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The safest prediction on this earth is that ranchers
will whine. Read regional history, and you'll see
predictions that allowing nesters to settle on the Great
Plains would drive all the stockmen out of
business.
The same dire forecasts appeared when Herefords began to supplant longhorns, when shepherds tried to push their flocks into cattle country, when the cavalry didn't exterminate Indians with sufficient dispatch, when bleeding-hearts insisted on due process for rustlers, when compound 1080 was banned . . . .
So it's hard to take the livestock lobby seriously when we hear that thousands of ranchers will be forced out if fees for grazing on public lands are raised from $1.86 to $4.28 per animal unit month.
But suppose that there really is a wolf this time and that ranching actually did fade. What would that mean?
For consumers, next to nothing. Of the 98.2 million American cattle in 1990, only 1.2 million ever defecated on our public lands. Eliminating them means a 1.22 percent decline in beef supply which might be reflected in prices. Beef prices already fluctuate a lot more than that.
For a rural economy, not much would change, either. Or so I gather from Randy Russell, a friend who is a rural economic development specialist now practicing in Utah.
When people tell you that you're in a ranching
town,
he once said, they're talking myth. The major
share of rural individual income comes from transfer
payments -- pensions, Social Security, disability, welfare.
Throw in government jobs that pay decent wages -- Forest
Service, Postal Service, teaching. That's what supports a
community. Ranchers are seldom much of a factor, even if it
looks like a ranching town because you see muddy
four-wheel-drive pickups with gun racks.
But there's still the environment to consider, even if the national environmental groups all favor raising fees.
Would the West be a better place to live if working ranches were replaced by 35-acre ranchettes and clusters of chipboard condos? If ranch water rights were diverted to more sprawling metro suburbs? If cattle and sheep on public lands were replaced by snobbish Gore-Tex mountain bikers and llama packers?
Apparently the national environmental groups are of that mind, given that they support the fee increase rather than a grassroots plan recently developed in Gunnison County -- broader representation on grazing councils, and no fee increases if the land, especially riparian habitat, is restored.
Further, of all who plundered the West -- slash-and-gouge loggers, rip-and-run miners, plow-a-dust-bowl sodbusters -- only the ranchers stayed around to sleep in the bed they made. Continued overgrazing and environmental degradation can't be in their long-term interest, and they do seem interested in the long term.
Perhaps, then, the environmental
aspect of
grazing-fee increases is just a smokescreen. Behind the
scenes, the real game could be dispossession followed by
gentrification.
This happened 200 years ago in the Scottish highlands.
The English gentry wanted a place to hunt grouse and fish
for salmon, and that place was infested by crofters. These
small landholders were expelled on political grounds, for
supporting the Jacobite rebellion. The gentry got a
playground. For something closer in time and place, read a
John Nichols novel like The Magic Journey.
You see
the same process at work, except the rationale there is
economic, rather than political or environmental.
Those redneck ranchers may be all that prevents the West
from turning into an extended Boulder-Aspen-Santa Fe --
places that praise cultural diversity
but have room
inside only for the politically-correct smoke-free
white-wine tofu culture of appropriate conspicuous
consumption.
If that's the case, forget grazing-fee increases. We should instead be grateful to the ranchers for the valuable service they provide in keeping the West truly diverse and livable, at the trifling expense of a few cows in the woods.
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