Can America's West Stay Wild?

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/02/17/can-america%E2%80%99s-west-stay-wild/




Can America’s West stay wild?

Policy on vast public lands has favored ranchers. Demographics and economics may alter that equation now.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

In 1993, Washington State classified its Columbia Basin Pygmy rabbit, a burrowing one-pound resident of sagebrush thickets, as endangered. Farming and other human activity had greatly limited the deep-soil habitat available to the bunny.

In 2001, the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated the rabbit, one of only two burrowing species in North America, as “endangered.” Alarmed by the animal’s continuing decline, that year state officials captured 16 rabbits and began a captive-breeding program to try to ensure the rabbits’ continued existence. By 2003, fewer than 30 rabbits lived in the wild, down from 250 in 1995. By 2004, they were all gone.

For many, the disappearance of this tiny denizen of sagebrush thickets is a cautionary tale. Captive breeding programs are a noble last resort, they say. But in this case, not enough was done to save the wild population, they charge. While several factors outside of scientists’ direct control contributed to the rabbits’ demise – disease, fire, loss of genetic diversity, and habitat fragmentation, in particular – one factor squarely within human control was not addressed soon enough: livestock grazing. Although the state had recognized the rabbit as threatened in 1990, cows weren’t taken from the state-owned Sagebrush Flat, the bunny’s last known home, until 2001.

Here, the tale of the pygmy rabbit intersects with a long-raging acrimonious debate in the US West. Just over half the land in the West is public land. And what are public lands for – the preservation of “pristine” nature or resource extraction?

Historically, management of these lands by state and federal agencies has favored resource extractors far more than conservationists would like. But as western economies change and demographics shift, this emphasis on extraction makes less and less sense, economists say.

Meanwhile, attempts to reintroduce captive-bred pygmy rabbits into the wild have so far failed. Of 20 freed in 2007, predators killed 18. Scientists returned the remaining two to captivity. With genetic diversity low, in 2005 scientists added Idaho pygmy rabbits, a close relative. The hybrid offspring were more robust. But in 2006, the last purebred male rabbit died. In coming years, scientists plan to attempt reintroduction of the hybrid rabbit, three-quarters native, again. But the pure Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit is now genetically extinct.

Did cattle push the rabbits over the edge?

Steve Herman, a biologist emeritus at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., says cattle may have pushed the animals over the edge. At the site, scientists observed trampled rabbit burrows and broken sagebrush, which the rabbit needs for both food and protection from predators. When cows were finally removed, “it was too late,” he says. “We’ve lost a life form, and it’s likely that our species [is] responsible.”

Matthew Monda, the Washington (State) Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (WDFW) wildlife program director for Region 2, counters that although observers had noted trampled burrows and the rabbits were in obvious decline, there was no decisive evidence that grazing was responsible. In fact, he adds, since cows and rabbits had coexisted for perhaps 100 years to that point, some worried that removing cows might make things worse. WDFW initiated a study to determine “if the grazing that occurred on the area was good, bad, or ugly.” But when the rabbit populations declined precipitously, the study was halted and the cows removed.

Given the stakes, why not just play it safe? Mr. Monda turns the question around: What’s the most conservative choice, to remove cows and thereby change conditions, or to keep conditions the same and leave cows on the land? “What’s the right answer? I don’t know,” he says. But “for multiple generations, the area had been grazed. And it was the last place that had rabbits.”

Ranchers are bulwarks to development

Ranchers view themselves as natural stewards of the land. Who knows and cares for the land better than they do? Often abutting public land, working ranches are bulwarks against out-of-control development, say pro-ranchers. Subdivisions – further habitat fragmentation – are worse for endangered species than are cattle, they argue. In recent years, this historically polarized debate has seen what Courtney White, cofounder of the Quivira Coalition in Santa Fe, N.M., calls the emergence of “the radical center.” In an effort toward sustainability, “progressive” ranchers are seeking to apply lessons learned from ecological science.

But, say some, even if better management can diminish livestock’s harmful impact, cows, an exotic species, shouldn’t wander the semiarid western landscape for one simple reason: “There’s only so much biomass out there,” says George Wuerthner, coeditor of “Welfare Ranching.” “If the majority of forage is going into a cow, it’s not there for all the other life forms.”

The forebears of American cattle evolved in parts of Eurasia much wetter than the US West. They gather and loiter near water. Much of the damage caused by cattle, scientists say, is from their impact on waterways. They can denude riverbanks, leading to erosion and muddy water. The loss of shade-giving plants raises water temperatures. Native fish species that have evolved in clear, cold water may suffer. Nesting birds lose habitat.

Other species affected by cattle

Katie Fite, biodiversity director at West­ern Watersheds Project, a conservation group in Boise, Idaho, lists species that are among those negatively affected by grazing: the sage grouse, the willow flycatcher, the yellow-breasted chat. Reptiles and amphibians like collared lizards and spotted frogs also suffer, she says.

A 2005 report by the US Government Accountability Office found that grazing on public lands cost taxpayers $115 million yearly. Ranching critics say that the current grazing permit price – $1.35 per cow-calf pair per month – is at least an order of magnitude too low. This subsidy, they say, is greatly responsible for much of the degradation on public lands in the West. Humans get a little meat at the
expense of wolves, grizzlies, bison, birds, and trout – intact functioning ecosystems.

“We ought to leave the West mostly for wildlife,” Mr. Wuerthner says. “That’s where it does really well, and it can’t be substituted somewhere else.”

Others see a more complicated picture.

Rick Knight, professor of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, says it’s not so simple. The fate of public and private lands are intertwined in the West. Whither goes one, so goes the other, he says. “If you want to save our natural heritage, you have to save both public and private,” Professor Knight says. “They are interlaced.”

Mark Brunson, a professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University, Logan, says that without low-cost grazing permits, many ranchers would go out of business. But it’s no throwaway subsidy. If done sustainably (as he and others say it can be), ranchers provide an invaluable service. They supply locally raised beef for a burgeoning locavore movement. Less tangible is the “living cowboy culture” they provide.

“The culture of ranching, which is also part of the American psyche, is also important,” he says.

Cultural heritage vs. land and species preservation

To many, this last argument falls flat. De­­structive professions shouldn’t be subsidized, no matter how iconic. If the concern is development, address it directly with zoning laws.

Demographic shifts long under way may change this debate. If the question is what the public values more – a working landscape or a pristine one – the “keep it pristine” camp is on the rise. (Disturbed by rapid development, even farmers and ranchers have begun to push for more landscape-friendly zoning.) Analysis of the past 40 years of economic growth show that preserving nature is the better long-term investment, economists say.

With its expanses of relatively pristine nature and a modern infrastructure, the US West is unique, says Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont. The region has long been a magnet for immigrants. But late-20th-century arrivals were not, as they once had been, mostly people seeking to work the land. Resource extraction, once a mainstay, is an ever-shrinking portion of western economies.

Profound economic, demographic shifts under way

Between 1970 and 2000, nonlabor jobs fueled 86 percent of this growth. Mining, timber, and agriculture (including ranching) contributed only 1 percent. Now, 93 percent of jobs in the West have no direct link to public lands, says Rasker. But wilderness areas, in conjunction with infrastructure like airports, correlated closely with areas that saw the greatest growth.

“The major contribution is that it creates a setting,” he says, and that’s what immigrants want. Conserving rather than exploiting nature makes more economic sense, he says. People move here to live near nature.

Land-management agencies have been slow to recognize the new role of unspoiled public lands as an amenity, he says. But they’re coming around. The marked “blue shift” in the politics of Western states in the recent election suggests a more conservation-minded public.

For Thomas Power, an economist emeritus at the University of Montana, Missoula, the puzzle is why the shift didn’t come sooner. He attributes the inertia to the nation’s love affair with the idea of ranchers.

“People move here partly to play out the fantasy of being a cowboy,” he says. “Rather than having attitudes different from long-term residents, they were trying to imitate or share in many of those attitudes.”

Do rangelands need to be grazed?

Here's a response I wrote to a student who had read my Is Ranching Sustainable article and challenged me suggesting that since bison once grazed the West, our rangelands "need" to be grazed. It's a common argument, and one heard often from ranching advocates. His original email to me is below my comments.

Alex:

Thanks for writing. Glad to see you are thinking about these things to some degree and that you are curious enough to look at it further. I think if you look into this issue more, you might find that the conclusions need greater refinement.

You raise the point about cattle replacing bison. I have an article on my blog (Wuerthner on the Environment) about that issue and it goes into more details, but bison are no more the same as cows as polar bears are the same as black bears--though obviously they are related. Cattle evolved in moist woodlands (like Georgia or Alabama) in Euro Asia. They have a host of evolutionary features that makes them unsuitable for western rangelands. Bison on the other hand have many features that makes them better adapted to the arid west. For instance, bison move all the time--whether they run out of food or not. They naturally spread their grazing impact over a much larger area. The hump gives them a fulcrum point that permits them to canter for long distances with little energy out put. Cattle are far less mobile not to mention that we have bred them to be fat and lazy. Bison can digest much less nutritious forage than cattle meaning they don't need hay produced by drawing western rivers for irrigation. Bison are better able to fend off predators meaning we don't need to kill predators like wolves because bison are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Etc. etc. etc.

