The book presents a thorough and thoughtful argument of how grazing on public lands has diminished the land's native biodiversity, has marginalized wildlife and brought many species to the brink of extinction, and has degraded ecosystems, especially those associated with springs, streams and rivers.
Bureau of Land Management land is particularly vulnerable to degradation by grazing since much of it is arid, gaining 12 inches or less of water each year.
The interesting aspect of this book is that she comes to her conclusion based upon the past uses and abuses by cattle and sheep grazers. But the future landscape (both literally and figuratively) changes dramatically when global warming is factored in.
Experts in global warming (or global climate disruption as professor John P. Holdren has suggested) predict that Western states such as Utah, Nevada and Wyoming will have increasingly warmer climates with declining precipitation. This will likely result in reduced forest cover and increased desertification that will negatively impact wildlife and grazing opportunities.
In addition, reductions in stream flow and increase of water temperature will occur that will adversely affect the fisheries of the region (especially those supporting the reproduction of threatened native cutthroat). Finally it is predicted the region will experience increased range and forest fires that will provide opportunities for non-native grasses and plants to squeeze out the native species that wildlife depend upon.
The alterations in the landscape brought on by global climate disruption will continue to marginalize the use of public lands for grazing purposes, and will bring grazing interests in direct conflict with those in support of preserving and enhancing the habitat for the needs of wildlife.
In the past, hunting organizations have consistently supported grazing on public lands (often to the detriment of the resident wildlife), presumably as a quid pro quo for access to private lands for hunting opportunities and the generation of conservation tags. In the future such support may be lagging.
It is in the context of the changing Western landscape that the Western Governors Association recently met. The governors concluded their meeting with a series of action items including the maintenance and enhancement of wildlife habitat corridors and concerns of the region regarding global climate disruption. Interestingly, there appears to have been little discussion of how the state and the federal governments will handle public grazing as suitable acreages dwindle, and lands previously described as arid move into the "desert" classification.
For the governors of these states discussing the drawbacks of grazing on public lands must be the third rail of Western politics. The problem is the scenario carefully laid out by Donahue is not only becoming painfully obvious, but is accelerating with climate change.
The WGA, in association with the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service and Congress, needs to develop realistic plans for the draw down and elimination of grazing on the vast majority of public lands.
Raising cattle in many parts of this region has always been marginal and will only become more so in the future. Raising cattle in other parts of the country on private land (the Midwest for example) has been much more lucrative, predictable and sustainable. To not limit and/or eliminate grazing on federal lands will place more acreage in jeopardy (due to erosion and loss of the water table) of losing the ability to sustain any wildlife, much less wandering cattle.
Or as Aldo Leopold put it in the 1930s, "What remains of our native fauna and flora remains only because agriculture has not got around to destroying it." It is important to act now to protect public lands before the biological diversity they support is lost.
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* JOHN H. WEIS is professor of pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
