Your story, “Buying ecological leverage” is almost
funny. I can just see that group of city slickers trying to run a
working ranch, especially where they are going to introduce
“Mexican wolves.”
Seriously speaking, there is nothing
wrong with governments fencing in unique natural features such as
these “rock fins” on public grazing lands. There is much more wrong
with the plutocracy acquiring working range for the sole purpose of
removing it from production.
It is the same old story
everywhere. First, reduce the economic viability of the American
producer by artificial, so-called environmental reasons. Then
reduce prices to artificially low levels by executing so-called
“free trade” agreements with foreign feudal oligarchs. Then, when
you have squeezed the hardworking rancher and farmer to the
breaking point, buy up his property at a pittance and maintain it
in such a way that it becomes a perilous nuisance to the neighbors.
Undergraze it so it is a fire hazard, and introduce lions and
wolves to feast upon the neighboring livestock. Or allow it to grow
dangerous “natural” flora that will infest his crops and kill his
livestock.
In the good old days, the ranchers would take
things into their own hands and form a posse, and people like the
“gentleman” pictured in your article would end up covered with tar
and feathers and encouraged to “seek opportunities elsewhere.”
Would that those days return.
John Bambey
Somerset, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline City Slickers, go home.
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