings people with divergent interests to the table. What can solve problems of such scale and complexity other than committed, passionate, protracted dialogue? A collaborative exploration of facts and perspectives is necessary to build ideas and create processes of transitioning away from and ultimately destroying what has proven to be not only an unsustainable but an incredibly unsatisfying lifestyle.
We need to integrate falsely disconnected bodies of expertise from law, policy, economics, science, ecology, psychology, faith, intuition, and all of it to figure out what, if anything can be done given the urgent and precarious situation we face. It certainly seems to me that the more we use science and technology to explore truths about reality, the more we realize that the knowledge and worldviews of those so-called “primitive” cultures we condescended to for millenia actually already had a lot of things figured out. The grand experiment that is civilization is a failure. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. Guess the joke’s on “us.”
Taking out trees is WRONG. This video promotes tree removal.
In fact the video does not discuss tree removal and Provenza makes clear that the obsession with exotic plant management is a bit of a fool’s errand in the big scheme of things (starting at 20:48.) Juniper has been spreading outside its typical habitat for at least the past 100 years and is considered invasive in many areas in the Great Basin because these areas used to be mainly grassland. If climate change matters to you at all these native grasslands stored incredible amounts of carbon underground, much more so than juniper systems which are actually degraded, unhealthy and relatively unproductive systems from an ecological standpoint. These are not pristine or beautiful forests with loads of value for wildlife, contrary to what you apparently imagine. See the video from my previous comment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOifPk79vog
Thank you for this excellent article. I recommend the documentary, Cowspiracy,the Substainability Secret, for further proof of the destruction cattle are causing. I’m in KY and even here there is evidence of erosion, riparian area and forest destruction and water pollution with E.coli and algae. Still the Farm Bureau and Cattlemen’s Association promote beef. Coyotes and goundhogs are shot on sight without regard for their place in nature
In the West many predators are killed which further upsets the balance of nature. 2.7 million were killed in just one year by government agencies to “benefit” ranchers and farmers. This doesn’t count the pets killed accidentally .Another wildlife species that has been persecuted ruthlessly is our wild horse, Equus caballus . Thousands have been killed although they are a native species and symbiotic to ecosystems. The BLM breaks the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act by “managing for extinction” to benefit the welfare ranchers at taxpayers’ expense.
With regard to horses, they are not native to North America, fwiw. See http://m.livescience.com/9589-surprising-history-america-wild-horses.html People with romantic visions of an Old West that never really existed in the first place pushed legislation through that forces the BLM to retain horses on the public landscape. As with grazing, it’s a decision not based on the ideals of ecology so much as politics, the BLM has to do it to appease some peoples’ unrealistic ideals. It may not be a perfect system but for now ranching subsidization is actually staving off much more widespread environmental destruction.
Also, “disturbance of the balance of nature” is the driving force of evolution. Extinction is a natural process.
Human cultures constantly make value judgments that influence which species they favor, and those preferences are always in flux over time. No choice we make is going to be entirely good… or entirely bad. Our choices are always good for some species and bad for others. This isn’t about “right” or “wrong.”
With the interconnected spectres of peak oil, biodiversity loss, population overshoot, and massive overconsumption of both renewable and nonrenewable resources knocking at the door, a more productive way to conduct a discussion on this topic is to examine what works and what doesn’t for our own long-term survival. And if you and your family happen to live near a ranching community when the shit hits the fan and industrial civilization collapses, I think you might be grateful that your neighbors still possess some knowledge of how to live off the land.
From a 30,000 foot level, the community of life on this planet is resilient, and has bounced back 5 or 6 times from periods of mass extinction such as we are experiencing now. The universe is indifferent and the destiny of everything is dust. Assigning blame, pointing the finger, and arguing is pointless.
Your link to Life Science sort of disproves your statement above:
“But the two key elements for defining an animal as a native species are where it originated and whether or not it coevolved with its habitat. E. caballus can lay claim to doing both in North America. So a good argument can be made that it, too, should enjoy protection as a form of native wildlife.”