So the assumption that we can replace bison with cattle is like suggesting that if polar bears were driven to extinction, we could move a bunch of black bears up to the ice floes and they would figure out to survive and eat seals. The only way we could raise black bear on the polar seas is with huge subsidies--both environmentally and economic--which is the only reason that ranching survives in the West.

But beyond that point, you may not be aware that most of the West's public lands were never grazed by large herds of grazing animals. Bison were found all the way to the East Coast, but they were seldom found west of the mountain front in the West. I.e. they were found on the plains of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, etc. but not beyond. Most of the public land in the West lies west of the mountain front in Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, eastern Oregon, California, and so on. There were no large herds of bison in these places. (There are a few exceptions to this which again I won't get into here, but as a generalization, most of what is now public lands was outside of the normal range of bison. So cattle are not replacing bison, and more importantly, the plants that live in these parts of the West do not tolerate grazing pressure.

The Great Plains is a different story, but that is not where the bulk of public lands allotments are located.

Third, even at the levels of stocking that are done today, ranching isn't surviving in this region. What is surprising to most people to learn is that most of our beef is not produced in the West, and particularly not on public lands, but in the East. Virginia produces more beef than Wyoming--the Cow Boy State, and Florida has more cows than New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada combined. There is more beef raised in tiny Vermont than on all the public lands in Nevada. The reason? The West is a very unproductive place, particularly the public lands. These are generally the driest, most rugged, and least productive lands in America. You can feed a cow on a few acres in Georgia that would require several hundred acres of land in dry Nevada to sustain the same cow.

The point is that the West is too arid to support economically viable livestock production. Even the private lands in the West--which on the whole are more productive than public lands, can't sustain viable ranching operations. And that was the major point of the essay you read.

Now to your other point that these lands "need" to be grazed. What you will find is that most rangeland plants "tolerate" some moderate amounts of grazing. But keep in mind that there are all kinds of animals grazing on the grasslands whether there are cows on out there or not. For instance, in Yellowstone Park (where there are no cows) you have elk, bison, etc. grazing the plants. But surprisingly these animals are not the most important grazers on the plants. Grasshoppers and nematodes consume far more of the grass biomass than any of the larger animals. In most grasslands, even among mammals, small rodents like ground squirrels and prairie dogs (where they are not poisoned and killed by ranching interests) consume far more of the biomass than larger animals. We are so focused on the big animals that we forget that in most ecosystems, it's the small creatures that are really important. Even if there were not a single elk or bison in Yellowstone, the grasslands would be grazed. So the idea that we need cows to do something to those grasslands is absurd. Grasslands are grazed all the time, just not by cattle.

And there are important ways that these other grazers use the landscape that makes them far superior to domestic livestock. One can't assume that we can replace grasshoppers and ground squirrels with cattle and everything is hunky dory.

Please keep in mind that most range literature whether read by Michael Pollan or you is produced by range departments which have a vested interest in promoting livestock. So you have to look carefully at their studies. For instance, I recall a number of studies that purported to show that livestock grazing "improved" riparian areas. What the studies compared were areas grazed by high stocking rates of cattle with areas with fewer cattle. The areas with fewer cattle "improved". The range study proclaimed that "grazing improved riparian areas."

What the studies really showed is that less grazing was better, and other studies have shown that no grazing is even better than less grazing in terms of riparian area health. But these range professors did not have a control (a typical defect of range studies). It would be like a tobacco company showing that those who smoked one pack of cigarettes a week had less chance of lung cancer than those who smoked three packs a week, then suggesting that smoking could lead to improved health.

Keep in mind that response is not the same as benefit. In other words, grasses will grow more above ground biomass if cropped whether by a bison, cow or grasshopper. But that doesn't mean they "need" to be cropped. Typically range studies only look at the above ground parts of a plant because that is what they are interested in since that is what cows eat.

In fact, if the above grass biomass is cropped a lot there is a loss of biomass in the roots--making such plants more vulnerable to droughts--this is one of the reasons that livestock grazing can cause so called "overgrazing". The plants don't die directly from grazing. They disappear gradually because grazing by livestock diminished their root system, and eventually a drought killed them.

So this is an issue about what you are measuring. Is above ground biomass the appropriate measurement of "grassland health?" Well to the rancher it is important because they want more grass for their cows--so most range scientists focus on measures of this kind of thing. And at the same time, they typically ignore the loss of root biomass because that doesn't favor grazing by cows--which after all is what they see as their mission.

Let me give you another example of how not only what you measure, but how you interpret things affects your conclusions. I can show you lots of studies that show that if you kill coyotes they will respond by having more pups. Does that mean coyotes "need" to be shot, poisoned and trapped? Hardly. It just means they can cope with a certain level of exploitation. But I assure you that coyotes do just fine without being killed all the time by humans. They don't "need" to be killed. Yet if your goal was "production" of more coyotes, than you might conclude that coyotes need to be shot, trapped, and poisoned, since in the end this would produce more biomass of coyotes.

If you are really interested in learning more about this so you can have a more informed perceptive, I might suggest you visit my web site where I have at least some articles that address these and other issues.

Thanks for writing.

Alex Aizenman wrote:
> Hi George,
>
> I am sitting in my primate social behavior class at the moment, Which happens to be an incredible waste of time, So I took to scanning the Counterpunch website for some interesting articles to pass the time and I have just read your most recent output to the site, "Is Ranching Sustainable." Just from reading the title I knew what I what you were going to say- Ranching is most definitely not the future of public lands in the west. I am sorry to inform you, but I am really disappointed in your article and your conclusions about ranching. Ranching must must must be the future of western rangelands, for the lands health and our own.
>
> It is incredible to me, that such an educated person such as yourself is seemingly unaware of what many people are doing with their alloted public lands in the west, most importantly, what they are doing to it with the use of cows. Obviously you are correct in saying traditional ranching practice is unsustainable. We all know that (barring those traditional rancher perhaps, but they will know it soon enough). What you are not considering is that Rangeland is MEANT to be grazed. Our rangeland is evolved to have large grass eating ruminants on it, Most specifically- Buffalo. There is a symbiotic relationship we have got going on here- grass need grazers, grazers need grass. You remove part of that equation your going to get unhealthy land, and in this case the continued dessertification of west. It is a myth that if you leave land alone it will gain its maximum health potential. Read anything about holistic resource management and you will learn more.
>
> Anyways, So we got all this grassland or potential grass land but we ain't got the buffalo anymore. Well we got cows (which have been in th west for over 300 years). We can use these cows to our advantage and to the lands advantage as long as we do so with out violating certain rules, namely the rule of the second bite- you can read Michael Pollan for that one (or Joel Salatin for that matter). Just read anything by Allan Nation, Joel Salatin, or you can email eschewennessen@gmail.com and they will tell you everything you need to know, way better than I can about the importance and potential of ranching and holistically managed grazing. Humans can actually make the land better by intensive management ( hard to believe I know).
>
> As an environmental Science student at the University of Michigan, I have seen the limitations of traditional environmentalists and scientists with their leave the land alone and keep people out of nature mentality, as well as their reductive and break-down-the-world-in-to-manageable-parts scientific processes. If you really think there is a viable future in that I am sorry, But their ain't. Kids and students and old old people have to learn that we are part of nature, we have a role, we are all interconnected We will never break down nature into natures individual parts and think we can understand it that way. We have to look at the whole. What better future could you imagine than people getting back in touch with the land, becoming Holistic ranchers and farmers. That is the best future I can imagine right now and What I personally aim to do, And I sure hope there is some land that I can use to do it.
>
> Not to mention that holistically raised beef means healthy grass, healthy cows and healthy you.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alex Aizenman

IS RANCHING SUSTAINABLE?

George Wuerthner









I hear often from livestock proponents that ranching is an economically sustainable use of western rangelands. Unfortunately many interested in conservation also believe this myth, and it has unfortunate public policy implications. As University of Montana economist Tom Power has noted, most people have a rear view mirror of their local and regional economies. They almost never know what is happening in the present and their ability to predict the future is even less accurate.

Ranching is doomed in the West by rising land values. Ranching, like all agriculture, persists on marginal land—lands that can’t provide a higher monetary return doing something else—usually real estate development. When land prices rise to the point that one cannot reasonably be expected to return sufficient profit to pay a mortgage on such property running cows, growing wheat or whatever, it signals the end of that industry—even though it may take a long time for the industry to completely disappear from the regional landscape. It is this long lingering death that fools people into believing ranching is sustainable.

With regards to ranching in the West, land values have already marginalized the industry. Few are buying ranches in the West to raise cows, or at least to make a profit raising cows. Today’s ranch purchaser is usually an amenity buyer who is more interested in seeing elk and catching trout than returning a profit from a livestock operation. For instance one recent study of ranching in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem found that most new ranch owners had earned their fortunes in other business endeavors. The ranch was a vacation home—a trophy to signal success—rather than a viable livestock operation. In many cases, if a cattle operation persists, it’s a tax write off rather than a source of income. Traditional ranching in the West is on life support and dying.

This was brought home to me a number of years ago when I was on a tour of a ranch along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. The rancher, who I’ll call Bob, had grown up on the ranch which his grandfather had homesteaded. His Dad inherited the ranch and passed it on to Bob. The fact that that three generations of Bob’s family had lived on the land was “proof” of its sustainability—or at least that is what Bob claimed.

