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Preface - Introduction - CHAPTERS: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
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Roads

Cowboys weren't meant to walk...

--Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., The American Cowboy

Ever wonder why so many gravel and dirt roads crisscross the Western range? So many of them seem to have no real purpose or destination.

Well, wonder no more; most are ranching roads. More roads have been blazed, bladed, and blasted through our public land to benefit the grazing industry than for any other reason. This incredibly huge and complex road network is perhaps the least recognized but most destructive of the major range developments.

Over the years, each stockman -- with help from government -- has developed roads to access nearly every portion of "his" allotment. These roads are used for building and maintaining range "improvements," implementing ranching management programs, procuring natural materials used for ranching projects, hauling supplies and water, managing and moving livestock; roads also are used as ranching firebreaks, for access to ranches themselves, and simply as a means for ranchers to oversee their vast grazing domains. In brief, they make public land accessible to and usable by the grazing industry.

The Forest Service reports more than 375,000 miles of officially acknowledged dirt roads on our National Forests, not including county, state, and federal rights-of-way; most are for logging (Foreman 1989). Many more miles traverse BLM, state, and other publicly owned lands. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of miles of unofficial, unrecognized, or de facto roads cover public land.

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Typical local ranching road.

Nearly all of the West's 30,000 or so public lands grazing allotments are criss-crossed with dirt, gravel, and (occasionally) paved roads, whose main and often only purpose is for ranching. Again, each allotment averages roughly 10,000 acres, or an area about 4 miles by 4 miles if square. We may reasonably estimate that maintained ranching roads traverse each allotment at least twice, accounting for 8 miles per allotment, for a total of at least 240,000 miles. The innumerable smaller dirt roads certainly cover at least this many miles, perhaps even an average of 1 linear mile per square mile, or twice this many miles. Thus, we may conservatively estimate that 0.5 million miles of ranching roads exist on Western public land. This is more mileage even than for the Western public lands timber industry, whose roads are confined to comparatively small areas. Further, many timber roads are retired after logging has ceased, while ranching roads are almost always used indefinitely for ranching and other purposes. (This is not to minimize logging roads' overwhelming impact.)

Ranching roads wander along almost every valley and canyon floor, ridgetop, mountainside, plain, and plateau imaginable. In the grazed regions of the West, this vast, extensive road network provides access to almost every place grazed by livestock, leaving most of the West no more than a few miles from a road.

Many ranching roads on public land have existed for decades; some may now be used for other purposes, but generally their chief or only significant use remains ranching. Many other roads have been constructed in recent years by or with the permission of the government, usually in response to some perceived ranching need. When permission to build a road is not forthcoming, it can still be established under pretense of some other activity. For example, a rancher may obtain permission to clear a stock trail, path for a fenceline, or access to a fence post cutting area, whereafter the cleared corridor becomes the road originally wanted. New roads that access "public woodcutting areas" often become ranching roads.

Many other roads are developed illegally. Some ranchers simply blade new roads wherever they want. Why bother getting permission from government agencies that often don't care anyway? Why worry about getting caught when this remote activity is rarely viewed or understood by anyone who would inform the authorities? In the rare cases where illegal road builders have been prosecuted, they usually suffer only a slap on the wrist.

Many more -- perhaps most -- ranching roads are created as ranchers drive cross-country along convenient routes, then continue using these same tire tracks until new routes are formed. Other motorists may follow their lead. Once established, these routes are treated more or less as sanctioned roads by government. When they wash out or are somehow obstructed, ranchers simply begin driving new routes instead.

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Many muddy tracks parallel the ranching road on right.

Stockmen in 4-wheel drive pickups, jeeps, all-terrain vehicles, and on dirt bikes keep these roads in a general state of disrepair because they patrol the countryside frequently, and in all kinds of weather. Wet roads become rutted, eroded mud bogs, and dry roads throw up thick plumes of lung-choking, vegetation smothering, air- and water-polluting dust. Being familiar with these roads (and of the macho persuasion), many ranchers normally drive them at high speed, throwing up gravel and rocks that pit and crack oncoming motorists' windshields and endanger lives. Their speeding heavy-duty vehicles create "washboards" -- numerous parallel small bumps on road surfaces that make driving difficult and cause vibration damage to vehicles.

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This eroded ranching road has been rerouted on the left. Coconino National Forest, Yavapai County, Arizona.

Probably most stockmen drive their vehicles off-road habitually, in all kinds of weather. Suppose, for instance, Rancher Clyde wants to mend a hole in a fence (or check on cattle, shoot coyotes, cut fence posts . . .) a mile from the nearest road. No problem. Clyde jumps in his pickup, drives on a road as near as possible, puts the truck in 4-wheel drive, and drives cross-country to the fence. The mile-long set of muddy ruts he left concerns him not. But now he sees an easier route back to the road, so takes that way instead. Thenceforth, he uses this latter route to access the area.