Yes, I feel wild horses ARE a native animal & those seem to be Jay Kirkpatrick & Patricia Fazio’s theory too.
You might want to research the actual damage that livestock has been and is doing – for instance: Welfare Ranching. This is made up of many essays by different experts regarding the damage that livestock is doing to the environment. Interesting reading.
I don’t have a personal opinion about wild horses one way or another. I’m not trying to argue for or against the concept. I just wanted to make clear the fact they were introduced relatively recently, and that political interests have more to do with their continued existence on public land than any “natural” or ecological rationale. My point is to say, isn’t it fascinating how people are so fickle and deliberately pick and choose desirable and undesirable species and introduce plants and animals knowingly or unknowingly, and change their minds, and disagree with each other? This topic is also reminding me of how interesting it is to consider the issue of how environmentalism has been framed since the 60’s where it is somehow supposed to be the government’s job to protect the environment! It seems laughable if you agree with the premise discussed above that the REAL job of the government is to protect the powerful interests of greedy and violent businesses.
A discussion on native species should include the fact that the animals raised for meat on our public grasslands are not native but imported for their heavy low set bodies. The sheep were selected because of their dense wool and thickset hindquarters. Because of their vulnerabilities to disease and sickness – they have contributed to sickness in our bison (justifying grand scale slaughter) and bighorn sheep (which have become the darling of groups such as Safari Hunt International). The invasion of the grazing meat animals has destroyed the habitats because of overstocking and preference for stationary eating rather than browsing on forage which every other life form (including the arguably native equines) depends on. Every animal that thrives on the grasslands contributes to its restoration with the exception of the meat animals who have never had a chance to adapt (live or die) as natural free roaming creatures (except the lovely long horn). It is important to distinguish between animals placed on the grassland to take advantage of the enormous carrying capacity and those species who survive in ecological balance; something meat grazing does not concern itself with except to demands more than its fair share while complaining of self perpetuated reduced forage as being the reason to curtail use (and lives) by free roaming wildlife.
I’ve seen chaining of miles and miles of sagebrush flatlands. I’ve heard discussion from ecologists that juniper trees encroach on sagebrush. I’ve seen exactly the same watering trough and bare land, with stubby leafless sagebrush exactly as represented in the lead photograph for this article. The issues are black and white. Grazing is by permit only and will not take an act of Congress as authority has been given to BLM to cease grazing if damage to the public grasslands is imminent or the needs of wildlife are threatened. Both scenarios are present and we demand resolution in the manner provided by law.
What we are seeing is a shifting of the blame by domestic grazers onto other “causes” such as encroachment by pinyon pine, 15-40,000 wild horse and burros overgrazing the same lands as 2 million cattle and sheep, “drought,” invasive weeds and wildfire. None of these causes are the true root of the desertification witnessed over the last 200 years. The public grasslands at one time had the carrying capacity of millions grazing animals and supported ecosystems, including dense populations of predators – whose roles have been extinguished in no small part to their conscious eradication by “Wildlife Services” attendant to grazing business interests.
Wildlife and wildlands are under direct threat by grazing on public lands and this fact has been analyzed for at last the last 200 years with no abatement, except when the grassland allotment is so soured as to be unusable and grazers turn to subsidies to support their losses.
Pinyon pines are ancient and should be revered for their survival as the provider of staple food to generations of native peoples. With grazing business taking over the interest of the public’s generosity by conversion to their personal fortune, all public land has seen diminished vitality and diminished carrying capacity – the last few years targeting pinyon trees as the antichrist of sagegrouse. Redirection of water supplies to enhance so-called “water rights” has also taken its toll.
This is an excellent article and I sincerely hope all citizens take heed. At the very least, make those agencies responsible for protecting our natural resources do it.
Thank you very much for writing this, Janet. I completely agree.
Please keep up the good work.