However as we spent the day together Bob indirectly offered much evidence to suggest that ranching was not economically and socially sustainable, even as he asserted over and over again about how sustainable ranching was.

The first hint that ranching might not be sustainable occurred when we visited a bluff overlooking the river that flowed through the center of the ranch. Bob told how when his Dad was a kid there had been six families living in that river valley. But the low productivity of the land meant one needed a huge spread of land to just break even on ranching. The homesteads were simply too small to support an economically viable ranching operation. Gradually each family gave up ranching and sold their property to Bob’s grandfather and later his Dad so that today where once there were seven families living along this stretch of river beneath the mountain front, there was only one—Bob’s.

Later we were discussing his youth, and Bob told us how he used to ride a horse to the local schoolhouse three miles down the road from the ranch. Today the school is closed due to declining enrollment (all those families that left the valley and other nearby valleys were no longer sending their kids to the local school). Bob’s kids had to ride an hour or more on a bus to get to the nearest school. Bob lamented how he felt badly for his kids who couldn’t participate in a lot of school extra curriculum activities like after school sports teams because they had to get on the bus to get home. If they didn’t ride the bus home, it meant Bob and his wife would have to pick them up—a two hours round trip from the ranch—something they just wouldn’t do very often. His kids felt socially isolated and were not happy living on the ranch.

But it wasn’t only his kids who were socially isolated. Bob’s wife longed to move into Great Falls. She hated driving more than an hour just to shop for groceries. As the only “wife” living in that isolated valley, she also missed having social contact with other women.

In addition to the closure of the school, there was a decline in other essential services as well. Without a lot of ranches to support a large animal vet, Bob had to depend on a veterinarian who lived a long distance from his ranch and had only infrequent visits. The same thing applied to medical help. When Bob was a kid, there was a “country: doctor who attended to the needs of all the far flung ranching families, but with fewer families, Bob’s family often had to drive into Great Falls to attend to even simple medical needs.

Bob then confided that even though the ranch he inherited was formed from the “bones” of six other homesteads, it still wasn’t really large enough to run the number of cattle he really needed to succeed financially. With three kids that he was hoping would go off to college, his ranch, though considered a good sized spread by Montana standards, still could not produce enough income to pay for things considered essential by today’s standards like a college education for his kids. Paying for college, much less braces for teeth, computers, and other “necessities” of today’s family expectations was not something that his grandfather and father had to factor into the family budget.

But unlike his grandfather or even his father, Bob could not expand the ranch by buying additional lands. Land values had risen due to demand for amenity ranches and prices were now far above what any one could reasonably pay back raising livestock. Bob was “stuck” in time with a ranch suitable for a 1950 lifestyle with expectations and financial obligations of a 2000 lifestyle. And because it was a long ways from the ranch to a sizeable town where other employment options were available, Bob’s wife couldn’t take on a job to provide a second income—which is how most traditional ranchers are surviving at all these days.


To make matters worse from Bob’s perspective, he increasingly had to make minor changes in his ranch operations due to environmental concerns. For instance in the past he could drain the river to fed his thirty hayfields. But today there were endangered fish in the river, and he was under pressure to reduce his water usage. Of course, one could suggest that if Bob really internalized all the environmental costs of his livestock operation he wouldn’t’ be in business another day. But times change slowly and he has only had to make some minor adjustments to appease environmental regulators, but even these minor new costs were hurting what was really a marginal economic operation. In the past, he could “externalize: all these costs on to society and the land’s wildlife, but people was increasingly saying they wanted Bob to pay the real cost of raising cows in the arid West, and these “new” costs were cutting into his bottom line.

It’s been a few years since I was on Bob’s ranch, however, I ran into him recently at another event. When I inquired how things were going with the family, he told me that his wife had moved into Great Falls with the kids so they could attend high school and participate in things like after school sports. With a second house mortgage to support in the city, and those college tuitions to pay, Bob found it increasingly difficult to make the ranch financially solvent. At first Bob’s wife and kids would come out to the ranch on weekends and in the summer, but over time, these visits became fewer and farther apart. Eventually Bob’s wife met another man in Great Falls whom she married. Recently Bob sold his “sustainable” ranch to an amenity buyer. He remained on the ranch as its manager.

Bob is still insisting that ranching is sustainable—though he is now the ranch manager instead of the ranch owner. The new owner is more interested in elk and trout than cows. Bob still gets to play cowboy running some cows, though far less than in his Daddy’s day. And it’s not cows that are supporting the ranch now, rather money earned elsewhere in the economy. Bob will probably go to his grave thinking that ranching is sustainable, but his circumstances suggest otherwise.

What Bob described to me was all the reasons why ranching was not sustainable. They are economic as well as social. And they are being repeated over and over throughout the West. Unlike the gold placer deposits that disappear quickly, and with it a mining town, ranching is dying a slow death, cut by cut, but it’s terminally ill. It’s just taking a long time to die, and this fools people into believing that there’s a future for ranching.

This has major public policy implications. Many people resist land use planning and zoning believing there is an alternative—namely that ranching will protect open space. But in a region with rising land values, counting on ranching to preserve open space is a fool’s game. If people are genuinely interested in preserving open space, important wildlife habitat, and public access to the land, they are going to have to bite the bullet and buy it—either with conservation easements or outright fee purchase. That is the only way to preserve what we have now into the future.

Bio Crusts and Livestock Grazing

THE SOIL'S LIVING SURFACE

Biological Crusts

George Wuerthner

Biological crusts are assemblages of microscopic organisms dwelling on the soil surface in arid regions. They are important for retaining water, reducing erosion, cycling nutrients, and diminishing the invasion of exotic plants. Range managers have typically disregarded the ecological role of biological crusts, yet they are easily disturbed and destroyed by livestock, and recovery can take years.

The plants most people think of as characteristic of the arid West are the large, vascular types, such as various grasses, sagebrush, rabbitbrush, bitterbrush, cacti, and juniper. Few people are aware of one of the most important groups of plants found on arid lands: biological soil crusts. These are assemblages of tiny, often microscopic organisms, such as cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses, living on or just beneath the soil surface in the spaces between the larger, more prominent vegetation. Although inconspicuous, biological crusts are critical to the productivity of many arid land ecosystems and in some places account for 70 percent of the living plant cover on soils. 1

Unfortunately, the important role of biological crusts has been unnoticed or ignored by many people, including most range managers and livestock grazing proponents. Traditionally, only the impact of livestock grazing on vascular plants has been a concern in evaluations of rangeland health. Yet recent research suggests that even if vascular plant communities are not affected in any detectable way by livestock, there can be significant differences between grazed and ungrazed sites in the proportion of ground covered by biological crust. 2 And over time, livestock damage to biological crusts can lead to the declining health of the entire ecological system - from increased soil erosion, diminished water-holding capacity of the soil, and less favorable nutrient flows, to greater vulnerability to invasion by exotic plants.

Biological Crusts as Part of Arid Ecosystems

Biological crusts, perhaps in keeping with their rather hidden nature, are known by many terms, such as microbiotic crusts, cryptogamic crusts, and cryptobiotic crusts. They are particularly important components of arid ecosystems, such as those in the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau, and the deserts of the Southwest, although they can be found in rangeland ecosystems from alpine areas to the Great Plains. Biological crusts are native elements of most western public lands. 3 As a group they are amazingly diverse and often account for a far greater number of species than the vascular plants with which they are associated. 4 For example, in southern Idaho, botanist Roger Rosentreter found 16 vascular plant species and 39 biological soil crust species in 140 plots placed throughout the rangeland plant community. 5

Biological crusts help to hold the soil surface together and thus reduce soil erosion from wind and water. 6 They play an important role in reducing the impact of raindrops; on unprotected soils (lacking biological crusts), heavy rain breaks up soil aggregates, which leads to the clogging of soil pores and reduces water infiltration rates, sometimes as much as 90 percent.

The crusts also create small-scale roughness or depressions in the surface of the soil that catch water, allowing it to infiltrate, thus reducing sheet erosion. 7 Some biological crusts have microfilaments that weave soil particles together, 8 again anchoring the soil against erosion. Biological soil crusts also act as mulch, reducing evaporative water losses.

Some biological crusts capture and fix atmospheric nitrogen, 9 and all of them can contribute to carbon fixation, 10 providing an important source of carbon for microbial soil populations. Since nitrogen and carbon are both limiting factors in arid environments, maintaining normal nitrogen cycles and carbon deposition is critical to soil fertility and prevention of desertification. 11 Vascular plants growing in soils with intact biological crusts have been found to have a higher concentration of nitrogen than plants growing in soils lacking such crusts. 12

By occupying the spaces between perennial plants, biological crusts also prevent the establishment and spread of exotic weeds. Most native perennials found in North American deserts tend to have seeds with self-burial mechanisms or that are cached by rodents - ensuring that they will be covered by soil or plant litter and will be able to germinate. However, the seeds of most exotic species, such as cheatgrass, do not use these strategies; rather, they germinate on the soil surface. Where biological crusts are intact, seeds of exotics generally fail to germinate successfully. Indeed, the loss of crusts in the bunchgrass communities of the Intermountain West may be largely responsible for the widespread establishment of cheatgrass and other exotic annuals. 13

Another unexpected positive aspect of intact biological crusts is their role in creating favorable microclimates. Most biological crusts are dark and can raise temperatures as much as 23 degrees Fahrenheit above that of adjacent surfaces. 14 Heightening soil temperatures can increase nutrient uptake and speed seed germination, photosynthetic rates, and nitrogenase activity for associated vascular plants. Ants, arthropods, reptiles, and small mammals are able to forage more effectively and more quickly with warmer soil temperatures, because they themselves are then warmer and more active. 15

Higher temperatures may be critical in many desert environments since soil moisture is typically higher during the cooler fall, winter, and spring months, and biological activity may be dependent on favorable soil temperature and moisture. When the dark-colored biological soil crusts are eliminated, the result can be lowered biological activity, with green-up pushed back to later in the spring and early summer. This can negatively affect vascular plants, since they are usually limited by soil moisture, and soils generally dry out as the season progresses into the warmer months.

