The Loma Prietan
December 1999/January 2000
To Graze or Not to Graze: The Issue
by Ed Smith
For many people, the scene of cattle and sheep grazing languidly upon endless ranges depicts the quintessential essence of the American West and its colorful history. However, behind that serene pastoral image lies extensive ecological destruction and landscape transformation. Appalled by that reality, many conservationists are calling for the abolition of all public-lands ranching-that is, grazing privately owned livestock on land owned and managed by federal, state, and local governments.
Sierra Club Chapters and Groups across the nation are debating the issue and asking if the Club's Grazing on Public Lands Policy, which does not oppose grazing on all government land, is compatible with our other conservation goals. The Sierra Club grazing policy announces a strong conservation purpose as follows:
"The goal of the management of grazing on the public lands is to restore and maintain fully functioning natural ecosystems, with their full complements of native species."
That goal fully aligns with the Sierra Club's other conservation policies. However, can it be achieved as long as any commercially owned livestock graze upon the public lands?
RANCHING ON PUBLIC LANDS
According to Lynn Jacobs in his book Waste of the West (Jacobs, 1991), "the 11 Western states are home to about 98% of all public lands ranching" in the United States. That comprises about 265 million acres of federal land-an area nearly as large as California and Texas combined-and 41 million acres of state, county, and other local lands. Together that acreage covers an amazing 41% of the total land area of those states.
Livestock graze in our national parks-such as Grand Teton, Utah's Capitol Reef, and Nevada's Great Basin-because passage of the bills that established them required the support of powerful Senators from Western ranching states. For the same reason, the Wilderness Act of 1964 permits grazing in wilderness areas where it existed at the time of designation.
Despite the immense acreage, only three percent of the cattle producers of America and five percent of sheep raisers use federal public lands. According to statistics compiled by Dr. Thomas Michael Power, Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Montana, federal grazing accounts for only 0.06 percent of all jobs and only 0.04 percent of total income in the eleven Western states.
Ranchers secure the right to graze their stock by obtaining grazing permits or leases and pay an annual fee based upon their number of "animal unit months." One animal unit month (AUM) is the amount of forage required by one cow with calf, one horse or steer, or five sheep or goats for one month. In 1999 the federal fee was $1.35 per AUM, whereas the fee on private land was over $10. For fiscal year 1998, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agency reported authorizing 18,698 grazing permits and leases that gave privileges for over 13 million AUMs.
Estimates of the total cost to the federal government for its grazing program range from about $300 million to $500 million annually. Many of those dollars pay for "range improvements," which include pipelines, water tanks, and other facilities and amenities that benefit livestock production. Other costs cover work necessary to protect and restore ecosystems from livestock damage, including fencing off streams and sensitive habitats, restoring forests and watersheds, and protecting endangered species. The total computes to about $18 to $30 for each AUM (source: Wilderness Society).
THE ECOLOGICAL COSTS
The prairies, grasslands, and other rangelands of the American West have suffered immense damage and degradation from over a century of intense grazing by domestic livestock. One reason is that the foraging behavior of cattle and sheep differs markedly from that of native herbivores-such as bison, pronghorn antelope, elk, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs. For example, whereas bison migrated throughout the length of the plains, cattle move very little and tend to congregate in riparian areas-which are the ecological zones around the banks of rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. In riparian areas, cattle trample the soil and cause massive erosion, ruin water quality, destroy vital habitat, promote the spread of invasive species, and endanger native fish. The National Wildlife Federation calls overgrazing in riparian areas "the single most important factor threatening and endangering many species of fish and wildlife on public lands."
Cattle grazing has profoundly transformed the vegetation of the American landscape. Early settlers introduced nonnative plants as forage for their livestock, and those plants and other exotics have proliferated at the expense of native species. Cattle spread invasive weeds through their dung and by seeds that cling to their hides. Once established, many old-world species prosper because they tolerate the nearly continuous and intensive grazing of cattle better than do most native plants.
