Letter from Larry D. Bullock
Grazing – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
[Editor’s Note: Dan Dagget advocates improved grazing techniques; he bet if you took two identical pieces of western rangeland and he grazed his cows on one and the other was left alone, his pasture would fare better. In our April edition, George Sibley also wrote about improved grazing practices.]
Dear Editor,
I would like to respond to Dan Dagget’s challenge [February edtion]. First, the Sierra Club newsletter is a bad place to make the challenge because Sierra Club members rejected a ban on livestock grazing on public lands (Sierra, July/August 2001). I’m still trying to figure out why.
I’d love to accept this challenge, but I can’t imagine a fair experiment under the circumstances. To cancel out the effect of rapid nutrient release that results from a large disturbance, like the intensive grazing proposed in the challenge, the experiment would have to continue for many years. The nutrient-release effect diminishes over time.
The next problem is the rangeland itself. Since most of it is already compacted, devegetated, and dewatered by livestock operations, any change might appear to be an improvement. Dan Dagget: “Surprisingly, this technique works best where the land has been damaged the most.” Wilderness advocates and ecologists claim that it will take a very long time to heal our cow-burnt rangelands. Thus, we might not live long enough to determine the outcome of the experiment. On the other hand, if we start with pristine rangelands, (if any can be found), who besides livestock industry promoters would want to sacrifice half of it to a herd of cattle?
Next, there’s a wildlife problem. The natural grazers that should roam the livestock-free side of the experiment have been reduced to small percentages of their presettlement numbers. Bison are completely gone, except for a few managed herds in enclosures; the Yellowstone N.P. herd is an exception. (Note: the intermountain region was not subject to large herds of large herbivores like the Great Plains used to be and, consequently, is not adapted to traditional livestock densities.) Thus, the natural effects of native grazers might not be there — no prairie dog towns (tens of miles in diameter) with their multiple, profound effects on the landscape. Also absent are large predators. Wolves and grizzly bears are completely absent in most places. Mountain lions have been persecuted and reduced in number. Thus, neither side of the experiment will have the beneficial effects of large predators, which is a necessary part of ecological balance.
Herds of native grazers might find the livestock-free half of the experiment and concentrate their impacts there — another out-of-balance scenario — because of aversion to livestock and people or attraction to better forage. A further complication is that wildlife may seem more abundant on denuded land because they can be more easily seen. Whereas on heavily vegetated land, they can hide.
THE PROBLEM is that natural abundances and proportions of native plants and animals and the free play of ecologic forces have been severely disrupted by 130 years of livestock industry influences. No grazing scheme involving domestic livestock is going to bring that back, especially one involving more cross fencing. The entire set of natural conditions is what “getimoffs” want for public rangelands, not mere greenery.
Short-duration, intensive grazing has been around for a long time. It would be instructive to consider results elsewhere. “In 1982 the World Bank/International Finance Corporation examined 7 ranches [in southern Africa] where it had been practiced for periods ranging from 7 to 14 years. The Corporation found ‘virtually no different effects attributable to grazing systems’….” (Waste of the West, Public Lands Ranching by Lynn Jacobs, 1991, p. 531; quoting Aubrey Stephen Johnson, 1987) “Claims for range improvement in southern Africa through Intensive Short Duration Grazing at double conventional stocking rates are not founded in fact. To the contrary, evidence in literature from Zimbabwe and elsewhere indicates it is impossible to have both heavy stocking and improvement in range conditions….” (Slovlin, Jon; “Southern Africa’s Experience with Intensive Short Duration Grazing,” Rangelands, Aug. 1987, pp. 162 – 166 as quoted in Waste of the West p. 531). S
If the kind of rangeland manipulations that Dan Dagget recommends are necessary, then why does it have to be done with cattle? Why not elk or bison or both? Why not use a mixture of all the aboriginal herbivores? While we’re at it, we could add in the missing carnivores that used to be here to keep the herds healthy. That should satisfy any “getimoff.”
We shouldn’t even undertake this experiment. “Over the years literally thousands of studies have been conducted in diverse terrain and conditions all over the West, to determine various environmental effects of livestock grazing….” (Waste of the West, p. 154) “Our public land is a guinea pig for range research. Each experiment requires the manipulation and damage of some aspect of the natural environment to produce the desired comparative effects…. Thus do hundreds of studies damage thousands of acres.” (op. cit., p. 155)
This experiment has an interesting parallel in the thousands of experimental livestock exclosures on public land, which are intended to provide a comparison between lands grazed and ungrazed by livestock. “They are tiny specks in a vast sea of overgrazing. The great majority enclose several acres of less, most less than an acre. Stockmen rarely tolerate anything larger….” (op. cit., p 168) But they have problems. Most were heavily grazed by livestock for decades before being fenced, so residual effects linger. Few exclosures are large enough to provide for proper ecosystem dynamics.
