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

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Aerial view of a salt block sacrifice area. Cattle trails radiate. Note the access roads at bottom center and the cattle (black dots). Awash stands out at upper right. (Joanne Cockerill)

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Supplemental feeding creates sacrifice areas and exacerbates overgrazing.

On a properly and lightly stocked range, livestock would theoretically obtain all necessary calories and nutrients from native plants. But because public ranges are vastly overstocked and livestock are grazed when, where, and how they shouldn't be, supplemental feeding is a common practice -- even on BLM land, where supplemental feeding is officially not allowed except for "protein blocks" and other highly concentrated supplements. (These concentrated supplements allow an animal's digestive system to utilize less palatable vegetation, thus intensifying overgrazing.) When range livestock become chronically hungry or deficient in certain nutrients, they must be provided with imported food, or they will suffer and die. Various feeds -- hay, alfalfa pellets, block, cube, and meal mixtures, sometimes mixed with salt and/or minerals -- are supplied to livestock in metal, plastic, or wooden feed troughs or thrown on the ground. All these areas, too, quickly become sacrifice areas -- localized wastelands. During hard winters or droughts, emergency supplemental feed is sometimes trucked in or dropped, at taxpayers' expense, from government planes or helicopters. BLM has been allowing long-term supplemental feeding on many desert allotments, thus allowing stocking levels in these areas to remain extremely high.

Water spreading is a technique of diverting flood waters from usually dry drainages onto the surrounding landscape with a system of dikes, dams, and/or ditches. Most water spreaders are long, low dikes bulldozed across wide, shallow drainages. Runoff is trapped and spread shallowly over a wide area behind the dike, with the intention of promoting forage growth, though it may or may not occur. Thousands of water spreaders have been built with tax monies on public land, many of them stretching across the range for a mile or more. Each one kills animals, scars the land with heavy equipment, displaces large amounts of topsoil, and robs runoff from downhill areas. Furthermore, their cost is not nearly compensated for by the increased amount of forage. Studies by the US Soil Conservation Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs show only a slight increase in forage production, and that the costs to construct and maintain water spreaders are at least several times higher than the maximum benefits attained (Calef 1960).

Other range "improvements" on public land include tens of thousands of corrals, pens, and associated equipment. Corrals are used for sorting and handling livestock, especially at roundup. Pens are used for separating breeding animals from steers and heifers; dehorning, castrating, and branding; shearing sheep; dealing with sick or injured animals; holding work horses; and so on.

Within the corral area are chutes and loading ramps, and perhaps a scale for weighing. There may be a cattle "squeeze" for restraining animals; special compartments or chutes for spraying cattle and sheep with insecticides, fungicides, and fumigants; or a dipping vat for treating livestock for external parasites. Also within the corral area may be fences to funnel livestock into the corral; feed and water troughs; salt blocks; sun shades; and storage for fence posts, wire, oil, fuel, and other supplies.

The land in and around a corral becomes a super sacrifice area -- especially degraded by trampling, concentrations of manure and urine, spilled oil, fuel, chemicals, etc. With their large truck parking areas and tight networks of roads and cattle trails, most of these corral sacrifice areas represent the environmental obliteration of at least an acre, and, in many cases 5 or more acres of public land.

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A corral in the (former) grassland of central California. Note the cattle trails leading toward the hills.

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This corral under cottonwoods along the Rio Grande River , New Mexico, may seem pretty, but like all other corrals it is a sacrifice area. Ranching roads lead everywhere, there are no small cottonwoods, lower tree branches are gone, the ground is mostly bare, and cattle desecrate the nearby river. Stockmen often establish corrals in or near riparian areas for the purposes of easily locating water-oriented cattle, providing them herbage and shade, and procuring fence and corral building materials.

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A corral made from cut trees and associated sacrifice area in dense forest, Kaibab National Forest, Arizona.

Where rivers, spring runoff, or deep gorges prevent sheep from crossing, government and/or ranchers build sheep bridges, some of which are quite extravagant. Similarly, where natural obstacles block rancher access, various kinds of cable crossings may be installed, again usually at government expense, often ostensibly for non-ranching purposes such as "public access," "fire fighting access," and the nebulous and baseless "to facilitate land management."

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Tax-sponsored monuments glorify stock driveways on public land.

