Dear HCN,
Jon Marvel did not adopt
his attitude toward ranchers or his extraordinary tactics
overnight. As you report, his attitude was formed over the course
of 30 years as a neighbor of ranchers and 20-plus years as a
resident of Idaho (HCN, 8/2/99).
This pattern is
repeating itself time after time across the West. New residents
come bearing seemingly boundless goodwill toward ranchers and the
cowboy way of life. When they wake up to cows in their gardens, and
the response of the rancher and local officials is to arrogantly
inform them about open range and right-to-farm laws, their attitude
toward ranching begins to change. Notwithstanding the efforts of a
few ranchers to reform their operations, the overwhelming response
of the ranching community to the concerns of their new neighbors
has been to use entrenched political dominance (and the positive
image of cowboys which television taught the American people) to
ignore the concerns of their neighbors and stonewall change on the
public range.
Ironically, it is this arrogant
attitude – essentially telling folks “we’re better than you’ –
which, by creating numerous Jon Marvels across the rural West, most
threatens the future of Western ranching.
As more
nonranchers move in, and conflicts multiply, it will become more
and more difficult to maintain the status quo. Most Western
ranchers don’t realize how fragile their social and political
dominance really is.
Western ranching may not
survive market globalization, which is also destabilizing livestock
markets. If it does, however, it will crumble internally when the
newcomers overturn the arrogant dominance of I’m-better-than-you
ranching elites. The only chance I see for a different result is
for progressive ranchers to assert leadership, muzzle their
arrogant cows-can-do-no-harm buddies, repeal open range and
right-to-farm laws, get their cows out of streams on their
property, and radically reform public-land grazing – including
rest, retirement or cancellation of numerous allotments. This is
the lesson which the Jon Marvel story should have made clear.
Ranchers need to realize that the Marlboro Man is not only no
longer on TV but that he died of
cancer.
Felice
Pace
Etna,
California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The lessons of Jon Marvel.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
