Dear HCN,
When one reads the
article by Hal Clifford in High Country News
regarding cattlemen and sage grouse (HCN, 2/4/02: Last dance for
the sage grouse?), it is very obvious that the ranchers in the
realm of the sage grouse are in severe denial concerning their
impacts on sage grouse. I would put the situation far past mere
ignorance, just as I would say that it is far more than ignorance
that leads the cigarette industry to say for many years that
smoking does not cause cancer. The Marlboro Man lost his lung to
cancer and he still kept puffing away. When I read the silly view
of that cowboy that cattle must be good for sage grouse because he
saw baby grouse eating insects near a cow patty, I was reminded of
a joke I heard years ago – “Eat (–it), 10,000,000 flies can’t be
wrong!”
The cowboy saw young grouse eating flies,
but he would have seen a lot more young grouse eating flies if the
cows and the cow patties had been long gone and the natural
flowering forbs (eaten by the cows) had been left to attract
insects as the natural ecosystem intended. So, when we get rid of
the denial and face reality, we have to realize that when men put
on the big belt buckles and the pointy-toed boots and put cattle on
the ground in the entire range of the sage grouse, these men are
part of a culture of death.
First, it was death
to the American Indian. But range wars also resulted in deaths of
many ranchers vying for control of lands and water rights. And the
culture of death went on and on, to include death to sagebrush,
death to wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, prairie dogs, ground
squirrels, eagles, grizzly bears, jackrabbits, pronghorns,
bunchgrasses, and anything that stood in the way of maximum profit
to the cowboy. Take out sage, put in crested wheatgrass. Withdraw
water from the rivers, put in alfalfa and the fish be
damned.
Cowboys, sage grouse extirpations,
cigarettes and cancer are all part and parcel of the same way of
life, or better put, the same way of death.
Stan Moore
San Geronimo,
California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Marlboro Man and the Sage Grouse.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
