Rebecca Clarren

I hate to mow the lawn. My yard spans a hill and cutting the grass with the electric mower I borrow from the neighbors is some strange hybrid of yoga and modern dance. (Flick the yellow power cord to the left over my shoulder, now to the right, under my leg.) My neighbor Allison, the one who so kindly lends me her mower has a solution: a neighborhood goat. We could all keep the goat for a week at a time and then, at the end of the summer, we’d slaughter and grill her up for one fantastic neighborhood block party.

The BBQ-part aside, using goats in lieu of lawn mowers or insecticides is gaining traction all over the West. For several years, Wilsonville, Ore. has hired a herd of 450 grazers to chomp down invasive plants at city parks. Clackamas County, not far from Portland, has used goats to manage weeds near reservoirs. This past May, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles hired several dozen goats (and a goatherd and a few dogs) to chew up the flammable brush around its 110-acre hillside. Ranchers in New Mexico have used hundreds of goats to eat and kill off tamarisk.

Claudia Ingham, a doctorate in rangeland ecology and management at Oregon State University, is studying the impact of grazing on landscapes rife with invasive English ivy. So far her results indicate that goats are the most effective at controlling the ivy so that native plants have space to flourish.

Using insecticides and fuel-powered mowers increasingly make little sense with raising gas prices and data about the impacts of toxic chemicals on humans and the environment. Call your local officials and get them to hire a flock of goats. It’s an idea that should take root.

Ernie Atencio

Country music in a rural honky-tonk inspires writer Rebecca Solnit to ponder the class and cultural underpinnings of the “crisis of environmentalism,” which has caused so much green soul-searching in recent years. “One Nation Under Elvis: An environmentalism for us all,” in the latest issue of Orion Magazine, explores the divide between urban and rural, left and right, environmentalist and rancher in musical tastes.

Solnit recalls enviros she’s known who seemed more offended by rural culture and lifestyle (and music) than by any actual damage that culture was doing to the land, or liberals who scorn backward rednecks for their religion and politics. There’s the other side, of course, like people wearing t-shirts that say WRANGLERS (Western Ranchers Against No-Good Leftist Environmental Radical Shitheads).

It begins to sound cliché, but of course there’s common ground. Not always, but often, these are artificial divides that we have missed important opportunities to bridge. It’s a loss to us all. She writes, “The result of all this has been a marginalized environmental movement . . . that has alienated the people who often live closest to ‘the environment.’” Beyond the strategic expedience of bridging the gaps, she also says that something “will go out of us if the resourcefulness, rootedness, and richness of rural culture disappears.”

“Yes!,” I said aloud as I was reading this. That’s exactly the point HCN and others often miss about ideas like the “radical center” and organizations like The Quivira Coalition (HCN 9/5/05) (full disclosure: I am the current chair of the radical centrist Quivira Coalition). Then she mentions Quivira as one example of cultivating that common ground.

But we need more. If we want this movement to succeed and the land to thrive we need to be making more friends than enemies. As Solnit puts it, creating “a music that everyone can dance to.”

By the way, always great music at Quivira Coalition conferences.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

When the U.S. Army established the 235,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to take property. Now the Army wants 400,000 acres more, and a group called Not 1 More Acre — made up of ranchers in southeastern Colorado –  is afraid they’ll use eminent domain to take it.

The group has filed an open records claim to get an accounting of plans for the site, which the Army wants to expand in order to “accurately simulate anticipated, actual, combat conditions” in the Middle East.

A 2008 federal budget law signed by President Bush in January contains a one-year moratorium on the Army spending any money on the Pinon Canyon expansion. The amendment was sponsored by Colorado Representatives Marilyn Musgrave (R) and John Salazar (D).

But another law passed by Congress, the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, contains an amendment which requires Army officials to deliver a report on why it wants a larger Pinon Canyon, the effects of an expansion on the community and other training options. That clause was proposed by Colorado Senators Wayne Allard (R) and Ken Salazar (D).

Rancher Mack Louden said the Army should observe the one-year moratorium. “They are ignoring all the voices of democracy opposed to the Pentagon’s plan, from the community and county level, through the state Legislature and right up to the U.S. Congress,” he said, according to a report in the Pueblo Chieftain.

See High Country News’ October 2007 story, Eminent domain’s poster children, for more.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Over the past twenty years, two poisons meant for livestock predators have killed thousands of unintended victims — dogs, bears, bobcats, raccoons and more (see our story here about one family’s experience).

The federal Wildlife Services Agency (an Orwellian agency name if there ever was one) places thousands of M-44 traps, which spew sodium cyanide when tugged on, on public land each year, and provides Compound 1080-laced collars for sheep and goats (see our story here about predator killing by Animal Damage Control, the agency’s former incarnation).