Stock driveways are wide, cleared zones allowing "trailing" of whole herds from place to place, usually from one grazing area to another or between ranch bases. Stock trails are simply trails used for the same purposes, though generally for smaller numbers of livestock. These "improvements" may be constructed anywhere a rancher deems it necessary to clear a path for more efficient movement of livestock, often through areas of rockiness, timber, or brush. There are tens of thousands of miles of stock driveways and stock trails on Western public land, which are in effect tens of thousands of acres of sacrifice area. Their environmental impact is similar to roads.

Ranchers cut or blast stock pathways into steep slopes and notches through obstructing steep-sided ridges, cliffs, saddles, rims, etc. to allow livestock passage. They cut openings through streamside vegetation and cut stream banks down to allow livestock access to water. They slash their way through thick forests and dense undergrowth. They even build "walkways" of firm ground into marshes, wet bottoms, and areas of overflow so cattle have access to as much forage as possible. Stockmen also cut and remove vegetation and displace rocks and soil to make trails for themselves and pack trails for their horses, so they may more easily move about allotments.

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A firebreak along a roadside fence. Ironically, the grass on grazed side is generally too sparse to carry fire!

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A semi-permanent sheep camp on BLM range near Lovell, Wyoming, becomes a sacrifice area and helps spread overgrazing to the surrounding area. Hired cowboys live at these camps for weeks at a time. The agencies tell us that to prevent damage from long-term use, no one may spend more than 2 weeks in any one location on BLM or Forest Service land -- no one but stockmen, that is. (George Robbins Photo, Jackson, WY)

Shacks sometimes are built on public land to house cowmen or sheepmen attending to business in remote parts of the range. Range riders develop temporary and permanent campsites, often removing vegetation in the process, cutting and filling soil, constructing crude log or rock shelters, building fire rings, depleting local firewood, and scattering trash about thus creating human sacrifice areas. Their horses further deplete vegetation and trample soil.

Range fixtures also include tens of thousands of stone, metal, and concrete monuments that mark the boundaries of grazing allotments, as well as metal and wooden signs. Most are built or installed with tax dollars.

Tens of thousands of miles of firebreaks scar Western rangeland. Whether bladed, herbicided, or disced, the environmental impact is similar to that of dirt roads. And, as discussed, the ranching industry's great reduction of natural fire has been one of its most destructive influences.

Range "improvements" also include developments designed to restore livestock productivity to land degraded by livestock. This would include, for example, contour furrowing of overgrazed hillsides to reduce soil erosion and help reestablish forage. Other restoration developments include contour trenching; terracing and terrace stabilization; check dams and instream structures; rip-rap on banks; grass seedings and plantings of shrubs, bushes, and trees; and range fertilization. Though all of these developments and more are necessitated by and constructed to improve livestock grazing, they are rarely directly linked to livestock grazing in government land management plans.

Additionally, phone, electric, water, and gas lines run long distances over public land to service public lands ranches, necessitating utility corridors and concomitant environmental damage. Considering that there are 30,000 base properties (not to mention auxiliary operations, electric pumps, etc. out on the range) spread more or less evenly across the rural West, necessitating tens of thousands of miles of utility lines and service roads, environmental damage from just the utility services for public lands ranching is clearly enormous.

The grazing industry is responsible for a bewildering array of other developments, contrivances, and environmental alterations which degrade our public land -- too many to detail here. For example, snow fences may be constructed on public land to protect developments such as corrals, pumphouses, and ranching roads. Wood, metal, or rock shelters protect livestock from winter storms. Even wind-blocks for livestock may be built; researchers are currently testing designs such as V-shaped and semi-circular high, solid fences.

Some "improvements" are so lacking in realistic justification that they may be considered little more than environmental vandalism. Actual examples include cutting down an entire pinyon tree to get a good fence post from the top, bulldozing a stand of brush so cattle maybe more easily seen on the other side, and taking a chainsaw to a large, dead tree because the stump made a good place to set a salt block.

Range Management

Fences, tanks, roads, salt, corrals, and other "fixed" developments are one form of what the ranching establishment commonly terms "range improvements." Another involves general manipulation of the environment, and is perhaps more properly called "range management." This includes eradicating unwanted vegetation, seeding rangeland, killing predators, and so forth.

