Dear HCN,
Wyoming’s illustrious
Senate president, Mr. Twiford of Douglas (HCN, 2/28/00: A prof
takes on the sacred cow), needs to creep out of his cave, somewhere
in the wilds of Converse County, and smell the roses. This is the
21st century, not the 1890s, and the times they are
a-changin’.
I flew with the 15th Air Force on
bombing missions all across Eastern Europe in World War II. We
would return to base and discuss how we would rejoice when all of
those countries would one day be set free. But we were disgusted,
dismayed and saddened when a tired, old, sick U.S. president handed
those countries over to another dictator. I never thought I would
live to see the day the Iron Curtain lifted and the Berlin Wall
came down.
I returned home from the service to
take up my studies at the University of Wyoming in the professional
course, Wildlife Conservation and Game Management. I received
Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees. I particularly
wanted to become a big-game biologist. Therefore, I took as many
courses as I could to broadly prepare for what I wanted – geology,
soils, botany, poisonous range plants, range management, and
ecology, among others. But it was in the regular game-management
courses and the ecology classes that I learned something was
terribly wrong out there on the public lands.
I
was raised on a small farm-ranch near Lander in the Great
Depression, great drought days of the 1930s. I had seen firsthand
how ranchers who adjoined the public lands used them – including my
father and some of the neighbors. They didn’t know any
better.
That experience and my training led me to
take the path that I did in trying to make some difference in
correcting some of the wrongs being perpetrated on the land.
Without having yet read Debra Donahue’s book, The Western Range
Revisited, I would bet I could tell you what she related, with all
of the science now updated and recent. I commend her great effort
and scholarship. Thirty years ago, I was touching on the subject in
High Country News.
I have lightly skimmed her
book, but I paid particular attention to her bibliography, some 31
pages of citations. All of those trained professionals she cites to
back up her work can’t be wrong. Now, with the science in hand, it
may be possible to open the dialogue on how to eventually
accomplish what she is suggesting. I look forward to reading and
studying her groundbreaking work.
It may appear
to be impossible at this point, but just read the various letters
to the editor and listen to the sad laments from so many of the old
guard. The old Republican-rancher establishment is
fearful.
I never thought I would live to see the
day when the stranglehold of the livestock industry on the public
grazing lands, and on Wyoming politics would be so challenged as it
is today. But I detect slight creakings of movement and hear the
gnashing of teeth as the moment of truth draws
closer.
There are many fine ranchers, most of
whom have realized the merits of good stewardship. It should be
obvious to all. But there are plenty more, too many, who have a
be-damned attitude and who resist any change. That tone was set by
the early big ranchers and it was passed down through the
generations. It became the “custom and culture,” the Wyoming cowboy
tradition. Sadly, the good ranchers never speak out against the bad
eggs. It could be a philosophy of, if we don’t hang together, we’ll
all hang separately.
Wyoming’s public lands were
claimed early on by those big stockmen who were on the ground first
as their turf. The stockmen of today still like to try to make the
same claim. Ella Watson, “Cattle Kate,” and her husband, James
Averill, were not taken away and lynched because they were such
adept cattle rustlers. (The big cattlemen’s own cowboys were much
better at it.) The ranchers wanted to send a message, to make a
point: “Don’t mess with us on our turf.”
Just
so, Twiford had no intention of doing away with the University of
Wyoming Law School. As a spokesman for the livestock industry, he
was making a point. The point was to crucify Debra Donahue in the
press, try to discredit her and her work, and to send a message to
the university: “Don’t mess with us on our turf.” The threats and
intimidation from the livestock industry are
obvious.
Western ranchers may be unwilling to
accept the inevitable – the challenge of change. But it is coming.
Back in 1968, a Western Resources Conference on “Public Land
Policy” was held in Fort Collins. One of the speakers, Lynton K.
Caldwell, spoke on “An Ecosystems Approach to Public Land Policy.”
Thirty years later you heard more and more talk of the ecosystems
approach to public-land management. You heard it from Bruce Babbitt
and then Mike Dombeck and now, in effect, from Debra Donahue. It is
a concept whose time has come.
Caldwell said in
1968: “If present demographic projections are valid, the America of
the 21st century, and even before, will be politically dominated by
the residents of great cities. It is they whose beliefs and wishes
could reshape public policies toward land.” We are seeing
it.
He also said, “Modern man in the aggregate
has not learned to perceive the world as a complex of dynamic
interrelated systems … To conceive an ecosystems approach to
public-land policy one must have first arrived at an ecological
viewpoint from which pioneers, land speculators, farmers, miners,
stockmen, lawyers, bankers, or local government officials have
commonly seen the land … Man’s future is inextricably involved
with changes in the air, the water and the land, which are the
gross elements of the ecosphere … This environment – the
ecosphere – is finite … This is the paradigm of Spaceship Earth,
whose passengers are only now beginning to realize where they are.”
As I write this, the Shuttle Spacecraft Endeavor
is returning to Earth. It is bringing back an incredible array of
the most comprehensive and accurate maps of our planet ever taken.
Undoubtedly, many of those photos will reveal to us the amount of
environmental damange we have inflicted on the only planet we know
which will support us and our profligate ways. Some will show the
effects of grazing-overgrazing. We should not ignore the
warnings.
Debra Donahue has done a credible,
scholarly work. It cannot be dismissed out of hand by the powers
that be, nor by the public. We are all owners of that public land
and we all, including our posterity, stand to gain or lose by what
happens to them. We owe Ms. Donahue a great debt of
gratitude.
Tom
Bell
Lander,
Wyoming
Tom Bell began High Country News in 1970; he continues to work on environmental and historic preservation issues.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tom Bell: The rancher’s dominance is over.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