Cheatgrass provides a dramatic example of how livestock successfully spread alien species. Introduced from Asia around 1890, cheatgrass spreads rapidly on heavily grazed ranges as the hooves of cattle disturb the protective skin of the soil (the cryptogamic crust) and as the animals crop down native plants, such as bunchgrass. Cheatgrass matures early, later becoming so dry that it fuels intense and widespread fires-such as the recent conflagration that burned over 1.6 million acres in northern Nevada. Covering over 101 million acres, cheatgrass now threatens the integrity of the sagebrush ecosystem of the intermountain West.
Grazing even alters the relative abundance of native plants, with serious ecological consequences. For example, in many areas of the West, shrubs, such as mesquite and creosote, are replacing perennial grasses because of preferential grazing by cattle and fire suppression.
Livestock also have a devastating effect upon American wildlife. The presence of livestock displaces or disrupts wildlife populations, sometimes fragmenting them into small, isolated units, which raises their vulnerability to local extinction. Livestock compete with wildlife for forage, alter or destroy essential habitat, and carry diseases to which indigenous animals have no immunity. Pulmonary diseases transmitted by domestic sheep have nearly driven several species of native bighorn sheep to extinction.
Arguably, the greatest harm of ranching upon wildlife is the relentless war against all competitors and predators of domestic livestock. That war eradicated the mountain lion east of the Rocky Mountains, poisoned over one billion prairie dogs, and virtually exterminated the grizzly bear, gray wolf, and red wolf south of Canada. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture killed nearly 100,000 predatory mammals, mostly coyotes, as a service to livestock ranchers through its Wildlife Services (Animal Damage Control) program.
THE CASE IN FAVOR
Arguing that carefully managed grazing by domestic livestock can, in some cases, serve important ecological functions, grazing advocates believe that the Sierra Club should not oppose it on all public lands. They assert that well-managed grazing can effectively control noxious weeds, reduce the chance of fire on the range, benefit some species of prairie birds by cropping tall grasses, enhance forage quality, and maintain open grasslands that benefit large herbivores, such as deer and elk. Each of those arguments has some merit.
The American Sheep Industry Association maintains that sheep will eat noxious plants that other animals avoid or find toxic. By controlling leafy spurge, knapweed, fringed sagewort, oxeye daisy (a rangeland perennial herb), yellow starthistle, and other common noxious weeds, sheep reduce the need for expensive and toxic herbicides on the range.
In those scattered locations where livestock grazing may provide some benefits, nothing requires that the animals be privately owned. Government-owned stock could perform the same services at large cost savings to the taxpayer if commercial grazing on public lands were terminated.
One of the most common arguments we hear today justifying public-lands ranching is that it retards sprawl. If ranchers no longer have access to the public range, the argument goes, their operations will not be profitable enough to continue, and they will sell their lands to developers of subdivisions. A few instances where ranchers have sold to developers strengthen the case. However, development is not inevitable. First, market demand drives land sales more strongly than supply. In many vast and remote areas of the West, development of former ranchland would be economically infeasible. Secondly, we have better ways to control sprawl in agricultural areas, for example, by enacting zoning regulations or buying land as open space.
THE POLITICAL POWER
Perhaps the strongest argument against public-lands ranching is that the financial and political power of the livestock industry continually thwarts efforts to develop sound ecological policies for the management of those lands. That power drives the Agriculture Department's war on wildlife, stifles legislation aimed at grazing reform, and battles tenaciously against restoration of the wolf and other endangered species. As federal agencies comply with the will of the ranching lobby, biologists with long and distinguished careers are resigning from government service in despair over policies that place private profits above the public interest.
The public lands are the last holdout for many of our magnificent wildlife species and the vital ecosystems that support them. Can we effectively conserve and protect them as long as privately owned livestock graze upon their lands?
On October 11, the Executive Committee of the Loma Prieta Chapter voted unanimously to join the Atlantic (NY), Vermont, and John Muir (WI) Chapters in asking the Board of Directors to adopt a policy opposing all commercial grazing on public lands.