Finally, biological crusts play a role in moderating fire frequency and intensity. Native plants in the most arid parts of the West are naturally widely spaced, and fires usually do not carry far because of the discontinuous and patchy distribution of fuels. Biological crusts occupy the open spaces between the larger plants - impeding the establishment of exotics, such as cheatgrass, which allow fires to carry farther and also increase fire frequency. So long as the crusts help maintain these mini firebreaks, fires are slowed, and their intensity is decreased. 16 Furthermore, under low-intensity blazes, soil crusts remain intact, limiting potential erosion that may occur in the aftermath of a fire. 17

Effects of Livestock Production

Various human activities can damage biological crusts, including use of off-road vehicles and even hiking. However, no human activity is as ubiquitous on western public lands as livestock grazing.

Livestock damage biological crusts primarily by trampling them. Except perhaps at the lightest stocking rates, the presence of livestock results in broken, degraded crusts. Livestock also tend to compact soils by walking on them repeatedly. Compaction can lead to changes in soil moisture and nutrient flow, which in turn can alter the species makeup of crusts. These changes may occur before differences in biological crust cover are apparent at the macroscopic level. 18

Biological crusts need moisture for growth and reproduction. Livestock grazing in the spring, just prior to the beginning of hot, dry periods, limits opportunity for regrowth of crusts. The net effect of the loss of biological crusts is magnified in areas where high-intensity summer thunderstorms occur; heavy rains on unprotected soil surfaces lead to significant erosion. 19 Livestock grazing in summer and fall is also detrimental since biological crusts are particularly susceptible to breakage and fragmentation when dry. 20 Spring, summer, and fall are the primary seasons for livestock grazing on public lands.

Full recovery of badly trampled biological crusts typically requires more than a few years. Since most public rangelands are not allowed more than a season or two of rest, even under the best rest-rotation management plans, complete recovery is essentially precluded under any livestock grazing regime. 21 It is important to understand that biological crusts occur most prominently in ecosystems that did not evolve with large herds of grazing ungulates. Along with the grasses native to such areas as the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau, and the Mojave, Chihuahuan, and Sonoran Deserts, 22 the biological crusts lack adaptations to the frequent presence of big-bodied herbivores. This fact helps explain why crusts are so vulnerable to damage in the face of livestock grazing.

The negative effects of livestock on biological crusts contribute to lower productivity, accelerated invasion of exotics - particularly cheatgrass - changes in fire regime, changes in soil structure, reduction in water infiltration, higher soil erosion from wind and rain, and changes in energy pathways. These impacts are nearly unavoidable when livestock are present, and thus the policy of allowing livestock grazing on public lands is in direct conflict with such goals as maintaining healthy ecosystems and limiting the occurrence of costly and ecologically damaging cheatgrass-fueled fires.

---

Endnotes

1. J. Belnap, "Potential Role of Cryptobiotic Soil Crust in Semiarid Rangelands," in Proceedings-Ecology and Management of Annual Rangelands, edited by S. B. Monsen and S. G. Kitchen, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-GTR-313 (Ogden, Utah: USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, 1994).

2. J. H. Kaltenecker, M. C. Wicklow-Howard, and R. Rosentreter, "Biological Soil Crusts in Three Sagebrush Communities Recovering from a Century of Livestock Trampling," in Proceedings Shrublands Ecotones, RMRS-P-11 (USDA Rocky Mountain Research Station, 1999).

3. J. Belnap, "Soil Surface Disturbances in Cold Deserts: Effects on Nitrogenase Activity in Cyanobacterial-Lichen Soil Crusts," Biology and Fertility of Soils 23 (1996): 362-367; R. J. Beymer and J. M. Kiopatek, "Effects of Grazing on Cryptogamic Crusts in Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands in Grand Canyon National Park," American Midland Naturalist 127 (1992): 139-148; J. H. Kaltenecker, M. C. Wicklow-Howard, and R. Rosentreter, "Biological Soil Crusts: Natural Barriers to Bromus tectorum Establishment in the Northern Great Basin, USA," in Proceedings of the VI International Rangeland Congress, vol. 1, edited by D. Eldridge and D. Freudenberger (Aitkenvale, Queensland, Australia, 1999); J. R. Marble and K. T. Harper, "Effect of Timing of Grazing on Soil-Surface Cryptogamic Communities in a Great Basin Low-Shrub Desert: A Preliminary Report," Great Basin Naturalist 49 (1989): 104-107.

4. R. Rosentreter, "Compositional Patterns Within a Rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus) Community of the Idaho Snake River Plain," in Proceedings-Symposium on the Biology of Artemisia and Chrysothamnus, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-200 (Ogden, Utah: USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, 1986).

5. Ibid.

6. J. D. Williams, J. P. Dobrowolski, and N. E. West, "Microphytic Crust Influence on Interrill Erosion and Infiltration Capacity," Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers 38 (1995): 139-146.

7. Ibid.

8. J. Belnap and J. S. Gardner, "Soil Microstructure in Soils of the Colorado Plateau: The Role of the Cyanobacterium Microcieus vaginatus," Great Basin Naturalist 53 (1993): 40-47.

9. Beymer and Kiopatek, "Effects of Grazing"; R. D. Evans and J. R. Ehleringer, "A Break in the Nitrogen Cycle in Arid Lands? Evidence from Nitrogen-15 of Soils," Oecologia 94 (1993): 314-317.

10. Beymer and Kiopatek, ibid.

11. H. E. Dregne, Desertification of Arid Lands (New York: Harwood, 1983).

12. K. T. Harper and R. L. Pendleton, "Cyanobacteria and Cyanolichens: Can They Enhance Availability of Essential Minerals for Higher Plants?" Great Basin Naturalist 53 (1993): 59-72.

13. Kaltenecker, Wicklow-Howard, and Rosentreter, "Biological Soil Crusts"; K. D. Larsen, "Effects of Microbiotic Crusts on the Germination and Establishment of Three Range Grasses" (master's thesis, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho 1995).

14. J. Belnap, "Surface Disturbances: Their Role in Accelerating Desertification," Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 37 (1995): 39-57.

15. C. S. Crawford, "The Community Ecology of Macroarthropod Detritivores," in Ecology of Desert Communities, edited by G. Polis (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991); J. T. Doyen and W. F. Tschinkel, "Population Size, Microgeographic Distribution and Habitat Separation in Some Tenebrionid Beetles," Annals of the Entomological Society of America 67 (1974): 617-626.

16. Rosentreter, "Compositional Patterns."

17. J. R. Johansen et al., "Recovery Patterns of Cryptogamic Soil Crusts in Desert Rangelands Following Fire Disturbance," Bryologist 87 (1984): 238-243.

18. D. J. Eldridge, "Trampling of Microphytic Crusts on Calcareous Soils and Its Impact on Erosion Under Rain-Impacted Flow," Catena 33 (1998): 221-239.

19. Kaltenecker, Wicklow-Howard, and Rosentreter, "Biological Soil Crusts."

20. K. L. Memmot, V. J. Anderson, and S. B. Monsen, "Seasonal Grazing Impact on Cryptogamic Crusts in a Cold Desert Ecosystem," Journal of Range Management 51 (1998): 547-550.

21. Kaltenecker, Wicklow-Howard, and Rosentreter, "Biological Soil Crusts."

22. R. N. Mack and J. N. Thompson, "Evolution in Steppe with Few, Large, Hooved Mammals," American Midland Naturalist 119 (1982): 757-773; G. L. Stebbins, "Coevolution of Grasses and Herbivores," Annual of the Missouri Botanical Garden 68 (1981): 75-86.

Holistic Resource Management: False Promise

THE DONUT DIET

The Too-Good-to-Be-True Claims of Holistic Management

George Wuerthner

"HRM [holistic resource management, now shortened to holistic management] promotes the dangerous philosophy that humans are capable of, and should be, managing a planet. It does not recognize the integrity of the natural environment, its right to free existence, or humans' place in it."

- Lynn Jacobs, Waste of the West, 1991


No treatise on western ranching and its effects on the environment would be complete without a discussion of holistic management. Holistic management (HM) is billed as a plan that will "improve the quality of life . . . while restoring the environment that sustains us all." Although there is nothing in this statement about livestock production, the best-known application of HM occurs in livestock husbandry. HM doctrine defines the major problem facing rangelands as "overrest," not overgrazing. HM founder Allan Savory maintains that "rest is probably the most destructive tool known to science." More cows, not less, say HM supporters, is the solution to a host of rangeland problems. It's not surprising that this strikes a responsive chord in most ranchers.

