New West Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
Last week I spent two days with 20 ranchers and 2 journalists. Everyone except the journalists wore boots and pants. Everyone except the journalists was up early. At times I felt totally out of place, yet right at home.
I know I come from a different breed, a more urban outlook. That is why I was nervous to attend the Undaunted Stewardship tour with the Montana Stockgrowers Association, knowing I would be on a tour bus, eating three meals a day with folks that I didn’t think I would have much in common with, nor really know what to discuss. As a journalist, of course I’m going to undertake the challenge, and I sure didn’t expect to be so enthralled, tutored and standing on the same ground as my weathered neighbor.
I got introduced to a way of life that is not too far off from my own. I appreciate and care for this land of Montana and the Rocky Mountains. I want it to be healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna. And the ranchers share that perspective, but they are the ones with dirt under their nails from managing the land that I appreciate.
The ranchers of Montana have a depth of knowledge of this place that is indispensable, as they have walked every inch, with decades and generations of wisdom of how to manage their property so water flows, noxious weeds diminish and our land is productive while providing the vast, and seemingly wild, open space.
I admit I haven’t been the best about hearing their side, as many “environmentalists” may not either. A few of the ranchers did claim that they are terrible about talking to and communicating with the other side, but they are trying to change that as our lands are becoming increasingly polarized with different interest groups.
We face a standstill with little to no progress on the future of our ranching community and what that means to some of the amenities that us urbanites appreciate and find essential to this land: open space, healthy wildlife habitat and local foods and agriculture.
I’m actually nervous for our ranching community and the lands that they manage, graze, care for and care about. We are facing a time when urban cities values open space and great vistas where wildlife roam free, but we do not understand what takes place on the other side of the fence.
Over the course of two day, I heard a list of threats to the viability of the ranching community that was astounding. It was more than I had imagined: brucellosis, wolves, wind energy, mining, judicature of water, sage grouse and the endangered species protection restrictions, subdivision fragmentation of the land, water quality and finding good helping hands.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in particular is in a challenging scenario. The 21 million acres in the GYE is losing the connected grazing resources, as the land becomes subdivided, public lands management plans change that alter grazing practices that no longer make operations viable, and species protection is putting restrictions on land management that also limited ranchers activities. All of these factors are constricting the profitability of the land and forces losses beyond a breakeven.
It was a wake-up call when one ranchers stated that due to the increase cost of brucellosis testing, as well as the change in management requirements in Park County, we may see ranches drop deep into the red, forcing sale and subdivision because the land value is so high, and in turn, the inevitable loss of open space in the Paradise Valley.
Our landscape is on the verge of becoming more fragmented than it already is, particularly if we loose the ranching community.
I encourage anyone who lives in the West to spend a day walking and chatting with a rancher on his land. You will walk away more enriched, more knowledgeable about land management and understand how crucial this threatened way of life is on our Western landscape.
millions of people and myself take the ranch for granted . the natural stewards of land give us much more than beef or lamb ,leather , wool . I don’t want my meat raised in a feed lot . Open space is a good thing .
Thoughtful take. My background is ranching, but most of the world doesn’t have any experience with ranching or ranchers. They are not caricatures.
Better late than never, I thank you so much for this insightful article. Sadly too many folks do not realize that when our food producers are gone, there is no way to go back.
Again, many thanks.
I’ve never yet met a rancher who did not favor eradication of varmints…
Lucia, Thank you for this article. Those of us who have worked closely with farmers and ranchers know that they care very much about the land. Without healthy habitat for their crops and animals they would not be able to stay in business. It would be much easier for many of them to sell out to subdividers and take the money and enjoy it. Instead, they keep long hours and work hard in all kinds of weather to make sure we have a healthy and abundant food supply.
Hopefully your article will continue to help ‘urbanites’ understand and appreciate people in agriculture who, for too long, have been the subject of much deprecation by many seeking to ‘conserve’ the land. That attitude became widespread and complicated the job of being a farmer or rancher – more regulations, difficulty in grazing on federal and state lands, higher costs, lower profits, dealing with endangered species and wetlands, and the list goes on and on. It all compounded the challenges of being agriculture and the underappreciation resulted in an attitude of little value for the agricultural community. Many in agriculture gave up and sold out because it just didn’t make any sense to raise calves at a buck a pound on the hoof on $10,000+ per acre land. There was a bumper sticker a few years back which said it all: “Cows, not Condos.” Now days, we have condos and not cows. So much for conservation efforts.
