.........

Preface - Introduction - CHAPTERS: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
Photo Galleries - ORDER A PRINTED COPY!

Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching - INTRODUCTION

The world we are told was made for man. A presumption that is totally unsupported by facts. There is a very numerous class of men who are cast into painful fits of astonishment whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.... -John Muir

You and I and all Americans are joint land owners. Together as "the public" we own almost half of the land in the 11 Western states (Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico), which hold 90% of all federal land in the United States outside Alaska. If state, county, and city-owned land is included, 56% of the West is public land.

This public land encompasses an incredible amount and variety of country -- some of the most diverse and beautiful in the world, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Death Valley, the slickrock country of southern Utah ... Few other countries have so much land open to all people.

Each year by the millions they come from throughout the United States and around the world to visit these public lands, pursuing various experiences. Millions of hunters and fishers, hikers and backpackers, picnickers and sightseers enjoy the public lands. For scientists and researchers they are invaluable, huge, open-air laboratories. To naturalists, they are the largest remaining wild areas in this country -- strongholds of natural diversity. They contain many natural resources and provide for a great variety of personal and commercial uses. They expand our physical, emotional, and spiritual horizons and help maximize personal freedom. Public lands are many things to many people.

Public lands are much more than all this, however. They are exactly what they are: soil, water, and air; plants and animals; climatic, geologic, hydrologic, and biologic processes; ecosystems; interrelationships; evolution; life -- existence. Western public land encompasses 418 million acres of Nature, of largely untransformed natural being. It is a continuing, progressive creation -- the current, cumulative result of the 5-billion-year evolvement of this planet.

All native entities of public land, from microscopic soil bacteria to grizzly bears, from desert globemallow to giant sequoias, from hot springs to lava flows, whether they occur individually or as communities, whether organic or inorganic, all share one thing: the right to exist. And though continued existence is not guaranteed to all on this Earth, the opportunity to pursue natural existence without undue human interference should be. The environment itself has the right to exist in a healthy, natural state, for its own sake, regardless of any human considerations.

National Forest in Oregon (USFS)

For many people, the intrinsic value of Nature is something intuitively sensed yet rarely discussed. Standing amidst a sea of waving grass or engulfed in the roar and mist of a waterfall can fill one with awe and humility, and inspire a feeling of protectiveness. Unfortunately, we tend to bury these sentiments as we go about our daily lives.

Although we humans have developed extraordinary powers to manipulate our surroundings for our purposes, we always will remain a part of Nature -- a creation of our natural environment, a component of the whole. As such, we need to protect the whole to protect ourselves. Ironically, by unnaturally exploiting the environment for short-term gain, in the long run we hurt ourselves, and our descendants.

Therefore, we should not only be "owners" of public land but defenders of this land. We have the responsibility to use it wisely, if indeed we use it at all. Because we have developed the power to control the land, we must also protect and in some cases restore it, for both our sake and the planet's

As collective public land owners, we have relied largely on various government agencies to implement our wishes for wise use and protection of the land. But our governments have not done, are not doing, and even refuse to do their job. In fact, with our governments' help, a small sector of the business community has continuously manipulated and exploited public land for personal gain for more than 100 years. Ultimately, we are all responsible. We should have stopped it long ago.

Unfortunately, the most harmful land use in all history is also one of the most subtle and least recognized -livestock production. The seemingly benign act of raising livestock has caused more environmental damage than any other land use, not only in the western US, but throughout the world (see Chapter VI).

On Western public land this commercial exploitation is the product of a well-organized, powerful, private ranching business allied with an entrenched government bureaucracy. Through the years, the public lands grazing industry has been quietly receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, corrupting our political system, defiling the social fabric of the rural West, and, perhaps worst of all, devastating the Western environment -- all to produce a tiny fraction of US meat.

At this point, you may again suspect me of exaggeration or even fabrication. This is understandable. Few of us are exposed to ranching other than through the usual fictional renderings of the romantic "Old West," as on TV and in Western literature. And as a people we have always idolized the legendary, independent, honest, tough, hardworking, resourceful, and in all ways virtuous Western rancher and endorsed the products of his* endeavors. Mom, apple pie, the cowboy and his cows. Americans love a good Western!

Nevertheless, this nostalgic, idealistic image we have all been reared with is a vast falsehood, a monumental myth preserved by baseless tradition, our own yearning for romanticism, and the ranching establishment's efforts to capitalize on our yearnings. Therefore, the real story of Western ranching may come as a shock.

* In this book I purposefully use the male rather than neuter form in reference to the stock raiser in recognition that ranching is so completely male-dominated.

So now we come to the business which created the West's most powerful illusion about itself and, though this is not immediately apparent, has done more damage to the West than any other The stock business. --Bernard DeVoto, The Easy Chair (DeVoto 1955)