In 2006 alone, reports the Associated Press, these poisons killed more than 14,000 animals, including wolves, foxes and coyotes. M-44s have also harmed several unlucky humans, including Utah resident Dennis Slaugh, who back in 2003 tugged on what he thought was a survey stake and still suffers from the poison’s lingering effects.

(Read on …)

Francisco Tharp

Thanks to a Food and Drug Administration decision made this morning, you might soon be able to order a McClonewich at the drive-through or spread a smear of low-fat clone cheese on your morning bagel.

The FDA said in a press release today that “meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.”

The decision comes just over a year after the FDA issued a draft approval Dec. 2006. During that time the FDA heard from approximately 145,000 people opposed to their plan.

The Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit proponent of sustainable agricultural practices, petitioned the FDA in 2006 to enforce a mandatory moratorium on cloned animal goods until further risk assessment, including an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), had been completed.

The FDA denied CFS’s petition today, saying in a letter that the Administration’s decision does not require an EIS because it does not constitute a “major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” which, under the National Environmental Protection Act, would require an EIS.

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies are slated to be removed from the endangered-species list next month — unless a letter from five congressmen to Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne delays the delisting.

According to an article in the Billings Gazette, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), George Miller (D-Calif.), Norm Dick (D-Wash.), Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) and Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) wrote that states “hostile to wolf conservation” could reduce the present wolf population from from 1,500 to as few as 300 if the wolves lose protected status.

Delisting the wolves would allow Idaho, Wyoming and Montana to sponsor public hunts for the wolves, and those states are already setting hunting seasons and quotas. Last year, some 140 wolves were killed by federal and state officials and ranchers in response to the wolves’ attacks on livestock.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Fascinating. Forrest E. Mars Jr., an heir to the Mars candy bar and M&M’s candy fortune, bought 82,000 acres of Montana ranchland, and now he’s in a struggle against companies that want to develop oil and gas wells on his land.

It has to do with the split-estate problem, which plagues many ranchers who don’t own the mineral rights. Usually the ranchers are the underdogs. In this case, I presume, at least the billionaire can hire very good lawyers.

The AP story is worth reading, here. If you’d like more background, High Country News has often covered the split-estate problem, including here and here.

The billionaire has collided with the strange, unfair architecture of Western laws that generally give priority to miners and drillers. So despite his riches, he may lose anyway.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Again, the Idaho Anti-wolf Coalition, led by Ron Gillette, is seeking to rid the state of wolves. The Twin Falls Times-News reports that the group has until April to gather 46,000 signatures for its petition, which calls for Idaho to back out of the recently released Fish and Game wolf management plan and to refuse cooperation with the federal government.
At a meeting December 4 in Twin Falls, hunter Tony Mayer described the situation of wolves in Idaho as “a crisis. This is a despicable situation. It’s an epidemic. It’s a problem.”

The coalition says wolves are decimating the wild elk population.

A Fish and Game official, Dave Parrish, said earlier this week that removing wolves from the state is not possible. “That train left the station a long time ago,” he said. The agency plans to keep at least 100 wolves in Idaho and maintain population numbers through controlled hunts.

Gillette said Idaho’s rugged terrain makes it impossible to control the wolves, who will retreat into the mountains and continue to feed on elk.

Government officials expect wolves to be delisted in February.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

This is a notable combination of two great writers:

Leo Banks, a freelance journalist in Tucson, has tracked down J.P.S. Brown, a 77-year-old border novelist who’s as tough as they come.

Leo, an old friend of mine, writes:

If you ask Brown who he is, he’ll say “cowboy.” He won’t say reporter, Marine, boxer, movie wrangler, stuntman or whiskey smuggler, and he’s been all those things.

If he says writer at all, it won’t be first on the list. But he’s a great writer, probably the best you’ve never heard of.

“People who know literature, and know the Southwest, mention his name right away,” says Bruce Dinges, director of publications at the Arizona Historical Society. “Joe’s the real deal. He’s done what he writes about, and his family has done it for generations. It’s personal to him. He doesn’t write to a market. He writes what’s in him.”

Summation: J.P.S. Brown has had five wives, years in the Mexican Sierra, smuggling escapades, a small plane crash, a poisoning by one wife, heart attacks, a Hollywood movie based on one of his novels — and he’s still writing what he sees.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Two tourists from Michigan were driving Highway 150 in Washington state, when suddenly it happened … and then, the NewsBiz clicked into warp drive, reporting it — via TV, newspapers, websites, you name it — to people as far away as Australia, and the Drudge Report. The original stories are here (with photos) and here.

Pretty funny for everyone — except the cow, which, by the way, was reported to be a “600-pound heifer named Michelle.”

In another hundred years, cattle grazing on Colorado’s eastern rangelands may find themselves munching on mouthfuls of shrubs instead of native grasses, according to a recent study by researchers from the USDA and Colorado State University.