If the energies of restrictions put on farmers and ranchers of the last 25 years, which put some out of business, was put into finding ways to keep them in business, maybe we’d still have more of our food grown locally rather than imported from God knows where. And maybe we’d still have more of the open spaces I enjoyed as a kid growing up the the Gallatin Valley.
God bless this dialogue.
Lucia
It would probably help for you to learn something about the ecology of pastoralism as well as the history of livestock power politics in the Greater Yellowstone before you buy into the rancher narrative of apologetics. Having grown up in agriculture and having some experience with cattle both in the South and the West, I can tell you the Jeffersonian perspective on yeoman farmers and ranchers that you find so inviting is more nostalgia than truth.
As for the so-called cost of brucellosis to ranchers, read or re-read my column here on New West called “The True Cost of Brucellosis.”
RH
You need to spend less time with the ranchers and more time with people like the Blixeths. I can drive by ranches and see the cattle. I can’t drive by the Blixeths’ house/mansion and see the opulence.
Great column Lucia! Don’t be discouraged by any narrow minded comments you may receive. It is far braver to seek out, understand, and work with the “opposite” viewpoint than it is to condemn and stereotype it. Thanks for your open-mindedness and giving voice to a commonality we all share–the love of open space.
Thanks for the much-needed insight into Montana’s agricultural communities. Unfortunately, I can’t agree with the statement that mining is a threat to ranchers. In fact, ranchers in counties like Jefferson (south of Lewis and Clark), appreciate the two mines in that county for the multi-million dollar tax payments these mines make to the local governments and communities. Tax payments that really help to off-set property taxes in the county. Property taxes, that with out these mines, would be staggering given the amount of acreage several of these multi-generational ranching operations own. I could go on and on, but rather, I would like to suggest that perhaps some time ought to be spent with our local miners (and even loggers). I think you would be just as enlightened by these other Montanans as well.
Explain why it should cost the rancher a cent for testing and vaccines, when they have an enormous budget that has and is being wasted away on hazing and slaughtering Bison and Elk, use some of it. Quit wasting Livestock funds on Bison and Elk. Use it for the CATTLE. The infected meat hits the food chain anyway.
In response to “I Love Nature,” I’d like to know how getting all the facts about the ecological and political impacts of cattle and the livestock industry is “narrow-minded.” I Love Nature’s comment sounds to me like more of the propaganda the livestock industry spreads around about itself–”Listen to our high opinion of ourselves, pay no attention to the facts.”
Yeah, ranches like open spaces–they just don’t like bison, elk, or other wildlife in those spaces.
This was a good article and the ideas expressed are my experience with ranching and ranchers. We run a small operation in Western Oregon and until our sheep are killed by predators, we let them be. Ranchers are not automatically opposed to allowing all species to live and utilize their land. But we are in a business and allowing our livestock to be killed by predators puts us out of business fast. In Western Oregon, our cattle have no predators that kill them but in Montana such do exist.
A rancher is first in the business of growing grass and secondly in raising meat for American families. The ones who don’t take care of their grass, don’t stay in business long. In Oregon the state does protect farming/ranching lands by zoning and tax advantages for being productive. Montana might consider doing the same as when free range ranching gone, our whole way of life will be impacted.
There is nothing healthier to eat (protein wise) than natural, grass fed meat. People need to get informed as that is the meat we should all be eating as it has the same Omega-3 as salmon which is so highly touted and also endangered.
Part of the problem in the west is that the land was “homesteaded” based on the subdivision of the land along straight lines–townships and ranges–and not on watersheds, rainfall and productivity. So now many ranches must depend on 10 thousand foot high elevation meadows–for part of the year- that are only found on public lands. You can’t ignore the fact that much of the west is “high desert” unsuitable for “fat faced” European cattle regardless as to how noble the rancher looks in his wide-brimmed hat and pointed boots. And yes, my great great grand parents homesteaded a “wheat ranch” in eastern Washington, so I am not totally without understanding for the rural way of life. And I prefer ranching to mega-mansions.
Lucia Steward,
what did you notice about the upland vegetation on grazed allotment vs that of ungrazed ? what did you notice about the soils on grazed land versus ungrazed ? the want for our West to be “healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna.” is an admirable thing – but that want, and the proclaimed intention of livestock producers to agree, are not adequate and enforceable standards capable of making it so. That want, and the proclaimed intention of livestock producers to agree, have been the case for decades – and that perspective has enjoyed the Lion’s share of media play all that time – and yet our wildlife habitat and ecological condition of the land continues to degrade. Why?
