Posted on 11/28/2001 2:12:30 PM PST by Sandy
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A conservation group has purchased another large grazing allotment at a national monument in southern Utah in its campaign to reduce livestock grazing and preserve sensitive canyon land.
The Grand Canyon Trust purchased grazing rights Monday in the 256,000-acre swath, which represents about 15 percent of the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The Flagstaff, Ariz.-based organization paid an undisclosed sum to a rancher, who will relinquish the rights.
"It's a way of preserving a big representative swath of the canyon country," Bill Hedden, who runs the Grand Canyon Trust's Moab office, said in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Hedden said he will ask the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the monument, to let the trust end most of the grazing in the allotment. By law, the land can't be held unused for long periods unless the BLM amends its management plan. About a half-dozen ranchers still hold grazing privileges for parcels larger than 80,000 acres.
"When (cattle) congregate around water sources, they damage native vegetation and pollute streams, they introduce and spread exotic species. If we can buy the ranchers out, those most sensitive places can recover and go back to a more natural productive condition," Hedden said.
Since 1996, the Grand Canyon Trust has paid ranchers to give up grazing rights on about 500,000 acres of the monument, Hedden said. The trust has spent more than $1 million purchasing grazing rights in southern Utah.
Monument designations give greater protection to land, such as bans or restrictions on vehicle use, mining and oil drilling.
I buy the Golden Eagle national park pass every year for $50 and the equivalent pass for my state's state parks (also $50).
I haven't done any trail maintenance work myself though I've thought of it. I've seen Sierra Clubbers doing trail maintenance (virtually the only thing that rabid group does that I agree with). I checked into it once. They basically pay a substantial fee for the privilege of joining the work effort and put in a week of their own time doing hard labor.
I like to have access to scenic lands. That is why I favor public ownership of them. I bet I wouldn't have access to them if they were in private hands or if I did it would be a Gatlinburg or Las Vegas kind of experience. I remember what a treasure Hilton Head Island in SC was before the developer "improved" it and made access to the beach difficult for those who didn't buy property there.
Grazing cattle on public lands for less than what grazing rights go for on the open market would basically be a subsidy for the ranchers. I respect the ranchers, but they need to compete in this economy like everyone else.
Folks at FR sometimes have such a knee-jerk reaction against the green crowd that they fail to recognize that TRUE conservatives do just that -- conserve.
Bottom line -- if the private landowner wants to voluntarily relinquish one of his property rights to a conservation organization (which is NOT necessarily the same thing as an environmental organization), then he is free to do so.
Voluntary, nongovernmental, nonbureaucratic land conservation for future generations -- how can anyone who calls themselves a conservative object to that?
I would have be a $1,000 that this statement was coming...only a matter of when. To say that public grazing land is somehow equal to grazing on private, usually irrigated land, is another of the BIG myths thrown up at ranchers by people who really are just parroting what they hear.
I charge the rancher who is presently leasing my land a heck of a lot more than he pays for public grazing...and with good reason. My pastures are fertilized and irrigated, well-fenced, with corrals and cattle-handling facilities on site. To somehow say that public land that may only carry 3 or 4 cow-calf pairs per acre for 4 or 5 months compares to land that will carry 15 pairs per acre for 6 or 7 months is somehow giving a break to public land grazers is silly. Plus, in evaluating public lands leases, the critics always seem to overlook the MANDATORY improvements that are required and stipulated each year when the rancher submits a grazing management plan.
When I was cowboying in Nevada I spent a heck of a lot of my time fixing fences, and building fences working on water troughs and springs, cutting fence posts, doing a lot of riding just to keep the cows on one side of some imaginary line that a BLM or USFS bureaucrat drew on a map in the head office. The BLM or USFS does very little allotment improvement...most BLM and USFS range conservation workers can't even read a brand. This cost my boss, the owner money and when you add up all the costs including the fact that calves don't gain as much on public land grazing, the costs are very close.
Most people who stick their noses into the public lands debate have never spent any time on the back of a cowhorse, never staked a mining claim, or never had a timber permit. For some reason because people go for a hike now and then in the woods they are experts in all things related to range and forest management. Try living the life for awhile...try bringing home a paycheck from a natural resource industry then tell me about mismanagement and land abuse and ranch welfare.
Another little-advertised fact is that the condition of grazing range lands in the west are in very good shape. Over 80% are in good to excellent condition with some in poor and some improving. This is after some horrible droughts in the west.
You got me going now...ALSO, please just think a moment and try to imagine what advantage a rancher has from "overgrazing" and abusing his allotment? Cows are protein converters, they convert grass protein into meat protein and the typical cow-calf producer is paid by the weight of the calves he sells in the Fall. If he abuses his allotment I promise you that his wiening weights will drop and he'll be out of business in a few years. Ranchers can not continuously bring home 550-600 lb calves year after year and abuse their range.
This debate will go on for a long time, my biggest complaint is the real stakeholders, the stewards of the land are not being allowed a place at the debate table.
I'm always amazed how some people are able to see complex issues so clearly...it's probably because they have so much experience to draw from.
I truly envy your wisdom and obvious intelligence.
Do you want to take my land as well? How much is enough? Should the whole country become a national park, reserved for hikers only?
I'm just a small time dairy goat breeder, myself. Goats work better when you only have 5 acres.
In my opinion, recreational use is much more damaging than grazing, in the real world.
You and I know that. Wish we could convince the enviro's. They have never explained how the buffalo didn't damage the land when they were as thick as flies but someone running a few head are made out to damage it irreprably.
I don't know. Where's your land?
Been there, done that for 36 years now. Oil company though, not a ranch. I have no problem with responsible ranchers. Our goals are probably more similar than you realize -- we both favor responsible land management and minimum impact on the environment. My Dad grew up on a ranch and taught me to love the land.
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