Comment by diebir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diebir | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

"I honestly don't think people understand how important rachers are to the ecosystems, a thousand times more important than wolves."

All right I'll bite. Where in Arizona? Mogollon Rim? Arizona Strip? The Kaibab?

Aside from these above Arizona is desert. The desert is fragile. The cows destroy the desert. The American West (deserts) are mountains of cow shit. Every stream, every spring, every alcove is fouled if the cows can get in. The cows are the biggest destructive force in the desert I have ever seen.

The saddest part is that the open range ranching in desert Southwest is not even profitable without large subsidies and support by the taxpayer. These ranches are "pretend cowboys" making a living by other means. A handful of cows they own does not really help anyone and the costs of us all are huge.

Now, to the forested parts of Arizona. The Kaibab and the Arizona Strip are essentially a park land. If not for cows, it would be a pristine wilderness. This is all federal land. We do not need cows there either. 6 months ago I went on foot from Bryce to Nankoweap. The cows on Kaibab wreck havoc just like everywhere else. The Kaibab is dotted by swaths of open areas made by ranchers years ago for grazing, still nothing grows.

What is really important for any ecosystem I am aware of, is to NOT have cows and ranching. We have enough developed and rich land in other places. Please leave the West alone! Please go to Texas where all land is private and raise your livestock there.

This said, fewer cows and higher beef prices would help in general as well.

Mogollon Rim is awfully big, but yeah. More specifically Apache-Sitgreaves/Gila national forest. I'm not talking about and don't know about the desert so those points are moot as are the ones about the strip and kaibab.

That's not to say you are wrong about them in particular, but our particular ecosystem it's different. However, the grazing on public land isn't all good. In chokepoints sometimes land destruction happens, for example.

That being said, the idea of leaving pristine wilderness that way for the sake of it fails the understand the bigger picture I am talking about here. For example, if we were to leave the pristine wilderness to do it's thing, we should let natural burns just do their thing. That's part of my original statement. The forest service was interfering with the natural process of burns in the forest and in the end caused more damage than benefit.

The livestock have helped keep underbrush down, and since the fires have helped to spread plant life and reinvograte the forest. The ranchers in tending the stock have also performed many of the duties that the forest service otherwise would do, and often don't have the time, manpower, or funding to get done. Honestly though I just happen to be a geek from the area, I don't know that much about the grazing system and I would have to ask the people who do know about it.

So to summarize, my list of good things are: reduced wildfire risk, increased plant diversity, invasive plant control, and reduction of public funds needed for land management (I've seen estimates at over $750m saved per year by public grazing programs nationally).

I have to say a response like yours is exactly what I'm talking about. The kind of knee-jerk "save the land" response without considering the pragmatic reality of the situation. Ranchers alone, if done properly, could keep the pristine wilderness more pristine than if it was all just walled off and no-one ever went there.

Ah, Gila!

Everything that I have seen on the ground makes me think that livestock can't be beneficial for an ecosystem, be it a desert or a forest. All I have seen from cows in the west is damage. The times have changed. The economy is different. The priorities of the country and people's attitudes have changed (conservation). It is time to get cows off public lands where it makes little economical sense.

BTW, in your case it is not grey wolf, but even a more endangered mexican wolf, correct? These are critically endangered, if I remember correctly.

> The saddest part is that the open range ranching in desert Southwest is not even profitable without large subsidies and support by the taxpayer.

Curious if you have any specific examples of this?

The entire idea is a work of fiction (I live in the SW desert). diebir went on a hike and saw beautiful public lands being utilized by ranchers utilizing their public grazing (which they pay for, though perhaps not enough which is subjective). All cattle ranchers that I've ever seen in 25 years have their own land, but depending on the season they lease rights from the BLM.

It's very strange for people to live their whole lives doing some activity in a rural area, then some city person spends a couple weeks in the area, and suddenly these people are being attacked.

I'm not validating what the parent comments was saying. Just seeing if I could get examples of these kinds of operations, specifically in NM and AZ. I know of Ted Turner, but from what I could find most of these "well fare" ranchers aren't really ranchers. Instead they are people who made their money some other way and bought up a bunch of land. I know a few people who lease forest land ... I don't envy them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com