The wild itself threatens livestock
it’s interesting to me how the livestock industry has been readily able to list off the perpetual threats to its “viability” for decades. It is similarly interesting to note that many of those things in this article, uttered in the same breath as ” I want it to be healthy and have the best management practices to keep it viable and teeming with diverse flora and fauna. And the ranchers share that perspective” is accompanied by a list of threats to Livestock’s viability: “sage grouse” “brucellosis testing” “wolves” “endangered species protection restrictions” “water quality” – it seems that there’s a disconnect between those two statements –
Why are these things threatening to the livestock industry ?
The reason is that Livestock has been a pervasive cause of the damage that makes necessary the protections afforded these common values.
It’s been the same line for decades – “We want wildlife and healthy habitat” says the rancher ~ with the caveat that because livestock have been and continue to be scientifically demonstrated to so degrade these very things, any measurable protections necessarily conflict with the “viability” of their enterprise – and must be diluted, denuded, reformed, or abandoned altogether.
“We want wildlife and healthy habitat” ~ but none of the legal protections, verifiable monitoring criteria, or “stewardship” of the less conspicuous but critically important systems that serve as the ecological conditions necessary to make that want so.
What was the rate of utilization on the grazed lands ? How about soil permeability from riparian all the way to upland ? What plants were prevelant ? Were there a lot of fences ? Roads ?
“Open space” is not necessarily wildlife habitat – and when the want for happy relations, more bloated subsidy than has already been wasted (estimate around $1/2 billion annually when all production activities the public pays for are accounted for across the country), and diminished protections for public land ranchers eclipses an objective regard for some of these questions – and many many more -mentioned above – those of us who are asking the questions about the condition of ecology – rather than the viability of the bankroll of the user – notice a pronounced negative thing if what we want, on our public land, is diverse fish, wildlife and the complex healthy habitat necessary to make those things so.
I encourage anyone who lives in the West to spend a day walking and chatting with an ecologist on public land. You will walk away more enriched, more knowledgeable about land management and understand how crucial this objective regard for natural systems is to our Western landscape.
C’mon, Brian, you are the media director for Jon Marvel’s Western Watersheds Project. It is no secret that WWP considers ranchers and beef their worst enemy and they have a barrage of lawsuits against those who would use public lands for anything other than playing, no matter how it benefits the people.
I’m not sure how many they have pending at this particular time, perhaps you could enlighten us. I think preventing control of wolves and preventing drilling for our own oil/gas are a couple at present.
Lest we forget, that HUMANS are the root of the problem not the livestock nor the vegetation. All plants have a reason, all animals would roam the planet were it not for humans building fences. So don’t blame the livestock for degradation of the land.
Ann,
you are right – it’s is HUMANS who put up the fences and put the livestock on desert lands – the animals themselves are not responsible. It will be HUMANS that take them off.
Public lands don’t just belong to environmentalists. The country has a right to choose wisely how to use these lands that benefit most people. I have no stake in leases on national forest or BLM lands but I see the advantage of having cattle on these places with oversight to be sure they don’t damage the lands. They do not have to if they are not overgrazing and are moved. Seasonally there is a good reason to keep the grass eaten down (fire protection) and a good reason to move them off if they are eating it down to far.
For people who think by being a vegetarian, they touch the land more lightly, this does not have to be so. It’s not only difficult to get enough protein with just vegetables but even they take up land to grow. Grassfed beef is healthier for the animals and the consumers. The issue is don’t overeat it. Raising all livestock in feedlots is not healthy or anyone.
I favor protection of the land period because it benefits the rancher and the sightseer but it’s not fair to make one use the highest use and the other of no value. If environmentalists go too far with their desire to keep the open forests free of anything but hikers, they will lose their battle. This country is still a democracy… for now.
Marion; Where the heck is the picture? I enjoy your photographs, no matter how we don’t get along most of the time you can take great pictures.
I didn’t post it because I had before.
http://www.pbase.com/mariond/image/81217276.jpg
I took some last week growing out of one of those nasty cow pies, but I haven’t processed them yet. Thanks for the compliment. By the way some of the leesees up there have been using this same ground since the country here abouts was settled in the 1880s and 1890s. Abused land would not look like this after 120 years.