OVERGRAZING, RANGE DEVELOPMENTS, and other human obtrusion in surrounding areas affect the interiors of most exclosures and hamper restoration. Wild animals from surrounding grazed areas are attracted to ungrazed exclosure interiors; they unnaturally affect and deplete exclosures. “To ‘destroy the evidence’ that livestock are damaging the land, express their displeasure with government interference, and allow their livestock to ‘utilize’ what they consider ‘wasted’ herbage, many ranchers covertly tamper with exclosures.” (ibid.) “Despite their knock down or push through fences, thereby invalidating their value for comparative study.” (ibid.) “Despite their limitations, the great majority of livestock exclosures exhibit dramatic environmental recovery.” (op. cit. p. 169)
“Exclosures are among the few places left in the West where we can witness land and water that has not been directly affected by livestock for decades. Thus, these sites are irreplaceable, vitally important, and should be protected. Unhappily, they are not … They are poorly maintained, if at all. For example, when I asked a Utah BLM range specialist why the few hundred yards of exclosure fences in his district could not be properly maintained, he replied that funding simply wasn’t available (though it was for hundreds of miles of ranching fences). (ibid.)
Finally, there is a subsidy problem. On the back pages of your regional newspaper of record, one may find a continuous stream of federal, state, and local livestock industry subsidies, favorable legislation, exemptions from fees and regulations, tax breaks, and many kinds of special treatment and obscure advantages — covert subsidies like government “wildlife projects” that primarily benefit stockmen, and ranching-caused problems like weed invasions and floods paid for by the public. Then there are entire systems of subsidies like Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) irrigation projects (see Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner). The public land system of subsidies costs the taxpayer about twice what is collected in grazing fees (Rangeland Reform ’94. Final EIS, Dept. of the Interior and Dept. of Agriculture), and about half of grazing fees collected are returned to ranchers as “range betterment funds” for range developments. The popular Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers and r
READERS OF Colorado Central Magazine have read about the struggle to elect water district directors instead of having them appointed. It’s a tip of the iceberg of livestock industry power that maintains the status quo on subsidies and favored treatment.
A recent holistic management newsletter (In Practice, Jan./Feb. 2002) describes a public-lands ranch in the Four Corners area where intensive grazing is planned. The rancher and the grazing system advocates used government-paid agency staff from the NCRS and BLM to help with the operation. Federal grazing fees at about 1/5 market value and all the usual subsidies also apply. The Signature (from La Veta, Colo., Jan. 3, 2002, p. 5) published a glowing description of a giant public lands ranch that unabashedly receives the assistance of the U.S. Forest Service, BLM, NRCS, and their local Soil Conservation District (state and property tax subsidies). “To help facilitate their goals, they have installed more than 40,000 feet of cross fence on their private and public land to better distribute the cattle and follow their planned grazing system. They have installed more than 27 irrigation structures including eight heavy equipment tire tanks, some 4,800 feet of pipelines, as well as spring deve
Dan Dagget’s vision for our public land involves more fences and other artificial range developments, more livestock, and a continuation of the subsidy system. Economics is beside the point; ranching is simply mandated, even though livestock, as a commodity, are overproduced, which results in lower prices and further demand for more generous subsidies from the rest of us. This is a well-known result of subsidies: they cause overproduction. This country doesn’t need the trivial amount of livestock produced on public land at such great expense and ecological damage. The livestock industry has been jerking around our country’s trade policy to get rid of the excess livestock; the industry’s lobbyists want free trade for their products and tariffs on other countries’ products, more subsidies for the livestock industry here and less subsidies for foreign livestock, so that they can unload excess beef, mutton, and wool. (see Colorado Farm Bureau News, Oct. 1998, p. 9, and The Pueblo Chieftain, Aug.
THIS SUGGESTS another requirement for Dan Dagget’s experiment, namely that the cattle-grazed side of the range receive no subsidies, just like the livestock-free side — no county-subsidized coyote killing, no cheap BOR irrigation water, no USFS controlled burns to improve forage, and no APHIS disease-control programs. Also none of the following: emergency feed; wildlife “control”; subsidized insurance; tax-deductible medical plans; sales-tax-free supplies; equipment, bull semen, etc.; low- (or in some cases no-) interest loans; free advertising and product promotion; “conservation” payments to conserve ranchers’ property and their future ability to continue ranching; free fences along state and federal highways; state and federal subsidies for removing dead livestock; free transportation of livestock feed by the Air National Guard; preferential treatment by county highway departments for snow removal; exemptions from conflict-of-interest laws for ranchers in elected office; etc.
We should simply scrap Dan Dagget’s challenge in favor of a new one: let ranchers graze any way they want, but without subsidies of any kind, and we’ll see how long cattle and sheep remain on western rangelands.
In as little as 20 years, some people say, public lands ranching will be looked at as a living history exhibit, not a viable economic activity. Maybe that is what it is today, and maybe it’s time we treated it as such.
–Dan Dagget, “Arizona Ranchers are Ripping off Wildlife,” High Country News, March 16, 1990, p. 16.
It would be interesting to know how Dan Dagget went from wildlife advocate and mountain lion protector to being a livestock industry apologist. Getimoff.
Larry D. Bullock
Gardner