In 1997, the scientists built six clear, open-topped plastic chambers three and a half meters across on short-grass prairie land northeast of Fort Collins. Over the course of their five-year experiment, they continuously pumped carbon dioxide into three of the chambers, raising the average concentration during the day to twice what is currently found in the atmosphere and simulating conditions they expect to find at the end of this century.

Scientists have long suspected that rising levels of carbon dioxide, combined with fire suppression and overgrazing, are contributing to a pattern of woody plants and shrubs edging out native grasses on rangelands around the world. Now they have hard evidence. In the chambers with increased CO2, the researchers found significantly more of a small, shrubby plant known as fringe sage – bad news for ranchers. “It’s not a particularly palatable forage species for domestic livestock,” says Jack Morgan, a plant physiologist with the USDA. “Some wildlife like it, though.”

While pronghorn and sage grouse might not mind the invasion, range managers need to sit up and take notice, according to Morgan. “Knowledge of global change and how it might be affecting grasslands is very underappreciated by the rangeland community,” he says. “If we hope to manage the land intelligently, we better understand it.”

Read the Denver Post coverage here and the LA Times coverage here. Or check out the study itself, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The federal government finally hauled some scofflaw Nevada ranchers into court. For years the ranchers have been grazing their cows on public lands without the required permits. According to a Justice Department press release:

The civil complaint filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada accuses ranchers Wayne N. Hage, Benjamin J. Colvin, and the estate of E. Wayne Hage of intentionally grazing cattle on multiple occasions on federally managed lands in Esmeralda and Nye Counties. In addition, the defendants are accused of receiving monetary compensation for unlawfully “leasing” lands owned by the United States to other ranchers for grazing purposes, despite having no property interest in these lands.

In 2001, we wrote about another federal attempt to shut down Ben Colvin and Jack Vogt’s illegal grazing (see Showdown on the Nevada Range and an earlier story, Nevada’s Most Rebellious). The BLM impounded the ranchers’ cattle and sold them off:

But quelling the rebellion will require even more impoundments, and inevitably more confrontation. There are around seven to 10 other ranchers who regularly trespass, agency officials say, about half of them for ideological reasons.

And those “ideological reasons,” for the Sagebrush Rebels, basically amount to this: “When it comes to federal land, we refuse to acknowledge federal authority or follow federal rules. But we will happily use that land, owned by the government on behalf of all Americans, for our own private gain — graze it, lease it to others, build roads across it, and in general do whatever the hell we want on it.”

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Hall and Hall is a leading seller of Western ranches. The company, in business for 61 years, has headquarters in Billings, Montana, and more salesmen in branch offices in Bozeman and Missoula; Jackson, Wyoming; Sun Valley, Idaho; Denver and two more Colorado cities; Nebraska and Texas.

Sample listing, among dozens of ranches Hall and Hall has for sale at the moment:

Encompassing 255,371± deeded acres and a 500±-acre lake … Flanked by two large rivers flowing 80 miles along two of the ranch borders … 70 percent of this land lies within … the largest wetland in the world. Currently producing 8,000 to 10,000 calves a year and farming soybeans on 12,000± tilled acres with far greater potential. Very high quality ranch improvements and residences with a main airstrip and auxiliary runways for the cow camps. $50,000,000 …

If you’re interested and want to see the property, keep in mind, it’s called Fazenda Santo Antonio do Paraiso, and it’s in Brazil.

Hall and Hall, you see, has responded to the current mess in the U.S. ranch market — prices soaring, sellers with unrealistic expectations, buyers holding back, causing a slowdown in sales — by listing ranches in South America, where apparently bargains can still be had.

Another sample listing, from Hall and Hall’s summer 2007 newsletter:

Bahia Mala (a ranch in Chile): Located along 2.5± miles of Pacific beachfront, this ecologically-rich gemstone property includes a comfortable lodge, 4 cabins with views of the ocean and up a river valley to a snowcapped volcano. These 1,730± acres augmented by 17,000+ acres of 30-year concession are truly a paradise 12 miles south of Raul Marin Balmaceda. $3,500,000 …

Or maybe you would prefer to buy:

Estancia Pilpilcura (in Argentina): Only 45 miles NE of Bariloche, this classic Patagonia ranch has 7,375± acres with 3+ miles of the Pichileufu River, a medium–sized stream known for excellent trout fishing. Residential compound overlooks the river with a superbly constructed 8,000± SF owner’s residence plus staff accommodations. The property is a haven for wildlife — eagle, red deer and valley quail. Pilpilcura Creek crosses the ranch for 2+ miles. Easy access to the airport. This ranch is a recreational treasure complemented by a working cattle operation. $3,300,000 …

Hall and Hall’s website is here, and the summer 2007 newsletter is here.

My take? Don’t know much about it really — might be good for South American locals and landscapes, or not. But it’s definitely one more sign that we’re in a new Gilded Age, in which those with tons of money to burn, and their business associates, bless their hearts, have their way regardless.