Three Ways to Heal the West

#1: A CATTLE BAN
Just say no to livestock grazing on lands owned by the public.

by George Wuerthner

Most efforts to reform ranching target overgrazing. But the problems will not go away if the focus is just on maintaining a bit more grass on the land.

Even on the open range, there is no free lunch. Every pound of grass going into a cow or sheep is food that is not available to support wild animals, from grasshoppers to elk. The effects ripple out through the community of native creatures: Fewer grasshoppers mean less food for their predators, such as cutthroat trout and kestrels, and fewer elk mean less prey for wolves, less carrion for grizzly bears or wolverines. At least on public lands, forage should be going to support native species, not privately owned domestic animals.

Nor would more responsible grazing eliminate the use of vast amounts of land to raise feed for livestock. The majority of the nation's farmland is not devoted to growing food for direct human consumption, but for domestic animals. Even in California, which produces most of the nation's fruits and vegetables, more acres are dedicated to hay, alfalfa, and pasture than to tomatoes, lettuce, oranges, and the like.

Irrigated livestock-feed production guzzles more water than any other consumer category in the West. In Nevada, agriculture—primarily alfalfa and hay production—consumes 90 percent of the state's scarce water supplies. Thus another cost of western livestock production is the dewatering of rivers and the fragmentation of aquatic ecosystems by dams and reservoirs created to provide irrigation water.

Whether grazed wisely or unwisely, cattle and sheep transmit diseases to native species such as bighorn sheep, causing the demise of many bighorn herds across the western ranges. Bison in Yellowstone National Park also originally contracted the bacterial infection known as brucellosis from domestic livestock. Now these emblems of the American frontier are shot when they cross park borders, to appease stock growers who fear their cows will be infected by bison—even though the chance of transmission is near zero.

The federal government carries out predator and "pest" control activities in the West, on public as well as private lands. Wolves, grizzlies, prairie dogs, and swift fox are just a few of the species eliminated from much of their former range by government agents. In a typical year, the government's "wildlife services" division kills nearly 100,000 coyotes, and even endangered species such as wolves and grizzly bears, on behalf of livestock producers.

Granted, streamside areas in the arid West would improve if ranchers managed cattle and sheep more carefully. But these green ribbons of life are home to 70 to 80 percent of all native wildlife in the region. Such crucial habitat is too precious to risk to a bureaucrat or rancher's promise to do better in the future.

Every hamburger is more than the flesh of a dead cow. It is the accumulation of many losses to our native ecosystems: lost wolves, bison, butterflies, sage grouse, trout, riparian habitat, free-flowing rivers, and clean water. These losses can and do occur regardless of whether the range itself is "overgrazed."

As a co-owner of the American federal lands, and as a supporter of all things wild, I can no longer abide the high price of private interests making money off the lands that belong to all of us. We should totally eliminate livestock grazing on our public lands.

George Wuerthner is a freelance photographer and writer. An ecologist by training, he is currently at work on a book about the impacts of livestock production.

#2: VIGILANCE
Reward the good ranchers and banish the bad ones.

by Rose Strickland

Advocating a ban on grazing on public lands would make it harder—not easier—to help restore the ecological health of western rangelands.

I've worked for over 20 years to remove livestock from public lands where grazing is not appropriate: where it is harming habitats of threatened and endangered species, causing desertification, damaging cultural resources, or is otherwise ecologically unsustainable. Grazing should also be banned on public lands where monitoring is not being done, because monitoring is essential to good management decisions. But there is no scientific basis for banning grazing where it is not environmentally harmful.

Grassroots activists try to improve grazing management where problems are occurring. We support good range managers wherever we find them. We work on restoration of watersheds and wildlife habitat. And we form alliances with progressive ranchers.

On the Bear Creek allotment in Wyoming, Sierra Club activist Meredith Taylor helped convince Shoshone National Forest officials to reduce livestock numbers, eliminate trespass cattle, and restrict grazing in streamside corridors. Nevada and eastern California activists helped convince Toiyabe National Forest to limit grazing to promote healthy forest ecosystems. They supported forest managers who held themselves and livestock permittees accountable for compliance with the new standards. The results are fewer livestock, better grazing practices, and much improved rangeland conditions.

Activists all across the country are exploring grazing-permit "buyout" proposals on all public lands, in areas of high biodiversity, or in popular wilderness areas. Along with livestock operators, we are also discussing the idea of allowing individuals without cattle to hold grazing permits on public lands for restoration purposes.