Though environmental damage from fences and stock water developments is enormous, that from ranching roads is more so. In fact, without the huge network of ranching roads, contemporary range development and livestock grazing itself would be nearly impossible.

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Ranching roads combined with fences beget hundreds of fences thousands of tax-sponsored cattle guards.

The mileage and distribution of ranching roads is mind-boggling; these roads have opened up nearly every livestock-grazed area in the West (most of the West) to vehicular access and its destructive impact.

Besides making it possible for extensive overgrazing and range development to occur, these roads have opened up huge areas --perhaps as much as half of public land altogether -- to human access and abuse by a wide variety of interests. Consequently, woodcutting, hunting, plant and animal collecting, development, and off-road vehicle (ORV) use are occurring in many areas damaged by such activity. Littering, dumping of toxic wastes, theft of natural resources, artifact hunting, arson, and mindless vandalism are common along ranching roads. For example, according to ecologist Jasper Carlton, over half of human-caused "wild" fires begin along roads. Geologically fragile and botanically and zoologically sensitive areas have been opened up with re es abandon, often with ruinous results.

More than any single human development, ranching industry roads have aided the exploitation, development, and desecration of our public lands and the rural West.

Roads are themselves a substantial detriment to natural systems. First, every road is a sacrifice area. Each square foot of roadway is a square foot of biological void. Even a lone set of tire tracks across the landscape represents the denudation of about 1/8th of an acre per linear mile. Each linear mile of dirt road ruins an average of approximately 4 acres of ecosystem. Accordingly, Western public land's minimum of 500,000 miles of official and de facto ranching roads represents a bare area of about 2 million acres -- about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

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A cattle guard awaiting emplacement in a highway through BLM land.

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Many tons of topsoil have been excavated illegally from this site along a BLM ranching road.

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Ranching roads promote all manner of environmental abuse, including illegal trash dumping.

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To clear a ranching road through a riparian area, live and downed trees were bulldozed into this pile. Coronado National Forest, Arizona.

However, the overall physical impact is far greater than represented by these 2 million acres. Road construction activities kill plants and animals directly, and physically damage road sites and surrounding areas in many ways. Cutand-fills are especially destructive as they displace and damage soil to a great depth, sever roots, destroy animals and their burrows, alter drainage patterns, and so forth. The steep slopes formed by cut-and-fills provide poor sites for vegetation reestablishment, and usually cause greatly increased water runoff and soil erosion, sometimes even landslides. Unless down to bedrock, the cut-out portion of a hill will expand until gravity and erosion finally level the slope beyond the angle of repose.

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The eroded gash in this hillside is caused by runoff concentrated through a culvert under the ranching road at top.

Water infiltration through bare ground commonly is less than 1/3 that of comparable vegetated areas, so runoff from dirt roads is high. Soil damage is similar to that of extreme overgrazing. These factors combine to make dirt roadways prone to severe erosion. Many ranching roads are in fact highly eroded and washed away regularly. On steep, easily eroded slopes, they become gullies and arroyos. Roads are rerouted alongside these new drainages; eventually they too wash away and join together to form larger gulches. Runoff water and sediment from dirt roads adds to that of surrounding grazed areas, increasing sediment deposition.

Roads block waterways and drainages. Water often is rerouted through culverts or bridges, hindering or halting passage of fish and other aquatic animals. Flood dynamics are altered and drainage patterns upset. Because roads concentrate surface water flows, soil erosion downslope from roadways is accelerated, causing cutbanks. Upslope, drainages commonly are bladed and channelized with heavy equipment to funnel water through culverts.

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Culverts impede the movement of aquatic life, pervert drainage patterns, cause increased downslope erosion -- and allow destructive roads to exist where they otherwise could not. (Steve Johnson)

Roads hamper interrelationships, fragment habitat, and create edge effects. They act as barriers to the normal movement and activity of native animals. Some very small creatures will not or cannot venture across these barren zones at all. Many small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles avoid roads, partly because they may be more easily espied and picked off by predators when on barren roadways. Some large animals, including turkey, elk, deer, mountain lions, and bears, for psychological reasons -- mainly, they associate roads with danger -- avoid crossing roads whenever possible, and are thus hampered in movement. They exhibit decreasing densities toward roads; for example, studies show that road densities of 6 miles or more per square mile can cut habitat use by elk and deer by up to 100% (Carlton 1990). Burrowing animals and soil dwellers, including worms, insects, and soil microorganisms, are blocked or killed by frozen, sun-baked, and otherwise hardpacked roadways. In summer, road surfaces may become too hot for certain reptiles, amphibians, and others to cross. For some populations and species, all these effects may lead to genetic drift and inbreeding, and thus reduced genetic viability.

