In spite of hurting both economy and ecology, private livestock grazing on public lands in the U.S. continues unabated for the last century right up to today. Much of the reason can be attributed to the myth of the cowboy.

All the way back in December 1946 in Harper’s magazine, Bernard DeVoto presciently wrote, “. . . the West has chosen to base its myth on the business that was of all Western businesses, most unregardful of public rights and decencies, most exploitive, and most destructive. The Cattle Kingdom did more damage to the West than anything else in all its economy of liquidation. As a mythology, it will do even worse damage hereafter.”

“It’s cultural capture,” says Debra Donahue, a professor of law at the University of Wyoming and author of The Western Range Revisited. “The ranching industry has captured the American imagination. And they have been given a special deal at great cost to the American public.”

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