In their century-long effort to force the environment to conform, stockmen have offered a remarkable range of suggestions for range management. For example, some ranchers think the government should destroy entire forests to enhance their livestock operations. Some would seed whole allotments to exotic forage grasses. Many propose killing every large predator in their state.

What has actually occurred would shock most people. Most Western public land is subject to range management , and already a large percentage has been developed for ranching, the vast bulk utilizing our tax dollars. This ranges from national soil conservation programs, to state-assisted brush eradication projects, to county aid in poisoning gophers on a 5-acre piece of land. All have one thing in common: they pervert Nature to benefit ranching.

Plant Enemies

With the zeal of missionaries bringing The Word to heathens, range "Scientists" are busy justifying the annihilation of certain ecosystems. This holy war is being fought with chainsaws, bulldozers, chains, torches, poison, and, like all wars, lots of propaganda An entire vocabulary of pejoratives surrounds these efforts at biocide .... This rangespeak bears as much relation to science as the rantings of the new tight evangelists bear to philosophy and logic.

--"Le Chat Noir," an environmentalist

As we now know, during the past century and a half livestock grazing has severely reduced or eliminated most native forage plants. Be that as it may, before EuroAmerican settlers arrived much of the West was covered by livestock-unpalatable vegetation. Forage plants were certainly important components of most vegetation regimes, but often other species were significant or dominant. Nonetheless, ranchers and range managers proceed blindly, assuming forage grasses are the ultimate goal for any landscape. (Of course, livestock consume a great variety of plants, but grass is the most profitable.)

We also have the dubious distinction as well regarding the number of species of undesirable vegetation. Let me list some of them: 1. Pinyon and juniper 2. Creosote bush 3. Mesquite 4. Cholla (pronounced CHOY-YA) 5. Oak shinnery 6. Sagebrush 7. Prickly pear.

--David W. King, President, New Mexico Association of Natural Resource Conservation Districts (USDA, USDI, CEQ 1979)

Consider the terminology used by vested interests to describe plants they don't like: "worthless," "unwanted," "unacceptable," "undesirable," "inferior," "rank," "overgrown," "overmature," "noxious," "poisonous," "decadent," "weedy." "Undesirable" to what? "Inferior" for what, and to whom? Why are plants "rank" when allowed to grow up closely together as they normally do instead of being eaten by livestock? Is a plant, any more than an animal, "overgrown" when reaching full size? When it gets old, is it "overmature," not deserving of life? (Is Grandpa "overmature"? Should he be put to death?) Why are plants termed "noxious" or "poisonous" when many animals other than cattle and sheep eat them? Can plants be "decadent"? What, really, are "weeds"?

Most of these terms would be laughable if not so widely accepted. We have been indoctrinated to believe that nonforage plants on rangeland are inherently "bad," that they have no justification for existence.

They [native "increasers"] are stable because millennia of co-evolution provided a full complement of native pathogens and debilitating creatures to limit these plants.

Nevertheless, because they are economically undesirable -- because we wish they weren't there -- much propaganda still portrays them as rogue organisms that have broken out and will destroy range, wildlife and the Western Way of Life if not beaten back by technology.

--Sam Bingham, "Barbarians Within Agriculture's Gates" (Bingham 1990)

So strong is our society's ranching orientation that we have been convinced that non-forage plants are not only bad, but even unnatural. To hear many ranchers talk, one would think these plants were practically nonexistent when livestock arrived in the West. Forbs, flowering annuals and perennials, and other non-woody, non-forage plants, they say, were "transitional" in nature, occurring only rarely where some major disturbance had temporarily cleared off the otherwise omnipresent grass cover. Supposedly, brush, shrubs, cacti, yucca, ocotillo, and other woody plants occurred naturally only in small stands in rugged terrain. Junipers and pinyons, they tell us, used to grow only in tiny stands on steep hillsides and rocky ridges. According to many of these people, even the West's coniferous forests have expanded greatly in size. These assertions correctly or partially apply to some areas, but as blanket statements they are ridiculous.

