Dear HCN,
WAKE UP High Country
News! How loudly does the land have to scream before you come to
your senses? The Western public lands you so graciously sacrifice
to the rancher only account for 2-to-3 percent of the annual forage
of livestock. Pocket change. Get all cows off public lands
permanently and watch 300 million acres undergo a miraculous
recovery from the devastating ecological impacts of cattle and
sheep.
The West cannot support livestock. I feel
you are locked into some sort of moral (and economic)
responsibility to preserving a backwards notion that the rancher is
a natural part of the Western landscape. Wake up! I say again. No
extractive industry should be subsidized at the expense of all that
is wild. Any stand that leaves Bovinus atrocitus on the land is a
deplorable one.
Tom
Fullum
Silver City, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline No cows, no way.
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