Nebraska wildfires leave ranchers scrambling for forage | Hacker News Reader

Nebraska wildfires leave ranchers scrambling for forage

farmprogress.com

22 pointswalterbell11 comments

Some may want to come in here leaving snarky comments about how they shouldn't vote for an administration that doesn't believe in climate change. But I will give a concrete example:

This administration fired thousands of Forrest Service and BLM employees at the start of the administration last year. Those workers were the ones that were responsible for the maintenance of these lands and for the fire lookout programs.

Maybe they couldn't have prevented this fire, but it's pretty clear these fires are much worse today because of those firings last year.

I’m not sure if these fires are correlated with the staff reductions in BLM. In the interview with a resident she doesn’t mention anything about that, just that last year was very wet which provided a lot of fuel and this hot dry spring has turned it into a tinder box.

BLM provides fire lookout services that were severely cut. They also perform prescribed burns, which they no longer have staff and budget for, which would have reduced the dry grass.

I seriously doubt ranchers were politically against OPM being used for fire prevention funding. Agriculture industry is well known to be highly socialist politically when it comes to agriculture subsidies.

Of course they weren't but look at how Nebraska voted in the last election. Other than the cities, it was mostly GOP, the party that explicitly said they would cut funding for those services if elected (it was in Project 2025).

"Other than the cities." Omaha recently hit the 1M mark, which includes that near part of Iowa. Lincoln has around 300k. So causally for a state total of 2M, around 700k dispersed. Compare this with the fires and controlled burn issues in Colorado, or the 'red' part of Colorado, compare population. But we like smoking pot in Denver/Boulder, so we will pretend there aren't more Trump voters, regular issues with fires (under Obama anyone) etc, N is for narrative. I didn't vote for Trump and I have experience seeing many perspectives in both of these states. 700k people and 2 electoral votes didn't throw the election. "Trump won statewide in Nebraska, as well as in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts, picking up four electoral votes. Harris carried the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District and its electoral vote." I suppose Boulder voted for its fentanyl problems as well.

This administration also impaired FEMA’s ability to provide disaster response to those impacted by this event.

Looks like the ranchers will have to pay for the hay for their cattle instead of grazing it practically free on federal lands. Tragedy of commons becoming the tragedy of having to shoulder your own private costs in support of your own private profits.

In general externalization of costs prevents/hinders development of competing approaches to increase efficiency and related tech development, and as we see the cattle ranching and beef production is still done like 2000 years ago.

Grazing rights are weird. A lot of them pre-date the existence of any sort of federal control of the lands. They function as private rights that were then managed by the BLM, although SCOTUS considers them public they do not function anything like that nor are rooted in public chain of custody. You have to pay a fee almost like a property tax to realize them, but the grazing rights themselves are bought and sold privately and generally rooted in a genesis as privately homesteaded limited private property rights.

ah yes, those fat cat ranchers might have to get off their golden thrones and do some hard work for a change. You should maybe look into the business as both a rancher and the food supply chain. A big benefit is that ranchers are far better partners and stewards of the land than developers and other industries (like oil and gas).

If you think ranching hasn't changed in 2000 years you know nothing about it. First, what we see in Canada & the US is most similar to Spanish open grazing of ~200 years ago, not some sort of neolithic practice from several thousand years ago. Then the obvious and game changer was barbed wire, and now intensive industrialization such as feed lots, genetic selection & artificial insemination, GPS tracking and data-based herd management. Public grazing is such a minor part of the picture now. The technology you call for is IMO the worst development: factory meat and massive consolidation.

> A big benefit is that ranchers are far better partners and stewards of the land than developers and other industries (like oil and gas).

it is a strawman.

The wildlife would be much better without the cattle grazing.

>open grazing of ~200 years ago, not some sort of neolithic practice from several thousand years ago.

no difference.

>Then the obvious and game changer was barbed wire,

bad for wildlife. And basically lazy/primitive version of shepherd dogs.

>and now intensive industrialization such as feed lots,

general mechanization of Industrial Revolution, engines instead of people, no innovation specific to cattle.

> genetic selection & artificial insemination,

bottle of vodka to the owner of the prized bull who would bring the bull to do his business at my grandma's farm

> GPS tracking

more convenient and cheaper to graze those vast federal lands

>and data-based herd management.

that has a very nice ring to it, must be something.

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