We are working on other issues, too—restricting predator-control activities, commenting on grazing-management plans, making sure native plants are used to rehabilitate burned rangelands, participating in watershed planning groups, fighting noxious weed invasions, and preserving wildlife habitat and open space through conservation easements near rapidly growing western communities, to mention a few.

A simple no-grazing "solution" would undercut these efforts. What rancher or federal manager would listen to the management suggestions of a conservationist who advocated no grazing? Instead of being able to form alliances and support good grazing managers, no-grazing advocates would become isolated purists—too inflexible to get their hands dusty solving urgent rangeland problems.

An attempt to ban grazing on public lands would also open landmark public-land laws such as the Wilderness Act to debate and amendment by what is now a hostile Congress. Since overgrazing is already against the law, our conservation efforts should focus on better enforcement, not new laws.

What is needed to achieve real grazing reform? Enthusiasm and hard work. Like nearly every other environmental issue important to Sierra Club members, the job of restoring western rangelands requires more activists, more creative approaches, and endless pressure endlessly applied.

Rose Strickland was chair of the Sierra Club's grazing subcommittee from 1984 to 1994. She is coauthor of a manual for activists, How Not to Be Cowed: An Owner's Manual to Grazing on Public Lands,available for $3 from the Sierra Club, P.O. Box 8096, Reno, NV 89507.

#3: BIG RESERVES
Buy private lands and keep the cattle option open.

By Reed Noss

How do we fix the ecological mess our rangelands are now in? I wish it were as simple as taking off the cows. Don't get me wrong. Removing cattle and the accouterments of the livestock industry—fences and roads, in particular—would do wonders for these lands. But it would not be enough. Furthermore, carefully regulated cattle grazing in some areas could possibly aid the ecological restoration process. Let me explain.

What the rangelands of the American West need is a comprehensive conservation plan. The first step is figuring out which lands need protection as reserves. The next step is designing a reserve network that connects enough habitat to meet the needs of wide-ranging species and to accommodate such natural processes as fire, flood, and nutrient cycling. Finally comes development and implementation of a restoration plan for the entire landscape—inside and outside reserves—that perpetuates natural processes and maintains biodiversity over time.

Perhaps the most important consideration in selecting reserves is that all kinds of habitats be represented adequately, from the riparian willows and seasonal wetlands to the high plateaus. Fortunately, because most western rangelands are federal, we can protect a wide variety of habitats without buying huge expanses of private land. But many of the larger valleys and riparian areas, including some that form critical corridors for wildlife, are in private ownership. Some of these lands will need to be acquired and added to the public land base.

When we progress to the phase of ecological management and restoration, issues become more complicated. The invasion of alien plants, such as cheatgrass, may be the biggest single threat to these lands, and much more than plants is affected. When a disturbed area is infested by cheatgrass, which is highly flammable, fires burn hotter and more frequently than they do under natural conditions. These fires, in turn, favor the spread of cheatgrass. Native shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses decline.

Studies in the Snake River Birds of Prey area of southwestern Idaho show that as cheatgrass overtakes these lands, and native shrubs and other plants decline, populations of ground squirrels and jackrabbits plummet. These mammals are the primary prey of prairie falcons and golden eagles, respectively. When the prey species decline, the raptors decline. The pronghorn (an amazing mammal that can run nearly as fast as the cheetah, which it coevolved with) is also sensitive to these changes. It is even more sensitive to fences and roads. Many of these barriers, not just cows, need to be removed to save the pronghorn.

No one knows how to restore rangelands after they become dominated by alien species. Recovery does not occur, at least on a human time scale, when highly degraded areas are simply left alone. We need experiments in ecological restoration. Cheatgrass greens up early in the spring before the native grasses. Some experiments suggest that intensive grazing by cattle during this period of vulnerability, followed by removal of the cattle before the native grasses become palatable, can help control cheatgrass. It is too early to say for certain what will work, but for a problem this severe, all options for restoration must be left open.

Those of us who love the American West should do more than call for an end to subsidized livestock grazing. We should demand full ecological recovery of these marvelous ecosystems.

Reed Noss is a conservation consultant, president of the Society for Conservation Biology, and chief scientist for Conservation Scientist Inc. He has written several books, including Saving Nature's Legacy (Island Press, 1994).

(C) 2000 Sierra Club. Reproduction of this article is not permitted without permission. Contact sierra.magazine@sierraclub.org for more information.