Dear HCN,
In his rush to support
environmental activists and ignorance of ecological processes, Tony
Davis unwittingly reveals two major fallacies of the anti-grazing
movement (HCN, 10/22/01: Healing the Gila). The first involves
ecological site potential and the misconception that all you have
to do is take the cows off and stand back. “It will rival the rain
forest.” What a joke and what a misleading piece of reporting.
Because of relatively good soils and available water, riparian
areas respond well when constant grazing pressure is lightened. But
a rain forest the San Francisco (or the Gila) will never
be.
The second myth perpetrated on your readers
is the incorrect implication that since flycatcher populations
improved when uncontrolled overgrazing was changed to well-managed
grazing, if all the cows were removed, there would be even more
flycatchers. This direct and linear response to changes in the
level of ecosystem perturbation has no support in the scientific
literature and is, in fact, an unlikely
scenario.
These two misconceptions are
fundamental to the diametric split between anti-grazing advocates
and those who would dare to leave cows on the landscape. The
differences are personal perceptions, purely ideological, the
result of widely disparate social and cultural backgrounds. The
article does a disservice to the thousands of Westerners working in
collaborative efforts to bridge these differences and provide a
future for communities dependent upon public land that is inclusive
rather than divisive.
Dusty
Snow
Tucson,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Anti-grazing fallacies.
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