Public land is – or, at least should be – just that: public. But what does that mean? And who should be able to decide how such common ground is used? One person’s wilderness policy may be another’s government overreach.
John McPhee (one of my favorite authors) once wrote a book called The Control of Nature. In this triptych portrayal of human folly, he recounts three attempts to contain overwhelming natural forces, highlighting our hubris in believing we are up to the challenge. One example he presents underscores the heroic character of the quest when a new volcano emerges on an isolated, Icelandic island. Rather than evacuate in despair, the inhabitants fight back, turning fire hoses on the advancing lava in an attempt to solidify it before it overwhelms their homes and the harbor essential to their survival. In another, he demonstrates the foolhardiness of those that build houses in California canyons periodically swept by flash floods hurling bus-sized boulders through whatever stands in their path. In the last, the mighty Mississippi bides its time, waiting for the rains that will once again allow it to chart its own course to the sea.
Nature isn’t always so powerful, though. Sometimes as docile a device as a cow can tame it.
This reality is driven home almost anywhere you travel out west. Consider my current location in Nevada, which may be the least inhabited part of the lower forty-eight states. In an area one hundred sixty by one hundred twenty miles can be found a total of twelve ranches. Period. No towns, nor even an intersection with a gas station. For that matter, not many crossroads at all, and those tracks that do intersect are dirt. Surely, this must be, by some definition, wilderness?
And yet not in any classic sense, nor even consistently within this same area. In the middle of those ranchlands is the five hundred seventy-five thousand-acre Sheldon Antelope Refuge. But all this terrain is actively managed, starkly beautiful though it may seem.
This land is dry, lying as it does in the rain shadow of the Sierras. But when Charles Freemont traveled this on horseback on his journey of (white) discovery, the flowers and grass reached up to his knees. Today, it’s an arid expanse of sagebrush and cheat grass, with widely spaced juniper trees appearing only at the higher elevations. It’s still rich in some types of wildlife (on which more later) in current if not historical terms, and perhaps no more sparsely populated now than in the days before Columbus. But as with virtually every other acre of land in the West that doesn’t have crops or houses on it, these are grazed by cattle.
Seriously? Yes, and even where you might least expect it. I once wound my way up a mountain range in Colorado from the plains below, crossing to the other side above ten thousand five hundred feet. At the very apex of the pass, after climbing through thick trees for over 2,000 feet, I crossed a cattle grate.
A forest can tolerate the occasional browsing cow, but not so easily more arid landscapes. Much of the unfarmed, non-urban or suburban land in the western half of the country bears only such ground cover as cattle will not eat, with just enough grass in between to sustain the sparse herds. The result is that the American West today supports only those species that can survive on what cattle leave behind, or on a carnivorous diet. Ifthey are too successful, like wild horses, they are culled to leave more forage for livestock.
Human impact over the last hundred and fifty years has even affected its climate of these parts. The scrubby vegetation that survives transpires far less moisture into the atmosphere, and the bare earth spaces in between convert more solar energy into heat. So also, with the land itself, much of it no longer protected by grasses. Rains washed away soils that were meager to start with, and winds blew off much of the rest. Subsurface waters are in retreat, as more rain runs off than sinks in. And vast aquifers of “fossil” water, relics of the last ice age, are being pumped down to sustain distant cities.
Even where cattle do not graze, the terrain is often managed to maximize the number of “desirable” animals (e.g., antelope and sage hen, for hunting) and minimize the “undesirable” ones (e.g., wild horses) to improve hunting. As I hiked through the Sheldon Refuge, I passed hundreds of juniper trees cut not for firewood (they lay where they fell) but to make way for the sagebrush game birds favor as cover. And though there were no buildings to protect, I met a fire crew pre-positioned in the center of the Refuge because a thunderstorm was on the way. Why, I asked? Because burned over sagebrush takes a long time to recover. Without such management, the range might revert to a state more natural but less tailored to the needs of the handful of sportsmen that visit this remote place each year.
So if wilderness means, as the dictionaries tell us, “an area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community,” then little more wilderness remains in the western half of the country than there is virgin forest surviving in the eastern states. Which is to say, not much, because any area grazed before the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964 by law remains open to grazing today. Thus it is that areas legally off limits to recreational vehicles remain riddled with dirt roads traveled by ranchers’ pickup trucks.
What of the rest of the hundreds of millions of acres of public land? By far and away the largest amount is owned by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forestry Service, and other government agencies, each of which officially or analogously operates under the slogan “Land of Many Uses.” Only National Parks, by law, are immune from grazing. Virtually all of what’s left is used, or potentially available, for ranching, mining, drilling and logging. The percentage of federal, state and privately conserved property not open to grazing is woefully small in contrast to public lands available for commercial use.
Of course, let him who abstains from eating meat cast the first stone, and that person is not me, although I rarely eat red meat. If we bar grazing from our own public lands but insist on still enjoying our burgers and steaks, we will only increase the despoliation of some other country’s landscape. All of which leaves us with choices to make, and very difficult ones, when Easterners (like me) want to walk in wilderness that others (the people who live here) want to graze or timber. The latter have little interest in being told where and how to do that, either, especially by folks back East.
Sadly, as with so many important issues today, what should be a subject for rational discussion has descended into a red state/blue state issue, with each successive administration pushing the laws in the direction it favors, and often reversing the initiatives of its predecessor. But if nature is defenseless, it is also patient. In the fullness of time, it will doubtless win the game. When it does, the definition of “wilderness” will become meaningless, with no other type of terrain to reference by comparison.
August 20, 2005
Since I wrote this piece, the issue of land use rights in the West has become more heated, leading even to armed clashes between local ranchers and federal marshals. Successive administrations of opposing views have reversed the actions of their predecessors, and a national consensus on this topic – as on so many others – appears more unreachable than ever before.
You can find the first post in this series here
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