Dear HCN,
Your cover story about
the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity in the March 30 issue
reminded me of a vicarious confrontation I had with a cattle
rancher in Arizona.
First some background: I’m
retired from the Forest Service and was the regional geneticist for
Region 3 (Arizona and New Mexico) from 1978 to 1981. I often
visited ranger districts throughout the region, giving technical
assistance on reforestation. The silviculturist on the
Springerville Ranger District, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest,
wanted me to visit a plantation he had recently established in a
salvage-logged area. It looked like he was going to have over 90
percent survival – an exceptional feat in the arid
Southwest.
We drove many dusty miles as he
explained all the precautions he had taken to achieve high
survival. Then as we came over a rise, we were astonished to see a
herd of cattle leisurely grazing throughout the
plantation!
I began tossing rocks and sticks at
the cattle. They paid little attention and moseyed away, munching
vegetation as they went. Most of the seedlings were trampled and
some were pulled out of the ground.
The permittee
had placed at least two salt blocks in the plantation to entice the
cattle.
I grabbed one of the 50-pound salt blocks
and threw it in the back of the pickup. At the end of the day, I
was going to put the blocks on the range manager’s desk with this
simple note: “Found these in the middle of a plantation. Please
return them to the cowboy and tell him to get his cattle out.”
I thought the silviculturist would support this
action, but I was wrong; he told me to put the block back. Their
forest was beginning to practice team management and this would
violate some of the sacred principles recently engraved on his
mind.
I later learned that it took over two
weeks to get the cattle out of the new planting. The district’s
management team had to meet a couple of times to determine if there
was actually a problem. Once they determined there was one, several
letters were written to the file, they drafted adjustments to the
grazing allotment, and the range specialist had numerous
discussions with the cowboy before he agreed to drive his cattle to
another pasture.
By then the cattle had
completely destroyed the plantation and the following year the area
was replanted. Did the cowboy pay for it? Nope. Nor did he pay for
the expensive fence the forest placed around the new
plantation.
This and similar events often
frustrated me, but after reading the Milagro Beanfield War, I
mellowed somewhat. A sage whose family had lived in New Mexico for
about 200 years taught me a survival mantra: Asi es la vida (Such
is life).
LeRoy C.
Johnson
Bishop,
California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline ‘Such is life’.
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