Most HM doctrine has nothing to do explicitly with livestock production but instead focuses on goal setting and operating a business in accordance with widely accepted practices. The major area of contention and the focus of the remainder of this critique revolves around HM's assertions that livestock are necessary to maintain healthy ecosystems and can restore biologically impoverished western ecosystems.

Although HM advocates would claim otherwise, their solution to nearly every woe on western rangelands requires the use of livestock management to correct the perceived problem. They believe that without livestock (managed according to HM prescriptions, of course), rangelands would suffer desertification, declining productivity, and diminished biodiversity. Managed properly under HM guidelines, proponents assert, livestock can be used to reduce weeds and soil erosion, increase productivity of rangelands, improve water quality and wildlife habitat, increase biodiversity and water infiltration, and restore riparian areas, all while simultaneously enriching the rancher's bottom line.

If you think this sounds a bit like the magic elixir that snake oil salesmen once purveyed, you're not the only one. Many activists and scientists question HM's basic ecological assumptions.

Many HM supporters assiduously deny they like livestock or even support the livestock industry; rather, they assert that they are only interested in ecosystem health. (Taking a cue from HM, most timber companies today advocate more logging, not to further their profits but out of their heartfelt concern for healthy forest ecosystems.) The need to restore and repair degraded landscapes through controlled livestock grazing, is, of course, a very happy coincidence for the livestock industry.

Some aspects of HM livestock management techniques are not in and of themselves flawed, and indeed have an ecological basis that is fundamentally sound-assuming that you want to graze livestock at all. HM doctrine requires confining large numbers of animals (that is, livestock) into relatively small areas, under tightly controlled conditions. Although the stocking rate is high, the duration of grazing in any one pasture is short. Ranchers monitor plant utilization and, at the time deemed proper, move their cattle to the next grazing site, allowing ample time for plant recovery. If followed meticulously-and that is the big if-such a grazing scheme has some merit from a livestock management perspective.

It is when HM doctrine strays beyond basic livestock husbandry and gets into ecological theory that it begins to elicit the ire of critics. For instance, HM proponents flatly declare that rest from livestock grazing is destructive; they claim that arid lands need more livestock grazing, not less. Related to these beliefs is the notion that livestock grazing promotes higher productivity of plant communities. In addition, HM advocates like to say that "hoof action" of livestock is necessary to incorporate organic matter into the soil, to push seeds into the ground for germination, and to improve water infiltration into the soil. All of these assumptions will be challenged below.

Before taking up each of these claims in turn, it is important to discuss a key operating principle of HM, something that allows HM proponents readily to adopt a livestock management strategy that on the face of it, seems too good to be true. We might call this principle the "Donut Diet" phenomenon. That is, the Donut Diet, or HM, as the case may be, offers a counterintuitive, even shocking, but ultimately tantalizing solution to a perennial problem. The conventional wisdom about how to solve the problem is not very appealing-for example, you're overweight, so eat fewer calories; your range productivity is diminished, so reduce the number of cattle on the range. Then some person or concept comes along that offers a way to solve the problem without requiring any sacrifice. In fact, you can have what you want-only more of it! Some people immediately scoff and will hear no more about this "revolutionary" approach. Others, however, are intrigued. Eat nothing but donuts, and lose weight! Put more cows on the range, and get more forage! Heck, why not?

The devil is in the details, of course, which is where HM and a "Donut Diet" start to break down. To implement HM properly, one must monitor range condition very closely. This requires a great deal of self-discipline, is labor intensive, and is often expensive. Success, of a kind, is possible in theory but often is very difficult to realize in practice. The same principles hold for a diet that would allow one to dine on donuts and other junk food; one can lose weight, but only with greatly restricted caloric intake.

Sustaining programs such as these is extremely taxing, and the temptation to slack off or cut corners is extremely high. Nonetheless, many people keep on trying, despite their own setbacks and despite outside evidence that what they are doing will not work. They want the program to succeed very badly. They do not blame the method, but their own failings. As an HM practitioner is quoted as saying, "After 13 years I can say it is still the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. The lack of success we have had in some areas has not been because holistic management doesn't work; it is because we haven't practiced it properly."

Yet there are ranchers who testify that they have measured improvement in range condition and/or livestock production under HM, just as some people may indeed lose weight eating nothing but donuts. How can this be? One answer is fortuitous timing. In some instances, the positive results observed by ranchers occurred during periods of above-average precipitation, when grass production was naturally higher. However, the main reason that some livestock operators see a change for the better after switching to HM is that they begin to pay close attention to something-livestock husbandry-to which they formerly gave little thought.

Under traditional grazing schemes, most ranchers dump their cattle out on rangelands to fend for themselves. Both the cattle and the rangelands are left unmonitored for weeks or even months at a time. HM, on the other hand, requires intense and frequent monitoring, and regardless of its other aspects, this is a good thing. (It is worth noting that researchers comparing HM techniques with other grazing strategies have found no inherent superiority to HM techniques. Indeed in some cases, greater improvement in range condition, at lower cost, is realized under other traditional grazing schemes, if livestock operators give the same strict attention to stocking rate and monitoring range condition.) Ranchers, with greater awareness, can become more responsive to the condition of the land as well as that of their animals. Intensive grazing can also force livestock to use more efficiently the forage in an area. It is not so different from any weight loss diet that gets the dieter to become more conscious of the act of eating and the food's caloric value. No matter what's on the menu, if one carefully observes what is being eaten, chances are that sensations of satiety will be felt sooner, and, correspondingly, fewer calories will be consumed. It's not the donuts that help one lose weight but the discipline and restrictions of the diet.

Just as nutritionists would argue with anyone who asserted that donuts were necessary for a healthy diet just because someone managed to lose some weight consuming them, ecologists and livestock activists object to HM's assertions that livestock grazing is necessary for arid land health. Numerous studies of both livestock-grazed and livestock-free lands provide scientific evidence supporting opposition to HM.

One major assumption of HM is that plants need to be cropped. This assumption is based on the observation that plants regrow new leaf material to replace that removed by herbivores. Yet plant responses to the loss of aboveground biomass can more properly be considered a coping mechanism to plant material losses, rather than a positive response to a beneficial event. This is not unlike the documented ability of coyotes to breed at a younger age and produce more pups in the face of predator control. One would be remiss to conclude that coyote populations' tolerance of exploitation translates into coyotes' "need" to be shot, poisoned, and trapped for health.

Areas protected from livestock grazing offer the most telling evidence that munching cattle are not a prerequisite to ecosystem health. Forest Service researchers recently published a study of Dutchwoman Butte in Arizona. This isolated mesa top had never been grazed by livestock yet was "striking in the diversity, density, and vigor of the grasses" and remarkably free of plants such as curly mesquite and snakeweed, which are undesirable forage plants and quite common on sites grazed by livestock. The amount of forage on the butte was four times that found in similar livestock-grazed areas despite the occurrence of a severe drought at the time of the study. There are other livestock-free places throughout the West-though rare due to the ubiquity of livestock-that further make the case that plant communities thrive in the absence of grazing domestic animals.

Another basic ecological problem with the HM livestock bias is that it ignores the evolutionary history of entire biotic regions. Although some parts of the Great Plains were grazed by mobile herds of large herbivores, most plants west of the Continental Divide evolved in the absence of large herding animals such as bison-the native species that HM advocates suggest their cows mimic. Except for small areas along the western fringe of their natural range, bison were not found during historic times in the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Pacific Northwest, or in the higher subalpine and alpine mountains of the Rockies. Plants across this vast region lack mechanisms to cope with significant grazing pressure from large herbivores. Yet HM proponents argue that these very dry regions would benefit the most from livestock grazing and trampling effects, even though there was no native analogue to domestic cattle. Some also question the claim that trampling can increase herbage production.

"Overrest" is another term HM proponents use frequently to describe areas not sufficiently grazed by livestock. They warn that with too little grazing, or too much rest, plants become "overmature" and "decadent," and areas of bare, eroding soil increase in size over time. These words may be familiar to conservationists since they reflect the same attitude that foresters have held toward old-growth forests. Today, we appreciate that so-called "overmature" and "decadent" trees are essential to the ecological health of forests.

It's worth noting that almost no plant communities are really "overrested," since all rangelands are grazed whether a cow steps foot on them or not. A host of native herbivores, from grasshoppers to jackrabbits to elk, consume plants even in the most isolated meadows and mesas. Even the focus on large mammals may be misguided. In livestock-free Yellowstone National Park, researchers have found that grasshopper biomass on the northern range exceeds that of all ungulates combined (bison, elk, pronghorn, moose, deer, and bighorn sheep) by three times and that grasshoppers are a major consumer of above-ground biomass. Thus, what HM advocates really mean when they talk about "overrest" is not whether an area is grazed, but whether it's grazed by livestock.

HM advocates assert that livestock grazing increases plant productivity, often using "forage production" as a gauge of ecosystem status when it is really a reflection of the economic concern ranchers have for quantity of livestock forage. Scientists readily acknowledge that many plants compensate for injuries by producing new growth. This regrowth is often higher in nitrogen and other nutrients, and hence more palatable to herbivores. But regrowth of a plant is not evidence that the plant has benefited from being eaten. Indeed, grazing has a cost to plants. After losing its leaves to an herbivore, a plant must redirect energy from seed or root production toward production of above-ground photosynthetic material. In other words, those who claim that grazing "increases" forage production are correct in a limited sense, but such increased production interferes with other plant functions, such as root development, making plants far more vulnerable to drought and other stresses.