It is a misconception that the government can “protect natural resources.” It can’t when, like Will mentioned, the government is beholden to those who wield economic power. That’s where a partial answer lies… If enough people understand that, the possibility of a voluntarily sustainable society can emerge. This has been said elsewhere:
“Protecting the environment” is the business of those among us who never expect to achieve more than stalemate with the forces that are rendering our planet uninhabitable. We must have more than that. Stalemate is just not good enough. And that’s the very first mind-change we must make — getting rid of the notion that “protecting the environment” is the very best we can hope for.
Protecting the environment is for bureaucrats and vote-getters. We can safely leave that in their hands to screw up in the usual fashion. But saving the world is different. Is anyone here waiting for Bill Clinton and Al Gore to save the world? No, saving the world is too important to leave to them. Saving the world is for upstarts and lovers. Saving the world is for the rest of us.” http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Writings/rice_u_2_98.cfm
“Extinction is a natural process.”
As you alluded to, we’re in the midst of the 6th mass extinction. This extinction event is happening faster than the other ones. To just shrug your shoulders in the face of this destruction is to demonstrate extreme apathy and a lack of love. There is a difference between naturally-occurring extinction and what we’re seeing now.
“No choice we make is going to be entirely good… or entirely bad. Our choices are always good for some species and bad for others. This isn’t about “right” or “wrong.”
You assume that life can survive the trajectory we’re on. The choices we are making right now – including allowing the ranching industry to continue the destruction – are destroying the planet’s life support systems. The planet is finite. Just because a system is resilient does not mean that system is immune to being pushed too far. There is only so much water, so much air, so much soil. When too much of that water and air is poisoned and that soil eroded, the planet can and will be rendered incapable of supporting life. Our choices, then, which are consuming what some call “resources” (and what others call pinyon pines, salmon, phytoplankton, grizzly bears, and douglas fir) at ever faster rates are bad for everyone.
“The universe is indifferent and the destiny of everything is dust.” Ah, now your nihilism is apparent…If the universe is indifferent and the destiny of everything is dust, why would the history of life be the history of species and processes working together to develop an ever-more cooperative, rich, and complex planet? No, the destiny of everything is more life. Humans just need to get out of the way and retake their proper place as respectful members of natural communities.
“Assigning blame, pointing the finger, and arguing is pointless.”
Statements like this are always said during times of atrocity and these statements often operate to neutralize resistance while the atrocities continue. Remember: the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto who fought back when the Nazis came for them had a higher survival rate than those who didn’t. It is as Utah Phillips has said, “The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”
Saving one animal IS making a difference. Its certainly NOT pointless to assign blame, nor is it pointless to argue & bring the problem into the public eye.
Good article – may you write many many more!!!
All I mean wrt argument is that you can literally sit here and argue your side and I can argue my side and we both dig into our respective positions and refuse to budge for 50, 100, 1000 years and accomplish nothing. It’s a waste of time! The more “enlightened” thing to do is have dialogue.
I guess the logical extension of what I’m getting at is that if you truly cannot reach agreement there is no one right way for people to live and that’s how we came to have thousands of distinct human cultures and languages in the first place, like branches diverging on a tree, related yet different. We in our culture have a peculiar insistence that there must be one way of doing things
Do you assume I’m a nihilist because I acknowledge that the sun is expected to eventually explode and even the universe at large is expected to become dark and quiet and still? I am like you and I wish nothing more than for things to be different and for love and the planet to flourish.
It sounds like in terms of tactics you might be one who would be willing to take up arms and fight literally. I commend you. Injure it. I am more of the mind to try to abandon the beast of civilization, to rob it of its power, for millions or billions of us walk away, to drain it like fleas sucking blood from the back of a camel, to pull resources away from it and build something else, many other somethings
Lest we be too optimistic, this process, of abandoning and/or destroying industrial civilization, of course would require extraordinary amounts of risk. Without Big Brother watching over us, there would be significant chaos and bloodshed before things settled out. And even then, it’s not like traditional societies/our ancestors lived like environmental or bleeding-heart liberal saints! Species were driven to extinction and there were wars and discomforts then, too.
PIÑON!!!!!