I’ve always had a love-hate relationship
with cows. I’ve cursed them loudly when they turned my favorite
mountain meadow into a cow-pie strewn wasteland. But then, they
taste so good.
I’ve inched my way through a herd of these
stupid beasts on some highway as their cowboy masters moved them to
summer range or to the feedlot and the hammer and hook, and
I’ve wondered if I could ever grow accustomed to their
reeking, fly-riddled flanks.
But then, have you ever seen
lovelier eyelashes than those adorning a Hereford cow? If any of my
ex-girlfriends had been able (or willing) to bat eyelashes like
that at me, who knows where those relationships might have gone?
When I see a herd of those heavy-set ungulates trampling
yet another meadow, I am appalled at the damage. Yet when I see yet
another field turned into a condo development, I ask myself: Is a
burned-out meadow as bad as this?
I have lost patience
with ranchers who abuse the land they make a living from, but I’m
careful not to paint all ranchers with the same broad stroke. If
someone tried to tell me that rancher Heidi Redd didn’t understand
the heart of the American West, I’d punch them in the nose. She has
lived most of a life at Dugout Ranch in San Juan County, Utah, and
I’m glad she’s there.
I’ve been reminded that the Cowboy
Myth is just that, but then I wonder, isn’t that what we need more
of these days? What is it with this cynical 21st century culture of
ours that makes us want to tear our myths and heroes apart?
Beyond my irrational defense of the cowboy and his cow,
there’s the reality of a commodity-driven society. Back in
the “good old days” of 20 years ago, Western land issues seemed
much easier to define. We didn’t give much thought to the ranchers,
or to the communities that were built upon ranching, or what would
happen to the ranches themselves — the century-old homes and
barns tucked under ancient cottonwood trees, the alfalfa fields in
the valleys that are as much a part of the Western landscape as the
mountains that rise above them.
Environmentalists didn’t
consider then, and many don’t care now about what might become of
the rural West if public-lands ranching ends. Environmentalists
have embraced tourism and recreation as a clean alternative to the
kinds of traditional extractive industries, including ranching,
that have not been good to the land. And of course, tourism has
always been a key component in many small-town economies — as
it should be.
It’s the runaway tourism/growth/expansion
of towns like Moab that should worry us. Exploding tourist numbers
transform a community, shifting the emphasis of the town away from
the people who live there and toward the tourists who don’t.
Meanwhile, there’s more damage to public lands than ever
before, from both motorized and non-motorized use.
Most
of Utah’s Spanish Valley, once a bucolic mish-mash of alfalfa
fields, cow pastures, junk cars and funky homes, is vanishing in a
sea of condo developments and second homes. There’s a vital
question for all of us when we talk about the highest and best use
of a piece of land: What does that mean when it comes to water and
farmland?
Last summer, a friend and I were discussing the
fires sweeping the West. The conversation turned to water, and my
friend, the owner of a recreation-based company, complained
bitterly about the amount of water devoted to agriculture in
Colorado.
“Did you know,” he asked, “that 80 percent of
the water in Colorado is used for agriculture? Yet farming and
ranching only constitute only 14 percent of the economy?”
I surprised him by saying, “So what?”
He growled in
disbelief.
“Well what would you prefer?” I answered.
“Take the agricultural lands in many of the valleys in Colorado.
Would you rather see them save the water for human consumption and
encourage 50,000 people to move into the area?”
“No,” he
replied. “I don’t want that either.”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s going to be one or the other. As B. Traven once said,
‘This is the real world, muchacho, and we are all in it.’ Do you
think they’ll just let the water flow slowly to the sea? Somebody’s
going to make money off that water.”
I understand the
points made by “cow-free” advocates. But at a time where the
“amenities economy” is creating an entirely new threat to the
American West, a West free of ranching makes no sense at all.
Jim Stiles is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn,.org). He is the
publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr, a
bimonthly paper, in Moab, Utah.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