Research has shown that grazing cannot increase overall plant biomass production, except under growth chamber or cultivated conditions. Furthermore, regrowth is dependent on moisture, and in many parts of the West, if grasses are intensively grazed, they may not have access to sufficient moisture to regrow in the same season, or even in subsequent seasons. Yet even using forage productivity as a measure, HM techniques are not inherently superior and often fail to produce as much forage per acre as other grazing techniques.

HM advocates claim that the hooves of livestock are necessary to integrate organic matter into the soil and improve soil fertility. Yet research has shown that soil fertility is not the limiting factor in most western ecosystems-water is. And with regard to soil fertility, livestock actually interfere with nutrient cycling. Since livestock tend to reduce soil moisture-by removing shading vegetation and by compacting soil so water cannot penetrate as deeply-they limit microbial decomposition, which is moisture-dependent. One study in Alberta found that short-duration grazing reduced soil organic matter and nitrogen when compared with ungrazed controls. Trampling by hooves played a limited role in this decomposition. In fact, in a review of the literature, one range scientist stated, "In our search of the literature we could find no studies that substantiate Savory's claims on the benefits of hoof action on range soils."

HM doctrine claims that hoof action will enhance water infiltration through trampling of the ground. This, according to HM proponents, breaks up the soil surface so that runoff is slowed and the rain is better able to soak into the ground. But research has shown that cattle hoof action actually impairs soil health in two ways. First, it compacts the soil's upper layers, which reduces water infiltration and increases runoff. At the same time, the destruction of the living soil crusts, known variously as biological crusts, cryptogamic crusts, and so forth, further accelerates erosion by making the surface soil more easily washed away. The loss of cryptogamic crusts is also considered one of the factors that favor the spread of weeds such as cheatgrass.

Finally, the way that HM measures and defines success needs to be examined closely. For instance, HM purports to improve biodiversity. Typically HM supporters consider any increase in species numbers an improvement in biodiversity. But conservation biologists use very different and more complex measures of biodiversity and improvement in biodiversity. To conservation biologists, biodiversity is not just about having a lot of different species on any particular site or even an increase in a few key species; rather the goal is to preserve or restore native species to something approaching their historic distribution and numbers as well as to preserve the important ecological processes that direct species' evolution. Under such a definition, an increase in the number of species may actually signal a departure from the goal of biodiversity preservation, if many of those species are exotic or were historically rare or absent.

Livestock production is destructive to biodiversity. The resource pie is only so big. The majority of the West's water, forage, and space cannot be going toward domestic livestock production and not significantly reduce the biological potential of native species, from grasshoppers to trout to elk. HM, by its single-minded reliance on, and advocacy of, livestock as the cure for just about every woe on western rangelands, contributes to the destruction-not the enhancement-of biodiversity and wildlands ecosystems.

Ranching Myths: Good Livestock Production and Ecosystem Preservation Can Coexist

MYTH

Good Livestock Production and Ecosystem Preservation Can Coexist

TRUTH

Perhaps the biggest fallacy perpetrated by the livestock industry is the idea that if we would only reform or modify management practices, there would be room both for livestock and for fully functional ecosystems, native wildlife, clean water, and so on. Unfortunately, even to approach meaningful reform, more intensive management is needed, and such management adds considerably to the costs of operation. More fencing, more water development, more employees to ride the range: whatever the suggested solution, it always requires more money. Given the low productivity of the western landscape, the marginal nature of most western livestock operations, and the growing global competition in meat production, any increase in operational costs cannot be justified or absorbed. If the production of meat as a commodity is the goal, then an equal investment of money in a moister, more productive stock-growing region-such as the Midwest or the eastern United States-would produce far greater returns.

Even if mitigation were economically feasible, we would still be allotting a large percentage of our landscape and resources-including space, water, and forage-to livestock. If grass is going into the belly of a cow, there's that much less grass available to feed wild creatures, from grasshoppers to elk. If water is being drained from a river to grow hay, there's that much less water to support fish, snails, and a host of other life forms. The mere presence of livestock diminishes the native biodiversity of our public lands.

The choice is really between using the public lands to subsidize a private industry or devoting them to ecological protection and preserving the natural heritage of all Americans. On private lands, native species face an uncertain future. It would be a prudent and reasonable goal to make preservation of biological diversity and ecosystem function the primary goal on public lands. To suggest that we know how to conduct logging, livestock grazing, or other large-scale, resource-consumptive uses while sustaining native biodiversity is to perpetuate the greatest myth of all.

Ranching Myths: Ranching is the Foundation of Rural Economies

MYTH

Ranching Is the Foundation of Rural Economies

TRUTH

Many livestock supporters attempt to portray public lands livestock production as an essential element of rural economies. It's easy to see the fallacy in this argument if you think about the numbers involved. For example, in Nevada there are fewer than 800 public lands grazing permittees. And in the entire state less than 2,000 people are engaged full-time as farmers or ranchers. One casino in Las Vegas employs more people than work in agriculture in all of Nevada. Although other states may have higher numbers of people involved in ranching, livestock production is proportionally a small part of the economic picture in all western states.

Ranching and associated activities provide very few jobs. Furthermore, most ranch operations, except the very biggest, are not highly profitable. Both of these truths help explain the rather interesting finding of one University of Arizona study: that instead of rural towns being dependent on the livestock industry for their economic survival, the reverse was true. Ranch families depend on nearby towns and cities to provide full- or part-time jobs that help keep the ranch financially afloat. Without family income from such positions as schoolteachers, local civil servants, store clerks, salespeople, and so forth, ranch ownership would be impossible. The vast majority of people who call themselves ranchers enjoy the lifestyle and the prestige, but they are not choosing a lucrative pursuit (as indeed many will complain!). Therefore, it can be argued that, financially, rural towns would likely survive without ranchers, but most ranchers would be hard-pressed to survive without the towns.

As ranching is relatively unimportant in local economies, it is even less important on state and regional scales. According to the Department of the Interior's 1994 Rangeland Reform Environmental Impact Statement, the elimination of all public lands livestock grazing would result in a loss of 18,300 jobs in agriculture and related industries across the entire West, or approximately 0.1 percent of the West's total employment. Natural resource economist Thomas Power has calculated that all ranching in the West, on both public and private lands, accounts for less than 0.5 percent of all income received by western residents.

Ranching Myths: Rangelands Must Be Grazed for Ecological Health

MYTH

Rangelands Must Be Grazed to Stay Healthy

TRUTH

Over much of the area that is now public land in the West, native plant communities evolved largely in the absence of grazing herd animals. Between the Sierra Nevada-Cascade crest and the Rocky Mountains lies the arid Intermountain West, composed of areas such as the Great Basin, the Palouse prairie, and the deserts of the Southwest, where bison were mostly absent and even herds of pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, elk, and other herbivores tended to be small and widely distributed. Consequently, the plant species of this region are not adapted to continual heavy grazing and trampling, as occurs with domestic livestock.

Yet some livestock proponents argue that although no large herds of grazing or browsing animals occurred in the Intermountain West in historic times, during the last Ice Age great numbers of wild horses, mastodons, giant sloths, and other herbivores roamed these lands. Thus, livestock advocates claim, cattle are merely filling a niche left empty since the extinction of these Pleistocene mammals. The problem, however, is that climatic conditions were very different during the Ice Age-precipitation was higher, for example-and plant communities were much different in composition, as well as generally more productive than today. Cattle are not filling some long-vacant ecological niche but are, in fact, exotic animals that have dramatically altered the native plant communities of the arid West.

Even where large herds of bison, elk, and pronghorn were common, such as on the Great Plains, plants do not need to be grazed. Rather, many Great Plains grasses tolerate grazing by compensating for losses in leaf and stem materials through additional growth. However, when plants move carbohydrates up from their roots to produce new leaves, root growth may slow, and seed production may be inhibited. Only plants with unlimited access to water and nutrients and with no competition (conditions found only in a growth chamber) can withstand repeated cropping without harm. In nature, plants repeatedly munched by livestock suffer from diminished root mass-a potentially lethal situation for the plant during a drought. Of course, drought occurs commonly in the West, including the Great Plains.

Ranching Myths: Cattle Have Replaced Bison

MYTH

Cattle Have Replaced the Bison

TRUTH

Although cattle and bison have a common evolutionary ancestor, so do the polar bear and black bear. Yet we would not suggest that these two bears can inhabit the same type of landscape or that they are ecological analogues of one another. Cattle evolved in moist Eurasian woodlands and are poorly adapted to arid regions. In comparison with bison, cattle use more water, spend more time in riparian areas, and are less mobile. They are poorly adapted to dry western rangelands-one reason why livestock grazing has been so detrimental to these ecosystems.

Bison feed in one place for a few days, then move on, whereas cattle tend to "camp out" in the same location for weeks, overgrazing the landscape in the process. Bison survive on available, native forage. Cattle require extra feed to survive northern winters, which typically means hay production and accompanying dewatering of streams. Cattle are poorly adapted to dealing with predators, being rather slow and unintelligent. Bison retain their wild instincts for avoiding and fending off wolves, grizzlies, and other carnivores.

