11-1-2005.The Eco-Cowboys: Big land buys signal greens are moving into ranching. Environmentalism and the New West.
By Joe Baird. The Salt Lake Tribune. It is very hard to retire a federal grazing lease. To keep your permit, or "validate" a new lease, you have to graze a minimum number of cattle on your lease every so often. You also have to own the cattle that are grazed on the lease.
Most of the canyonlands of southern Utah and northern Arizona should have never been grazed by that  exotic beast, the cow, but it has been and the current federal rules say it must continue to be grazed despite the extremely low productivity of the land.
Conservation groups are buying ranches. With this private "base property" of the newly purchased ranches comes the nearby public grazing allotments. Meanwhile hard core local traditionalists are trying to assert the conservationists won't graze the land hard enough. Livestock operators that will use the land hard should get the allotments instead. If this wasn't such scenic but unsuitable country for cows, it wouldn't be a controversy, but the local old-timers are out of touch with the true value of the landscape.

Southern Utah on the Colorado Plateau. This shouldn't be cow country.
Copyright © Ralph Maughan

Other conservation groups want the cows gone, period. They don't want to get into the grazing business. In fact the Western Watersheds Project has complained about the grazing practices of The Nature Conservancy on Conservancy-leased public grazing allotments.

Getting rid of cows entirely, however, will have to await Democratic control of Congress and a Democrat as President (and even then it is not certain). Legislation is probably needed to cause the retirement of grazing allotments on land that is unsuitable for livestock grazing.

Also being pushed is a national voluntary buy-out of public grazing allotments. This would require a law and money, costing about $3-billion (not much considering the wildlife benefits). A lot of ranchers seem interested in the idea of such a voluntary buyout. The infusion of cash to them would probably do as much preventing them from sub-dividing than all the subsidies they now get to continue grazing where it is not economic to do so. The fact that the livestock associations can't keep their members chained to their occupation terrifies them and their friends in Congress.

More on this 10-30-2005. Lack of grazing in Grand Staircase National Monument irks some locals. By Joe Baird. The Salt Lake Tribune. These county officials are pretty extreme. Even the local congressman Chris Cannon who is somewhat of a wingnut himself supports the Grand Canyon Trust, and in fact the Taylor Grazing Act does not say all the public lands must be grazed. This is a national monument after all.
The role of national BLM Director Kathleen Clarke in this is interesting, another example of close-to-the legal line of cronyism of the Bush Administration.

10-31-2005. Cattlemen take warmly to conservation plan. Environmentalists offer ranchers deal to save open spaces for the future. By Joe Baird. The Salt Lake Tribune.  On the other hand  . . .