Ranching promoters have painted themselves into a corner. On one hand, they insist that non-forage vegetation is native to only tiny portions of the West, that because of this most of the West should be managed for forage vegetation almost exclusively -- that is, for livestock forage. On the other, they don't quite know how to refute the overwhelming evidence that livestock grazing is what eliminated most forage in the first place. To escape this quandary, the industry has over the years developed a number of scapegoats: climatic changes; invasion of woody and weedy vegetation (it's the plants' fault); fire suppression; human causes; natural causes. The falsity of these claims is demonstrated elsewhere in this book.

Then again, many ranching advocates don't even bother with explanations or justifications. They see the West as a giant board upon which they play "Vegetation Manipulation for Maximum Profit." These people see the world as merely a collection of resources, and with themselves as managers of those resources for whatever goals they choose. What is natural doesn't matter. There need be no rationalization for manipulating ecosystems, for it is their manifest destiny to direct all natural processes towards their goals. This reality is unfortunately common to our modern world, from former Interior Secretary James Watt, who said that we may as well use up the world's resources now because Armageddon is coming, to range consultant Allan Savory, who insists that livestock can be used to mold the Earth into virtually anything we choose it to be, to the typical BLM range manager, who embraces some degree of both.

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US LAND AREA IN FOREST (millions of acres)

(Source: US Forest Service) Note: This graph merely reflects acreage in trees, not forest quality.

In many areas of the Forest, livestock graze in and adjacent to timber sale areas. Timber harvest removes woody vegetation allowing shrubs and grasses to increase for a period of time before trees become dominant again. The extra forage produced during this period can be used to increase cattle ... --US Forest Service

The grazing industry's plant enemies fall into 3 main groups -- trees, "weeds," and brush. That trees are natural to much of the Western landscape stockmen cannot deny, nor would the public tolerate the denuding of whole forests simply to create more livestock pasture, as they do with brushlands and "weed" areas. Besides, most Western forests provide a tolerable amount of livestock herbage anyway; widely-spaced trees allow plenty of sunlight to reach the forest floor, usually providing for a good covering of forage and browse plants. On open rangeland, a few trees per acre is even considered desirable as summer shade for livestock. Nonetheless, ranchers prefer to maximize profits by minimizing sun-blocking trees. Toward this end, they have for decades cut, ripped, burned, poisoned, and generally killed trees. In "Forest Land Grazing," Kingery and Graham relate that, "In the past, carrying capacity for livestock in forested areas was routinely increased by removing tree cover." The federal government reports that more than 260 million acres of US forests have been cleared specifically for livestock -- an area nearly the size of Texas and California combined.

This ranching deforestation continues today. John Robbins explains in Diet for a New America:

Since 1967 the rate of deforestation in this country has been one acre every five seconds. Many think our forests are being cleared to make room for urban development. But in fact, for each acre of American forest that is cleared to make room for parking lots, roads, houses, shopping centers, etc. seven acres of forest are converted into land for grazing livestock and/or growing livestock feed. (Robbins 1987)

More than 2/3 of the 70 million acres of US forest cleared between 1.967 and 1975 was converted to grazing land, and most forest clearing still is for livestock production (Akers 1983). While much of this has been in the East, forests there generally regrow and heal more quickly than in the West. And while Eastern deforestation is generally more openly geared toward livestock production, Western stockmen needn't be so directly involved; as mentioned, most Western forests are naturally more open and sunny, and, moreover, the government and other land users do most deforestation for them.

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Two half-square-miles deforested primarily for cattle grazing. BLM, Beaver County, western Utah.

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Thinning slash piled and ready to burn -- in preparation for increased livestock grazing. Black Hills National Forest, eastern Wyoming.

On public land, the various governments conduct forest thinning, herbiciding, and prescribed burning -- usually ostensibly to benefit forest health or timber programs, sometimes openly to promote livestock grazing. Whatever the expressed or actual purpose, these programs benefit the ranching industry. Most forest areas with commercial quality timber have been logged at least once, many areas twice or thrice. Livestock grazing potential is a strong consideration behind many government timber plans, though this is rarely acknowledged, and, by the agencies' admission, logging is a main component of government long-range plans to expand grazing. The agencies often allow increased grazing in logged-over areas, especially clearcuts. Once logging opens up a forest area to allow a certain level of grazing, ranching interests do their utmost to keep the area as sparsely-treed in the future. At times this has resulted in conflicts between ranchers and loggers, but the level of grazing possible and allowed on most logged public forests is sufficient to keep ranchers satisfied.