Wild bison functioned within ecosystems in ways that livestock do not. Their bodies served as food for predators and were scavenged by ravens, coyotes, and magpies. What was left of their carcasses decomposed and was returned to the soil. Bison were a part of, and contributed to, a great diversity of life. Livestock, on the other hand, represent a large net loss of energy and biomass to an ecosystem, as their bodies are removed for human consumption elsewhere.

Despite the simplistic claim that cows merely replace bison, it's not just bison that have been replaced by this exotic, domesticated species. On most rangelands today, cattle are the only major herbivore. Yet in the days before livestock, an entire suite of species fed on the grassland plants, from grasshoppers and sage grouse to prairie dogs and pronghorn. Substituting a single species-with different dietary preferences-for this diverse group of herbivores results in overuse of some plant species and grants competitive advantage to others. These other plants are often invasive and less palatable to many native herbivores.

Ranching myths: It's either ranching or subdivisions

An airplane perspective of Ag impacts on the land. Here irrigated fields dominate the surface of the Gallatin Valley, Montana.

MYTH

It's Either Ranching or Subdivisions

TRUTH

Livestock advocates try to silence critics by saying that reducing or eliminating livestock from public lands will lead to subdivisions. Yet, supporting the livestock industry-even increasing its subsidies-will not stop the parceling out of ranchland into housing tracts.

Ranching in the West has always depended on the ready availability of large acreages of land. Western ranchers have competed with stock growers in more productive regions of the country by using more space, and by getting the forage on that land cheaply. However, when land prices rise, western ranchers lose their one advantage. Wetter, milder areas produce more cattle per acre than western rangelands, without as many of the costs and challenges, such as predators, scarcity of water sources, and the need for miles of fencing.

Subdivision is also market driven. But a supply of millions of acres of land for sale (as is the case in the Great Plains) does not alone draw developers. To be attractive to developers, and to eventual buyers of residential lots and homes, land must offer a favorable mix of amenities: proximity to jobs, outdoor recreation, arts and culture, good schools, a pleasant climate, and beautiful scenery. These are the qualities that stimulate subdivision.

Sprawl has gobbled up farmland in California's Central Valley and the Los Angeles Basin, despite the fact that these are some of the most valuable agricultural lands in the world. There is no way marginal ranches and rangelands in the West can compete when a high demand for housing occurs in an area.

The threat of subdivisions needs to be put in perspective. Ultimately, population growth is the problem. In the meantime, livestock production has a physical footprint far greater than urban and suburban areas. In California-the most populous western state-less than 5 percent of the land area is devoted to cities, towns, and subdivisions. Agriculture-farming and ranching-dominates more than 70 percent of the state's acreage. In other western states, the fraction of land occupied by housing and urban/suburban development is even smaller.

Fortunately, there are at least three proven ways to protect open space, wildlife habitat, and other environmental values on private lands: zoning, conservation easements, and outright fee purchase. If the same amount of money we currently throw away on subsidies to the livestock industry were devoted to protecting and buying up wildlife habitat instead, the land would be far better off.

Ranching Myths Grazing Supports Family Rancher

MYTH

Public Lands Grazing Supports the Family Rancher

TRUTH

Public lands grazing subsidies, like most agricultural subsidies, disproportionately benefit large landholders. In a 1992 Government Accounting Office profile of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) permittees, the largest 500 permittees, out of nearly 20,000 total, controlled 36 percent of the public lands forage. Just 16 percent of all permittees controlled 76.2 percent of the AUMs (animal unit months-one AUM being the amount of forage required by a cow-calf pair for a month) available on BLM lands. Most of these permittees were big corporations or very wealthy individuals. The smallest 2,000 permittees controlled less than 0.13 percent of BLM forage.

This inequality is a result of the process for assigning public lands allotments. Access to permits requires ownership of private base operations. Since wealthy ranchers own more land, and thus more base property, they wind up with more federal lands allotments.

In addition, few ranchers depend entirely on their public lands allotments to meet all their forage needs. Although the percentage varies from operation to operation and state to state, most ranchers fulfill the majority of their annual forage needs from private lands. Only the largest operations actually use public lands for a significant amount of their livestock's forage. If the public lands were to become unavailable to these large ranches, most of their operators could reasonably afford alternatives for grazing their stock.

Alternatively, most smaller ranches today represent status or lifestyle choices for their owners-the vast majority of ranchers who use public lands. Most western ranches do not depend exclusively on livestock for their income, or for even an important fraction of their income. Growing and selling livestock is usually a break-even enterprise at best. Jobs in town or other business ventures are what allow families to maintain their status and appearance as "ranchers"-not running cattle or sheep on the range. If these ranchers chose to give up, or were forced to relinquish, their public lands allotments, most would adjust through reducing their herd size to match their private holdings, or through leasing the private grazing lands of other landowners. Family ranchers might also continue to diversify their income-as many are already doing-either with new enterprises on the ranch (for example, guest ranches, and guided fishing and hunting), or with other work off the ranch.

Ranching myths: Livestock Benefits Wildlife

MYTH

Livestock Benefit Wildlife

TRUTH

Hundreds of species across the West are in danger of extinction, primarily because of livestock production. Species as varied as the Bruneau Hot Springsnail, the southwestern willow flycatcher, and the Bonneville cutthroat trout are in jeopardy as a consequence of habitat loss or degradation due to livestock grazing and its associated activities. No other human activity in the West is as responsible for the decline or loss of species as is livestock production.

Predator and pest control has extirpated many species, from wolves to prairie dogs. Dewatering of rivers for irrigation has contributed to the decline of many aquatic species, including many native trout. Livestock trampling of riparian areas, wet meadows, seeps, and springs has harmed habitat for a great variety of creatures, from songbirds to frogs. Livestock consumption of grass and other vegetation decreases hiding cover for many animals, making them more vulnerable to predators. Disease transmission from livestock to wildlife, as has frequently occurred with domestic and bighorn sheep, can diminish or eliminate certain wild animal populations. Most forage on public rangelands is allotted to livestock, leaving little food for native species to consume.

A few species have increased with the spread of livestock production. Yet, just as one could demonstrate that rats and pigeons flourish in the city and thereby incorrectly assert that wildlife benefit from urbanization, so too is it false to point to the proliferation of deer, Canada geese, cowbirds, and a few other opportunists and suggest that livestock production enhances conditions for wildlife in general.

Several big-game species, such as elk, pronghorn antelope, and bighorn sheep, have increased from early twentieth-century lows, when market and subsistence hunting nearly drove them to extinction. However, the rise in the numbers of these species is a consequence of intensive game management-such as adoption of strict hunting seasons, reintroductions, and habitat acquisition-rather than any inherent compatibility with livestock. Indeed, many of these big-game animals are still limited by having to compete for forage, water, and space with domestic livestock.

Livestock advocates suggest that water developments, such as troughs and stock ponds, benefit wildlife. While some wild animals undoubtedly use them, these facilities tend to lack adequate surrounding vegetation for hiding cover, nesting habitat, foraging, and other wildlife needs. Thus, these structures are almost useless to most wild species, and they exist at the expense of natural seeps, springs, and streams that would support far more native creatures if left intact.

Ranching Myths: Ranchers are Good Stewards of the Land

MYTH

Ranchers Are Good Stewards of the Land

TRUTH

More than 410 million acres of U.S. rangelands-public and private-are in unsatisfactory ecological condition, according to an estimate by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This is an area four times the size of California, or 21 percent of the continental United States, and nearly all of it is in the West. These lands are severely damaged, with at least 50 percent of the desirable plant species eliminated, high erosion and weed invasion rates, and riparian areas unable to function normally.

Although public lands usually get more attention from the media, statistics compiled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service indicate that more total acres and a higher percentage of private lands in the West are in unsatisfactory condition as compared with public rangelands. This is particularly egregious in that private lands tend to be more productive and better watered than public lands-hence more resilient to livestock abuses.

In truth, ranchers are fighting an impossible battle against the natural limitations of the landscape. The West is not only an arid region but one in which annual precipitation varies widely. The amount of precipitation that falls in a year is directly reflected in the amount of grass production, meaning that forage quantity varies widely from year to year as well. This makes it very difficult for ranchers to maintain a stable business operation while also managing herds so as not to damage the land.

To be a good steward, ideally one not only must have a sense of responsibility and concern for the land-as many ranchers do-but also must treat the land in a way that conserves its fertility, productivity, diversity, and beauty for the future. Yet by raising domestic animals that demand large quantities of water and forage in a place that is dry, and by favoring slow-moving, heavy, and relatively defenseless livestock in terrain that is rugged, vast, and inhabited by native predators, ranchers have put themselves in a position of constant warfare with the land. They funnel most of the grass into their own animals, at the expense of the wild herbivores. They divert water from rivers to grow hay and other crops to feed cows, leaving fish and other aquatic life with hot, shallow trickles. They allow their cattle to graze and trample riparian areas-habitat on which 75 to 80 percent of all wild animal species in the West depend-polluting waterways with manure and adding excessive sediments to the water as they denude the land. And although "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," it's arguable whether most people would prefer a place where the grass is chewed down to stubs and the ground is littered with cow pies, over a grassland of tall and waving stems, dotted with wildflowers.

