Dear HCN,
I would like
to register a firm objection to the recent cover story, “Healing
the Gila” (HCN, 10/22/01: Healing the Gila). I was distressed by
its old-fashioned, polemical, “Good Guy vs. Bad Guy” tone, which
seems out of character with recent cover stories in
HCN. You’ve done a very good job recently
covering progressive and innovative developments around the West.
But Tony Davis’ story was straight out of the 1980s. It gave
readers a choice only between environmental absolutists and
overgrazing ranchers, which is no choice at all. And it definitely
does not address the burgeoning “Radical Center” in the grazing
debate.
There are numerous examples of dramatic
riparian recovery coming as a result of simple changes in grazing
management (the National Riparian Team has plenty of examples),
usually as a result of a switch to dormant season use. Therefore,
to let Mr. Davis paint a picture in black and white, as you did, is
irresponsible of HCN. That’s because, as I told
Mr. Davis over the phone, if environmentalists are going to cause
economic and emotional pain by their actions, they should do so
reluctantly and only with airtight ecology. By allowing Mr. Davis
to portray the very complicated issue of riparian recovery in such
simplistic terms, you may be facilitating the spread of that pain,
when it may not be
necessary.
HCN continues to
“not get it” when it comes to ranching in the West. On almost every
other major environmental topic, from coal mining to salmon fishing
to dam decommissioning to progressive forest practices to
watershed-scale collaborations to the complicated issues
surrounding water, HCN has done an excellent job
of digging deep to get the real story.
On every
topic, that is, except ranching.
There is a
progressive ranching movement afoot, and there are plenty of good
stories out there. For example, Bill deBuys’ grass bank, located
near Santa Fe, is a great model for ecological and economic
restoration. There are many progressive ranchers doing great things
for wildlife and water on their land, too, including Jim Winder,
Virgil Trujillo, Mac Donaldson, Bill McDonald, Roger Bowe, Kathy
and Mike McNeil, Bob Budd, David James, and on and on. The West Elk
pool, in your backyard, has an important story to tell as
well.
Recently, the New York
Times and the LA Times profiled some
of these ranchers. When will HCN? I think this
is a major hole in the otherwise very fine fabric of your
newspaper.
Courtney
White
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The writer is executive director of the Quivira Coalition.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Grazing story ignored radical center.
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