Thus, other than the timber establishment, the grazing establishment is the strongest influence behind denudation of public forests. According to the USDA's An Assessment Of the Forest and Land Situation in the United States:

Significant opportunities to increase range grazing occur on portions of the 488 million acres of commercial forest land. Commercial harvesting of mature tree stands will often result in temporary (5 to 10 years) production of grasses, shrubs, and forbs that are palatable to livestock Intensive timber management practices such as thinning pruning, and site preparation can be modified in scope, timing and intensity to increase the amount, and to extend the period of forage production ... (USDA, FS 1980)

The National Cattlemen's Association and other public ranching organizations recently co-signed a National Forest Products Association letter to Forest Service Chief F. Dale Robertson demanding that the Allowable Sale Quantity in forest plans be mandated.

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Forest thinning allows increased use by livestock. Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, east-central Arizona.

Many "wildlife enhancement" projects on public forests entail tree thinning or clearing, usually, it is said, to benefit elk or deer. Roads, water developments, and fences are installed, and, curiously, livestock numbers are raised. Though an area may then be thrashed by cattle, the presence of a few more elk or deer will prompt range managers and ranchers to trumpet the "success" of the "wildlife" project.

Equally deceptive are many of the "firewood cutting!' programs on public lands. Often, when stockmen want a grazing area thinned or cleared of trees not of sufficient size or quality for commercial logging, they pressure the agencies to open it -- often with new roads -- to commercial or personal-use firewood cutting. As expressed in a federal brush management manual, "The potential for harvesting cordwood should not be overlooked as an added incentive in the management of mesquite, juniper, oaks, and other appropriate species." Having woodcutters saw trees down and haul them away is profoundly easy for the ranching establishment. The cutters get the wood, the government the credit, the ranchers the profit, and the land and the public the shaft. The new roads become ranching roads; fencing, grass seeding, and stock water projects are begun; and small trees are killed from that point on. Presto! -- overgrazed woodland becomes overgrazed ranchland.

Another scam cooked up by Western ranchers in collaboration with self-serving water resource departments and their powerful constituents involves pushing government agencies to eradicate trees and brush to "improve watersheds." Watersheds stripped of their trees and brush, they say, shed water like a tin roof, shooting the increased runoff quickly down through drainages to fill reservoirs, where it may then be used by cities and agriculture. After the land is denuded, it is seeded with livestock grasses, and from that point on cut, burned, or sprayed to keep it free of woody vegetation. The vested interests may then claim that the increased grass cover infiltrates and releases more water into waterways than the original vegetation -- disregarding, of course, the impact of increased overgrazing.

Studies show that these projects generally don't produce much, if any, more water for reservoirs because devegetation, attendant soil damage, and overgrazing deplete prolonged surface flow. They also show that the money, materials, and effort expended, coupled with the environmental damage, don't begin to justify the extra water, and that woody vegetation must be re-eradicated indefinitely. However, they usually do produce more livestock forage, and often this is a main reason our taxes keep being squandered.

For example, in Arizona thousands of acres of upland forest and brush have been cut, herbicided, and burned in an attempt to increase forage for livestock and water to the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Tonto National Forest's effort to keep Pinal Mountain grassy spawned one of the biggest conservation battles in Arizona history, as well as a book entitled Sue the Bastards. In another Arizona fiasco, the government spent millions of dollars on the Beaver Creek Project in Coconino National Forest to cut ponderosa pines, junipers, oaks, and brush from hundreds of acres to produce, according to a newspaper editorial, "about enough water to wet a dishcloth," and some additional forage. Yet, an association of government agencies is currently studying the prospects for vastly expanded devegetation in central Arizona forest and chaparral.

Another form of this ripoff involves eradicating trees and brush along waterways because they "drink up and transpire huge quantities of water." This has led to all sorts of crazy schemes, like a recent proposal by Arizona state officials to kill all cottonwoods along several rivers. This was done in the early 1970s by the New Mexico Soil and Conservation Service along a portion of the Mimbres River in southwest New Mexico. As related by Sharman Apt Russel in Songs of the Fluteplayer,

They believed eliminating these great trees, some more than a hundred years old, would mean more forage for cattle... Without the cottonwoods to hold the soil with their roots and break the impact of water, subsequent small floods swept over the denuded ground like an efficient mowing machine. When the channel was dry again, the eroded result could only charitably be called a river

While it is a known fact that plants transpire water, any high school ecology student also knows that riparian vegetation also conserves water, as well as physically protecting waterways and providing many other benefits. However, less trees and brush means more forage, which means more livestock grazing.