Living Behind the Bovine Curtain

George Wuerthner




We in the West live behind a bovine curtain. Like people living behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, we are inundated with propaganda that extols the virtues of livestock production in the arid West. Yet, like the people of eastern Europe whose leaders continued to tell them that communism worked despite the reality of empty shelves in the stores, we in the West are told by a host of livestock advocates that livestock grazing "improves" the landscape and is a relatively benign use of the land despite the reality of cow-blasted riparian zones, predator control, species extinctions, water pollution, and dewatering of our rivers.

Occasionally, radio free Europe broadcasts send us a different message from the "outside" world. The GAO and EPA and other organizations produce reports that paints a message quite different from the hoopla feed to us by the range managers, range "scientists", ranchers and others who have something to gain by maintaining the status quo. The EPA calls western riparian areas the "worst shape in history". The GAO suggests that most federal lands are "badly mismanaged". The Soil Conservation Service reports that a total of 410 million acres of rangelands (public and private) are in "unsatisfactory" condition. And so it goes. Reality doesn't jive with the propaganda.

A study conducted by the BLM of its lands in the late 1970's showed that the majority of its holdings were unsuitable for livestock grazing. But not surprisingly down came the bovine curtain, and the report was suppressed by western politicans and never released to the public. And even today, both the Forest Service and BLM frequently refuse to even consider the question of whether domestic livestock grazing is appropriate on any particular allotment. Instead, these public agencies spend more and more our money trying to make the land "fit" livestock. Hence we spend millions annually on fencing, stock ponds, pipelines, and other devices designed to "improve" livestock distrubtion and "mitigate" impacts.

And our tax dollars pay for the propaganda that continues to poar forth from the livestock industry. It's not that all of this information is wrong or that I believe most livestock advocates are purposely trying to distort the truth. I have no doubts that from their perspective, they believes everything they say is true. Some is. Most isn't.

Consider for example the common statement from the livestock industry suggesting the "vast majority of rangelands are stable or improving in condition". Sounds good until you examine the data yourself and discover that the vast majority of rangelands are in the "stable" category and stable in poor condition. Only a small percentage is actually improving and is matched by a nearly equal amount that is declining in condition, but by grouping stable with those acres under improvement, livestock advocates can say "the majority" of lands are improving. Of course, one could just as easily say the "majority" are declining as well. It is this is kind of misinformation and deception that characterizes so much of the information coming from the livestock industry and their lackeys in range "science".


This same deception is used when ranchers and other livestock supporters make the point that grazing benefits "wildlife". Unfortunately, an unconscious assumption of most ranchers and range managers in that "wildlife" equals a few big game species. There is much more to our wildlife heritage than these charismatic mega fauna. For dozens of species from the kit fox to the sage grouse to the Willow-Whitehorse trout, the influence of livestock grazing has been anything but positive, but these species are conveniently ignored when ranchers talk about the benefits of livestock grazing for "wildlife". In fact, livestock grazing is responsible for the extinction or near extinction of more species in the western United States than all other human activities combined!

But even the statements that livestock has lead to increases in big game species are deceptive. Many studies have demonstrated that livestock will displace elk, bighorn sheep, and other big game animals from pastures where cattle or domestic sheep are actively feeding. Frequently wild species are displaced into areas with less security cover, thermal cover, or foraging areas with poorer forage quality. Typically, these "costs" and questions about overall animal fitness are never reviewed by the researchers trying to prove that livestock "benefits" wildlife.

Another common myth is that elk, bighorn sheep, antelope and other big game species have increased since the 1960's and it is implied that improvements results from benefits associated with livestock grazing. While it's true that SOME big game species have increased in numbers, one needs to ask whether this is the result of livestock grazing or in spite of it. In reality, big game numbers have been increasing everywhere since historic lows near the turn of the century when overhunting coupled with excessive competition from livestock decimated most large ungulate populations. Since that time effective game laws, coupled with transplants, AND an overall reduction in livestock numbers, have all led to increasing numbers of these animals. Big game herds have increased in areas both in areas with livestock grazing and without. But they have increased more in areas without livestock.
To see the problem with such logic, let us turn to Colorado and its elk herd. At the turn of the century there were so few elk in Colorado due to overhunting that animals were transplanted from Yellowstone. Today there are more than a 300,000 elk in the state despite the fact that Colorado is one of the fastest growing states with a huge sprawl problem. But it would be wrong to imply that sprawl "improve" conditions for elk simply because there are more now than in 1900. Yet, this is exactly the same logic the livestock industry uses all the time to "prove" that livestock and wildlife are "compatible".

Such statements show a profound ignorance of how our ecosystems function. There are no empty niches. Each blade of grass that goes into the belly of a domestic cow is that much less forage that could be sustaining NATIVE species. The herbivore might only be a grasshopper, not a "good" animal like an elk. But that grasshopper will feed a rodent or a bird, which in turn may feed some other native species.

Besides consuming forage that might otherwise support native species, livestock "use" up space and water as well. Many species will, if given a choice, avoid areas under intensive livestock use. Water developments for livestock are not nearly as beneficial for wildlife as ungrazed ponds and springs. This is not to deny that one won't occasionally see wildlife using these developments, but in most instances, such developments destroy existing seeps, wetlands and springs which have far more beneficial use to wildlife than a mud-caked, cow-trashed development.

There is no doubt that "better livestock management" can mitigate some of the negative impacts associated with livestock grazing, but mitigation is different than suggesting that livestock grazing "improves" things. With few exceptions, the cumulative effect of domestic livestock grazing has a detrimental effect upon the landscape. Lessening those impacts is not the same as "improvement". So when a riparian zone is fenced and the riparian zone "improves" what we are really saying is that the absence of livestock or reduction of livestock is what "improved" the area. Yet most livestock propaganda has statements like "riparian areas improve with grazing". This is like suggesting that cars improved the air in LA after emission control devices were installed. Cars did not improve the air, and LA air shed would be better off with fewer or no cars.

Most environmentalists suggest we should work with ranchers for improved livestock management, but this is actually calling for the continued domestication of our native ecosystems. Just as timber management effectively makes our native forest ecosystems into tree farms, livestock management effectively turns our native rangeland ecosystems into feedlots for privately owned animals with all the profits going to the ranchers and the public left with the costs. Better livestock management almost always means more fencing, more water developments, more roads, more spraying, burnings, chaining, predator control and other activities designed to "better distribute" livestock. Better distribution is like building a taller smokestack. It spreads the pollution over a larger area so it is not as noticeable, but it doesn't necessarily mean there are fewer impacts.

There are plenty of opportunities for production of livestock on private lands in the United States. And for every rancher in Harney County, Oregon or Elko County, Nevada trying to make a living, there is a livestock grower in Georgia or East Texas trying to do the same. It's not like western ranchers are the only individuals attempting to provide consumers with meat. They are directly competing with livestock producers in other parts of the country. To suggest that we need to subsidize western ranchers so as to maintain rural economies is to sacrifice rural economies elsewhere in the country.

But rural economies are not the only thing we sacrifice by maintaining a western livestock industry. If we consider the ecological costs of meat production in the arid West with places like Georgia or East Texas, we find that ecological costs, while still substantial, are far less in the east or mid west than anyplace in the arid western U.S..

The reality is that cows are poorly adapted to live in dry climates. You can't get away from that fact. We can't afford to fence all the riparian areas in the West to protect them from cows. We shouldn't have to continue to dewater rivers to irrigate fields to produce crops to feed cattle. We needn't extirpate all the predators from public lands simply to make them safe for someone else’s privately owned cows.

Finally, many ranchers threaten to subdivide their property if they cannot continue to graze on public lands. The common assumption being that by permitting public lands grazing, we maintain the tax base, protect open space and prevent subdivisions from taking over valuable wildlife habitat. Yet, there is no evidence that access to public lands grazing actually prevents subdivisions or helps to maintain open space, except in a very few instances. In most cases, as demand for property increases, and the value of that land for other uses also increases, most ranchers eventually find the economic rewards of selling out too great to resist or simply have no choice as other uses making livestock production less viable. This has happened over and over again, suggesting that access to public lands grazing privileges is a poor substitute for strict zoning laws, conservation easements and other measures that can protect these values without sacrificing our public rangelands to support a few individuals. In many cases, the money being spent on administering, monitoring, and mitigating the impacts of livestock grazing would buy a lot of development rights or provide a significant amount of money for outright fee purchase of threatened lands.

We need to ask whether what we give up in things wild and free are worth the costs. If one looks at the cumulative effects of grazing on all "wildlife", on fisheries, on native plant communities, on watersheds, on soils, on recreation and on aesthetics, it becomes obvious that no human activity has had a greater impact upon our natural ecosystems than livestock grazing. And since livestock are exotic animals utilizing space, water, and forage that would otherwise support native species, domestic livestock use of these public lands is not compatible with maintaining native ecosystems and biodiversity.

We need to ask what this nation needs more. We can raise all the cows we need on private lands in the more humid areas of the country, but there are few places where we can protect large, intact ecosystems. Most of these areas are found in the West on public lands. As long as we have alien, non-native domestic livestock dominating the management direction of our native rangelands and using a majority of its forage, space and water, we will never realize the full potential of these arid regions.