Beautiful picture! except for the Lupine, that is also known to kill cattle and cause them to abort.
To Robert Hoskins, yeah we know your line. Drive the farmer and ranchers off the land and the west will revert to an idyllic nirvana. What hogwash. Fortunately, purveyors of your narrow viewpoint, though vocal, are still a small minority in places like the Gallatin Valley. Most people I run into are still apreciative of farmers and ranchers for maintaining productive land and the open spaces it provides.
Great article BTW. We need far more dialogue and interaction between ranchers and more urban folks who are interested in land-use issues and maintaining open spaces. We do have a lot in common in that we both have a great love for the beautiful wide-open Montana landscape and the heritage of this state.
Dray
Glad to know you don’t believe in history or science. People are generally ignorant of those two subjects; that’s why they can’t or don’t see the damage that livestock and the livestock industry have done to land and wildlife.
Just how much are ranchers doing for bison, for example? Or for wolves and grizzly bears? Of late, Montana’s ranchers have decided to target elk as alleged sources of brucellosis for Montana’s brucellosis incident. There’s no proof of this, of course, but the cowboy culture has never held truth in much regard.
The answer is that there doing nothing positive for wildlife. “Open spaces” doesn’t mean much without the wildness that wild animals bring to it. Cattle are a pretty poor substitute for the animated landscape.
RH
When wildlife are destroyed or ‘eliminated’ in order for cattle to graze public lands, I have a problem with that. When Wildlife, (Bison and Elk) are accused of transferring a non-lethal, antiquated policies disease, and the Rancher doesn’t have the internal fortitude to stand up and ask why along with the wildlife advocates, in order to ‘up-date’ those said policies, I have a problem with that. When my Private Property rights are ignored, in the name of the Cattle, of which there are none EVER in my area year around, for a disease that is no threat to humans when necessary precautions are taken, I have a problem with that. When I see individual cattle Ranchers, ‘cow-tow’ to an organization, ‘just-because’, and That Organization, ‘put the screws to’ the individual Cattle Rancher I have a Problem with that.
When I see our Gvt. Officials Do completely stupid things in order to control something, and waste OUR hard earned money to do it, in order to keep their enormous budget to blow. (when West Nile, Hantavirus, Mad Cow are more serious of a disease, and they aren’t out there killing every Robin or field mouse or mosquito) I have a problem with that.
I’ve lived and am living both sides of this fence, but never the Gvt. side, just as someone trying to make a living raising cattle, and someone that enjoys and is honored to live among some of the Purest of our ‘Creators’ gifts. I can’t understand why there needs to be a line drawn between the Rancher and the ‘advocate’ when the only real FALSE problem is brought on by the Gvt. in the name of ‘disease’. A disease that is no more deadly than Osteoporosis, is known how NOT to get it (unlike Osteo.)
If the Department of Livestock and the Board of livestock would spend that money they get in their budgets ON the livestock, ie. vaccines, testing, etc. Do you think there would still be an issue? There will NEVER be Bison all over the landscapes again, and we all know it. Does anyone know how many ranches, head of cattle are in the GYA? I know there is less than a thousand (domestic) on the West side of the Park in Gallatin County. And THOUSANDS of acres with elk and deer, plenty of room for some Bison.
I Salute the Rancher in Wyoming refusing to slaughter his herd. As a beef eater, I would boycott MT beef but I would love to buy some of the WY. rancher’s ‘infected’ beef.
Ann
What’s going on here in Wyoming is that ranchers have finally had to make a decision and make it publicly–what’s more important: grass or disease. The elk feedgrounds protect ranchers’ grass on public and private lands while maintaining brucellosis in elk at high levels in western Wyoming. Ranchers have been able to play both ends against the middle for a long time, and act as if brucellosis is a serious disease, but they can no longer get away with that falsehood. They know that brucellosis is no big deal and they’ve known it for a long time. What’s different now is that they have to admit it publicly.
The action by the rancher in Daniel–refusing to slaughter his herd, which will cause Wyoming to lose its brucellosis free status for the second time in four years–is an acknowledgement that brucellosis is no big deal and that the APHIS rules are obsolete and draconian. It’s also an acknowledgement that losing brucellosis free status is no big deal either. The claim that it’s an economic disaster for the livestock industry is false, as I’ve demonstrated elsewhere on NewWest.
What really counts, as it always has, is grass, and the power to control grass. That includes the power to control elk in Wyoming and bison in Montana–the power to keep elk and bison from range that is reserved for cattle.
