It’s springtime in the
Rockies, which means roiling rivers, blooming fruit orchards and
lots of baby bovines in the valley-bottom pastures.
A
month ago, the calves were small, dark lumps deposited on
dun-colored fields; today, they are energetic youngsters, chasing
each other across green grass in free-for-all games of tag. In a
matter of weeks, most of the cow-calf pairs will head to the public
lands, where they will fatten up on mountain grasses and streamside
browse.
The migration of livestock from valley pastures
to mountain meadows, from private lands to public, and back again,
has been a tradition in the West for more than a century.
It’s hard to imagine the day could come when this rhythm
ceases.
Yet, more and more people are imagining that day,
and in some places bringing it closer to reality. Difficult
economics and increasing conflicts with other public-lands users
— off-roaders, mountain bikers, hikers and the like —
have convinced a small but growing number of ranchers to give up
their public-land grazing permits for a one-time buyout check.
Over the past decade, in places like Utah’s Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Oregon’s Steens
Mountain and Arizona’s Grand Canyon-Parashant National
Monument, ranchers have accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars
to take their cows permanently off lands with high ecological and
recreational values.
Whether this trickle of buyouts ever
turns into a larger flood depends largely on money. A group of
environmental organizations, flying under the banner of the Public
Lands Grazing Campaign, is pushing legislation that would authorize
the federal government to fund buyouts across the West. But the
prospects of this Congress and president approving it are dimmer
than dim. Site-specific bills — such as the Central Idaho
Economic Development and Recreation Act, which authorizes the
buyout of grazing permits held by a handful of Idaho ranchers in a
proposed wilderness area — are more likely to pass and get
funded.
The ranchers’ best hope for getting a
“golden saddle” lies in the growing number of conservation groups
and their private funders who want to see fewer cattle on the
range. Today, at least a half-dozen groups, including the Grand
Canyon Trust, the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Association, the
National Wildlife Federation, the Conservation Fund, and the Oregon
Natural Desert Association, have buyout programs. The Conservation
Fund alone has purchased grazing permits covering 2.5 million acres
over the last 10 years.
Of course, there are people on
both sides of the fence who oppose the buyout movement. Some
environmentalists don’t want ranchers to get a penny for
grazing permits that, according to federal law, are not a formal
property right and can be terminated at an agency’s
discretion. But this stance has softened. Andy Kerr, who once flung
lawsuits at the Forest Service to stop old-growth logging and now
heads the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, says most
environmentalists now acknowledge that ranchers’ permits have
always had tangible monetary value. Permits increase the value of
privately held base properties and can be borrowed against at the
local bank.
Though rancher interest in voluntary buyouts
is increasing, most of the organizations that represent them oppose
buyouts on the grounds that they will kill the West’s
ranching culture. But that’s an overstatement. Buyouts will
be most attractive to ranching operations that have never made
sense, economically or ecologically. Ranchers who have figured out
how to make a profit while maintaining the health of the land will
stay on the public lands.
Even ranchers who accept a
buyout check don’t have to get out of the business. They can
reinvest in their livestock operations by purchasing private land,
or they can start new businesses that better fit the region’s
rapidly evolving economy. In either case, the rural West benefits.
And so does the land. Buyouts can relieve pressure on
ecosystems grazed too hard for too long and give a boost to wild
species that are highly valued by society, yet can’t survive
in the presence of cows. There is no reason why ranchers struggling
to make a go of it in prime grizzly habitat, or in the path of
bison migrating out of Yellowstone National Park, or along a desert
stream that provides critical habitat for endangered songbirds,
shouldn’t be given a generous check to permanently move their
cows to greener pastures.
In the years ahead, the rhythm
of public-land ranching may beat a little less loudly. But in
return, the wild heart of the West will grow stronger. And
that’s an important step in the evolution of public-lands
management.
Paul Larmer is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He is the paper’s publisher and can
be contacted at plarmer@hcn.org.
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