Roads serve as pathways for humans and corridors for the spread of their opportunistic plants and associated pests and pathogens, thus harming wildlife and natural systems. As well, roads may effectively hamper normal migration patterns of many plant species, depending on their methods of propagation. Roads act as dams and diversions to alter runoff patterns, thereby restricting water to downhill vegetation. The overall effect on plant life can be seen along some roads, where vegetation on one side is sparser and/or composed of different species than that on the other.

Vehicular traffic scares animals and upsets their normal activities. Moving vehicles act as barriers to animal movement. Exhaust from vehicles contains heavy metals, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, all of which may have a significant cumulative effect on wildlife.

Wildlife and animal rights groups estimate that 1 million vertebrate animals are killed on roadways in the United States each day. Ranching roads on public land cause many thousands of these deaths, not to mention killing millions of invertebrates each non-winter day.

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A collared lizard joins the mass of victims killed by Western ranching roads.

A large percentage of ranching roads must be wide and well-maintained to accommodate large stock transport vehicles. Ranchers require all-weather roads for well-drilling rigs, the transport of supplies and heavy machinery, and year-round access for ranching management and to ranch headquarters. Powerful ranching interests make sure their needs are given high priority in government road building and maintenance plans.

Indeed, as public lands ranching management becomes more intensive and range "improvements" more numerous, new ranching roads are being developed at an accelerated pace. Already, ranching roads are the single most destructive development on public land. If public lands ranching was ended and all associated roads decommissioned, what would soon follow would be one of the world's greatest environmental restorations.

Salt

Salt is a necessity to many wild and domestic animals, including livestock. A cow consumes 2 to 3 pounds of salt per month and will travel long distances to obtain the mineral. Ranchers are acutely aware of this and often use salt to coax cattle into less heavily grazed areas, in a manner similar to their use of stock ponds. In this way salt is used to distribute livestock more evenly over an allotment and thus to more fully exploit the range. In some cases this may, as claimed, lessen overgrazing in certain areas. More often, greater herbage utilization through salting simply means that a rancher spreads his livestock (sometimes more livestock) over more of the allotment, thereby further spreading livestock impacts.

Likewise, by moving salt in planned increments, herds can be moved about the range, such as between forage areas, away from poisonous plants, up behind the rising snowline in spring and down from the lowering snowline in fall, or toward corrals at roundup. Thus, salt is a tool of livestock manipulation and range exploitation. Under both BLM and FS regulations, decisions on salting are solely the permittee's, with essentially no restrictions.

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A black angus licks a mineral-salt mixture. Note the numbered ear tags.

Salt for range cattle commonly comes as 50 pound blocks. White blocks are pure sodium chloride; other colors indicate the addition of various other essential minerals. Usually salt blocks are simply thrown on the ground in the desired location. They may also be set on flat rocks or tree stumps, or placed in specially constructed salt block holders or covered feed troughs to keep them from dissolving in the rain or moist soil. This also minimizes competition from wild animals.

For convenience, ranchers most often locate salt blocks near established ranching roads, but they will punch in new roads if they feel the need. Many thousands of dirt roads in the West lead to nothing more than a few salt blocks. Many ranchers drive off-road across the landscape, dumping salt blocks from the back of their pickups wherever they think it would benefit their operations, thus creating the beginnings of new roads as they go.

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Salt blocks dumped only days ago are already becoming the center of a sacrifice area and surrounding range damage. BLM, southeast Oregon. (Nancy Peterson)

As with stock tanks, the areas around salt blocks quickly become sacrifice areas. Often covering acres, with numerous cattle trails radiating outward, many of these wastelands resemble wagon wheels when viewed from aircraft. Because trampling is so intense, and because salt tends to sterilize soil, damage may last for decades after an area is no longer used for salting livestock. Hundreds of thousands of salt blocks litter our public land, and each becomes the center of a sacrifice area.

Note: Bear in mind, however, that sacrifice areas are merely concentrated -- thus more obvious -- manifestations of livestock impacts. Even if livestock were distributed uniformly over the range, depending on circumstances, their overall impact may or may not be smaller.

Again, as with stock tanks, ranchers claim their salt blocks benefit wild animals and that without this salt much wildlife would perish. However, wild animals have been obtaining needed salt and minerals from food, natural licks, etc. since life began; there is clearly no need for ranchers to provide salt for wildlife.

They lie. --Mike Roselle, activist

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A wooden trough provides salt and supplemental feed to cattle, whose impacts are thus concentrated in this area. Note that the juniper, used by the cattle for shade, has lost all of its lower branches and is beginning to die. Gila National Forest, NM.

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