The problem then is the political power of the livestock oligarchy to control land use and wildlife for its own benefit. The only way we’re going to get better land use and wildlife management in the Greater Yellowstone–the only way we’re going to secure range for elk and bison, not to mention wolves and bears–is to destroy the political power of the livestock industry to control the range.
That’s why it’s “wildlife versus livestock,” and there is no “win-win.” If wildlife are going to win, livestock have to lose. So called “win-win” strategies are doomed to failure, because they accomplish nothing but enhance livestock industry control over land and wildlife but cover it up with comfortable platitudes about cooperation and good will–as reflected in Lucia’s story. But there’s no good will involved, only greed and selfishness.
RH
Robert;
I agree for the most part except the individual small Rancher, (there are a few as seen with Rainy). I still feel it’s APHIS not the small Rancher, when it comes to disease, The Board of Livestock, then the Department of Livestock. The individual Rancher is just the pawn in the control thing, and some (I guess) still can’t see the cow for the manure on her. I guess what I’m trying to do is ‘wash’ the cow, get the ‘small’ ranchers to see how they are being used, and screwed.
In Montana on this side the grass can’t be an issue becuase there are no public grazing allotments. But on your end I guess there still are.
If they trucked that hay in to feed the cattle instead of the Elk, they would eliminate the disease breeding grounds, and the cows would have plenty to eat. Grazing a field is cleaner than a feedlot no matter how you ‘butcher’ it.
otherwise you are so right. There is no huge financial loss, and even if there were, why couldn’t the ‘natives’ buy up the ‘infected’ meat when it’s time to butcher? Let the Rancher continue with his ‘ranching’. Let the ‘budget’ cover most of the testing if not all the testing etc. costs.
Ann
Politically, one issue is that “the small rancher” hardly exists. Most of the small ranchers I know in Wyoming are right here in Crowheart. Unfortunately, the little guys and gals have zero influence on the livestock industry–the DOLs, the APHISs, the Stockgrowers, the Cattlemen, the Farm Bureau, the meat packers, etc., and that is what we are having to deal with–not the little guy with a couple hundred head. It’s a power issue, and we don’t get anywhere by collaborating with the power brokers.
The only way to think of what’s happening to bison, elk, wolves, grizzly bears, other critters, and the land itself, is that we’re dealing with an entrenched and well-funded power structure that’s interested in one thing: power. There’s no other way to think about the problem except in range war terms, between wildlife and livestock.
Look at the lies going around with government sanction that elk caused the brucellosis incidents in Montana. You and I know know there is zero evidence for an elk source, and good circumstantial evidence for a cattle source. Yet, the press, after all the letters I’ve written to reporters explaining why elk aren’t the source and why cattle are the most likely source, continues to parrot the DOL/Stockgrower line that elk are the problem. This is not an ordinary problem amenable to compromise. It’s either wildlife or livestock.
RH
You are exactly right. BUT if we can get all your little ranchers and all the ”little’ ranches everywhere to start doing what the guy in Daniel is doing, we might could bust the DoL’s, Stock growers, APHIS et.al’s control, don’t you think? a whole bunch of ants can take over when all moving in the same direction.
Theoretically, but if I’ve learned anything in my time here in Wyoming, it is that herding ranchers in one direction is a little like herding cats or hunters in the same direction, except for the cultural biases that drive them in the same direction, such as hatred of predators and the attitude that every blade of grass on the range belongs to cattle. I’ve also learned that even ranchers who have figured things out rarely are willing to take on the status quo. Those that do are usually cantankerous old women who don’t like the Stockgrowers any more than I do. Unfortunately, they have the same influence over the Stockgrowers that I have–none.
One has to be practical. The root problem for wildlife is politics, and to solve the problem one has to change the politics, which is livestock politics. That means taking on the livestock industry, no holds barred. Until people are willing to do that, we’ll never see bison welcomed in Montana.
Just out of curiosity, do you people, who want to shut even the responsible ranchers out of public lands, eat beef?
I think that if you truely beleive that there are no wildlife on private farms and ranches you are wrong.
Yes, Ranchers raise cattle for their livelyhood that is how they are able to stay on the land, but what they don’t tell you is how many wildlife live and thrive on the same land where cattle graze. Do a little research about if elk to see if they prefer to graze lands never grazed by livestock or if they perfer to graze where cattle have. I think the results will surprise you.