Category Archives: Private Livestock Grazing

Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands

A Brief History of the Cattle – Sheep Wars and Why Sheep Are Better Than You Think

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History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon? – Dan Brown

Recently I have seen comments on blogs expressing horror at the prospects of sheep grazing on public lands. Comments about little wooly range maggots, ripping up plants by the roots and trampling the range to dust. These well-meaning folks get their information from tainted sources.

There really was a war between the cattlemen and sheep raisers in the very late 19th and early 20th century. It was social, political and too frequently violent. The violence most often perpetrated by team bovine. The sheep raisers lost, the cattlemen won and went onto write the history which was later popularized in our love affair with the Hollywood western movie genre.

The cattlemen were typically tied to a ranch headquarters that raised hay and had facilities to handle cows. This was prior to grazing regulations on public domain, so a cattle rancher would simply lay claim to large areas of public land they wished to graze but had no actual rights to. They protected their domain through water rights claims and intimidation and violence as needed. Continue reading A Brief History of the Cattle – Sheep Wars and Why Sheep Are Better Than You Think →

chaining, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, veg treatment

A Primer on Rangeland Management

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Welcome to Rangeland Management 101

Welcome class. In this course you will learn the basics of rangeland management:

1. Rangelands are defined as largely native landscapes that are not timber producing and not used for farming. Their chief value is for the raising of livestock, producing food and fiber for human consumption. Like western water law, only uses directly benefiting humans and putting money in a pocket are valuable. Ecological services and things we merely like such as scenery, clean water, wildlife, fisheries, endangered species are not really values.

2. Ecological habitat types have an innate ecological productivity. This is the amount of vegetation they will grow in a year, typically expressed in pounds/acre/year on typical western landscapes. In more productive habitats the metric is more like tons/acre/year. Nature produces more vegetation than is needed to maintain healthy plants. This excess production is a harvestable surplus of vegetation that can be utilized by wildlife and livestock as forage.

3. Livestock and native plant eaters are divided into grazers and browsers. Grazers prefer herbaceous vegetation like grasses and forbs while browsers prefer shrub species. This may vary seasonally, but deer and sheep are generally browsers and cattle are primarily grazers.

4. There are two kinds of grazing animals. Nonselective grazers tend to eat whatever vegetation is in front of them, they are not particular about the species of plants they eat. Selective grazers show strong preferences for certain species of grass and forbs and will eat those selectively until they are gone before moving onto less desired species. American bison is an example of a nonselective grazer. Cattle are highly selective grazers. The cattle’s most preferred plants are the first to show grazing impact and the first to decline in abundance or disappear from the plant community entirely. Continue reading A Primer on Rangeland Management →

chaining, Economics, Grazing permit buyouts, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, veg treatment

Cows, not Trees, are the Problem

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We are bulldozing our public lands for a few very privileged private ranchers.

Utah’s state symbol might as well be the cowpie. We turn ourselves inside out making sure they are everywhere, all the time. In campgrounds, in national parks and monuments, in the forests, on the steppes, in our streams, all down the roads, and right there, next to your favorite picnic table. Cowpies. One might wonder why.

cowpie- Utah state symbol
Utah’s state symbol

Continue reading Cows, not Trees, are the Problem →

Point Reyes, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands

Acts of Congress, Ecological History, and Point Reyes National Seashore

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The No Bull Sheet is delighted to welcome wildlife biologist and author Laura Cunningham as editor and contributor. Thank you for this piece on Point Reyes, Laura.

piece-pt-elk-area
The view at Tomales Point Elk Reserve in Point Reyes National Seashore, with coastal prairie recovering from decades of livestock grazing. The vacated historic dairy buildings are now used for visitor interpretation.

Special interest lobbies have been hard at work convincing Congress to loosen environmental protections and advance extractive industry profits, and in return, the legislature has increasingly been using its review and amendment powers to attack bedrock environmental laws ranging from public participation requirements to the protection of imperiled plants and animals. I’ve been working to try to stop this from happening on Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area in Marin County, California, where efforts are underway to amend the enabling legislation that founded those parks. Continue reading Acts of Congress, Ecological History, and Point Reyes National Seashore →

Bears Ears, Cliven Bundy, Conservation, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, Rose Chilcoat

Malicious prosecution in San Juan County

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Officials in San Juan County are conducting a case of political and malicious criminal prosecution against Mark Franklin and Rose Chilcoat. The case, over a year old now and not yet even in the trial phase, is already a blow against Mark and Rose and a black eye for San Juan County. They saw a nefarious way to seek revenge against Rose, who is a successful, effective conservationist, and they are getting it. Mark and Rose have accumulated over $100,000 in related legal bills defending themselves against trumped up charges for an utterly insignificant event. They suffer the stress of being falsely accused of crimes that could incur substantial fines and decades in prison. It is a travesty that court proceedings have been allowed to grind on to this point. There is, alas, more legal grinding yet to go.

Rose is a hero in conservation circles.  Continue reading Malicious prosecution in San Juan County →

Economics, Grazing permit buyouts, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, Yellowstone everywhere

We are way upside down

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Upside down

Our public lands could be so much better. So easily. But we manage them in an upside down fashion.

Instead of managing the land for its intrinsic value as a natural landscape for the benefit of the vast majority of the public whom owns the land, we manage them for a noisy, tiny, belligerent, special interest group. The majority of us end up financing the degradation of our own lands. It is dumb of us. We don’t need to continue.

The main threat to the health of the land in the West, hard to see although it is everywhere, is public lands ranching. Nothing does more damage to public lands than public lands ranching. Continue reading We are way upside down →

Allotments, Economics, Grazing permit buyouts, Private Livestock Grazing

Cancelling Edward Abbey’s Grazing Permit

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aerial confluence price
Confluence of the Green and Price Rivers, taken one handed by the author/pilot from his airplane.  Not a good place for cows.

Yes, that Edward Abbey and yes, he did hold a Bureau of Land Management grazing permit.

In the fall of 1979, I moved to Price, Utah, taking the job of Assistant Area Manager for BLM’s Price River Resource Area. One of my duties was supervising the range management program on 1.8 million acres of public land in Carbon and Emery counties, and an early task was examining case files of the 87 ranchers holding grazing permits on 113 grazing allotments in the area. Permittee files were arranged alphabetically by name, and the first one in the top drawer was Edward Abbey. I immediately asked the range conservationist, Michele Abbey (no relation), if the file was for the Edward Abbey. She assured me it was and I took the file back to my desk for perusal. Continue reading Cancelling Edward Abbey’s Grazing Permit →

Cliven Bundy, Economics, Grazing permit buyouts, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, Yellowstone everywhere

The Single Best Idea for America’s Best Idea

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Put an end to public land livestock grazing

Utah is 90 percent urban. Much of the West is the same. Yet it is run politically as though it is mostly rural and agricultural. Most Utahns live along the urban Wasatch Front from Ogden to Provo. The Wasatch Mountains bordering the Front are in the U.S. Wasatch National Forest. Even though the Wasatch forests receive traffic like a major national park with millions of visitors per year, these forests are in the best shape of any of the national forests in the state. The reason? No cows. No sheep. No barbed wire. The public would never stand for it.

The rest of the state is a different matter. A majority of the land in Utah is public and most public land is run for and by ranchers, used up and abused by their private livestock. As a result these open lands are in sorry shape, continually overgrazed, constantly mismanaged. The land could be so much more beautiful. Instead, it is hammered, more than we know. And there is no good reason for it. Certainly not an economic one. Only a lack of public awareness allows this travesty to persist. Continue reading The Single Best Idea for America’s Best Idea →