Logging, forest health management, wildlife enhancement, wood cutting, or watershed or waterway improvement -- whatever the intentions -- stockmen are the longterm beneficiaries. Though they aid and abet whenever possible and are even in many cases the main motivating influence, they keep a low profile. Why incur public resentment for destroying trees when the government and other land users are doing it for them?

In quantity, leaves of some tree species can be poisonous to livestock, and they may be removed for that reason. Pine needles are blamed for Western livestock losses totaling millions of dollars. A recent article in the Lassen County [CA] Times is entitled "Pine Needles Threat to Pregnant Cows"; much of Lassen County and the West is covered with pines. While some ranchers are calling for action on this "problem," most are thus far reluctant to call for widespread "pine eradication" programs for this reason.

A killer [ungrazable plant] is invading Montana! Like a cancer it is spreading at runaway speed, getting out of control and destroying its victims [ranchers].

--from an article in The Stockmen's Journal

Weeds, according to Emerson, are "plants whose virtues have not yet been discovered." But according to M.E. Ensminger in The Stockman's Handbook, "A weed may be defined as a plant (1) growing where it is not wanted and interfering with desired land use, or (2) with a negative economic value within the framework of current land use." According to ranching reality, then, a weed is any leafy, non-woody plant that detracts from livestock operations. Plants now called weeds were components of almost every pristine vegetation community in the West. Even on the "pure" grassland of the prairies, many non-grass species flourished among the grasses, in separate stands, and where fire, animal activity, rocks, drainages, etc. interrupted the grass cover.

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"Larkspur -- a rangeland weed," according to the Forest Service. (USFS)

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Forest Service employee poisoning larkspur via backpack sprayer. (USFS)

Approximately 455 acres of wet meadows will be sprayed in the Apache National Forest [Arizona] in June to control the wild iris .... The control project is part of the range improvement program on the Burro Creek Range Allotment. --Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, AZ

Stockmen disdain "weeds" for many reasons. A great many, such as tumbleweed, mustard, thistle, cheatgrass, and yarrow, are of low palatability; as increasers or invaders, they have replaced forage plants over large areas. Some -coneflower, ragweed, and paintbrush, for example -- are marginally grazable. Soil cryptogams, are considered weeds because they allegedly prevent the establishment of forage. Locoweed, Johnson grass, milkweed, tansy mustard, goldenrod, threadleaf groundsel, larkspur, lupine, wild parsnip, and many other plants can be poisonous to cattle and sheep. (The government occasionally fences off poisonous plants from livestock, rather than eradicating them.) Others, such as cheatgrass, foxtail, and various stickerproducing plants, may physically harm livestock. Some plants are destroyed because they are highly flammable. Some "drink up too much water." Some benefit insects and other wild animals not acceptable to the grazing industry. They damage or block stock watering developments. They hamper ranching activities. They're rank, coarse, unruly, stickery, stinky, strange: almost any excuse will do when an increase in preferred forage is the ultimate goal.

Interestingly, most of these plants are natives and, if not for stockmen, would not now be considered "weeds." Those that have increased their numbers and range have done so under the influence of livestock grazing. As related by range professional D. Griffiths in 1910, "The perennials, or more valuable species, have, it is true, disappeared; but they were not driven out by annuals, but on the contrary, by the rancher's cattle" (Griffiths 1910). Many other weeds are exotics that overgrazing has spread over huge areas.

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A leafhopper.

Brush is the mortal enemy of the range manager....

-- Boysie E. Day, Professor of Plant Physiology, University of California, Berkeley (USDA, USDI, CEQ 1979)

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Ranching roads and brush clearing open up formerly inaccessible, unexploitable, and unspoiled areas to livestock grazing and other harmful developments.

Healthy stands of brush provide for many and various animals, ecodiversity, productive watersheds, recreational use, and aesthetic enjoyment. Be that as it may, brush is the plant type most persecuted by the ranching establishment. Not only does brush reduce forage more than any other vegetation type, but it is the hardest to eradicate. Brush may "hide predatory animals," obscure views of livestock, or physically injure livestock with long spines or sharp, broken branches. Some species have poisonous leaves. Brush hinders the movement of livestock and cowboys.

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Chaparral near Sequoia National Park, California, has been stripped from these ridges to increase cattle forage.

Some brush species provide livestock browse, but ranchers much prefer the potentially greater amount of herbage provided by grass. They see brushland as potential grassland. To them, every bush eliminated is that much grass gained. To this end they even kill individual brush plants. With brush eradication projects, some involving hundreds or thousands of acres, they have destroyed millions of acres of aboriginal brush.

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Over vast areas, livestock have reduced the cover of shrubs and brush along with herbaceous ground cover. Ungrazed roadside on right.

Again, stockmen claim that brush has "invaded" and ruined their once-productive, grass-covered ranges. Again, partly true. However, in many areas overgrazing has actually killed off the original woody cover. This is especially true of and regions, sensitive transition zone brushlands, lowelevation broadleaf woodlands, and riparian areas.

Ranching advocates similarly argue that brush never occurred as climax communities, that bushes and shrubs are merely "disturbance species" that occupy disturbed lands until grass once again covers the land. This may be true for some species in some areas, but much evidence suggests that most Western brushlands and shrublands have been around in one form or another for millennia (see Malin 1956, Thwaites 1959, etc.).

For example, though today big sagebrush covers fully 100 million acres -- more than 1/8 of the American West -research indicates that it has increased its range only slightly, and that the significant change has been the increase in sagebrush density at the expense of other vegetation (Vale 1980). Regardless, more than 12% of sagebrush territory has been cleared of sage for livestock (though usually it eventually regrows under continued livestock grazing and lack of fire) (Ferguson 1983).

Indeed, many brush eradication projects occur in places that never were primarily grass. Often it is assumed that any place with the apparent potential to grow grass originally was grassland, or, if not, at least should be grassland. And, with a few magic words from some industry "range expert," a brush eradication project is under way.

Through subsidization, brush clearance has grown to become an agricultural industry. It is a significant source of income for various seed, chemical, and machinery interests.

--Ian McMillan, Man and the California Condor (McMillan

1968)

The large acreage involved in shrub eradication projects is a telling commentary on the economic power and political influence of the range livestock industry in the intermountain West.

-- Thomas R. Vale, "The Sagebrush Landscape" (Vale 1980)

According to the ranching reality-makers, half or more of the area of former Western grassland has been "invaded" by shrubs, brush, trees, and weeds. According to USDA, "noxious" plants have "taken over" tens of millions of overgrazed acres and cost ranchers roughly $107 million annually in livestock deaths, birth defects, abortions, or emaciation. But calling it an "invasion" is a tremendous distortion. By growing a covering of woody plants or other vegetation unpalatable to livestock, in a sense the land protects itself from further overgrazing.

Stockmen's answer is to kill the offending plants, instigate range developments, and increase livestock numbers, leading to more unwanted vegetation, more eradication, more developments; in short, endlessly staving off livestock impacts and maintaining livestock numbers with more and more range management. Stockmen do not tolerate livestock reductions. Instead, the land itself must be changed, or grazing systems, or agency management, or even people's perception of the problem.

To maximize livestock production, ranchers and range managers seek to maximize vegetation that benefits livestock by minimizing that which doesn't. This is euphemistically called "type conversion" -- changing the vegetation from one type to another. In truth, stockmen find reason to kill nearly every kind of plant but preferred grass. Since so little preferred grass remains, vegetation manipulations are usually designed to erase all vegetation in a given area, in hopes that new growth will contain more grass. In so doing, the industry gives itself a "clean slate" on which to create a livestock-oriented landscape.

Since the early 1900s most biotic manipulation on public grazing allotments has been done by the various governments, bolstered in 1974 by the Federal Noxious Weed Act. Today, under a variety of rationales and pretenses, nearly every public land management unit in the West conducts vegetation eradication. Many means have been developed over the years. They are used singly or in various combinations now under the buzz phrase "integrated pest management." Described below are the 6 basic methods.

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