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In 2002,
I wrote the following letter to Carl Pope, executive director
of the Sierra Club, explaining why I had resigned from a leadership
position in New Mexico:
Dear Carl,
On June 11, I resigned from the Executive Committee of the
Santa Fe Group of the Sierra Club. I did so principally in
order to create more "elbow room" in my life for
my family.
However, I have also moved on to a new type of environmental
activism, one that does not fit well with the club's
current policies and approaches.
In fact, I have deep concerns about the future effectiveness
of the Sierra Club on issues related to the public lands in
the West."
I want to explain this last thought, gleaned from nearly eight
years of intensive environmental activism at the grassroots
level, in hopes of nudging the Sierra Club, an organization
I still greatly admire, in a new direction.
The American West has witnessed tremendous changes in the
past 15 years. These changes include the rise of models of
sustainable use of public and private lands, the widening
threat of recreation to biodiversity, the emergence of a "land
health" paradigm from the scientific community, the shift
of conservation strategies from "protection" to
"restoration." and the expanding role of collaboration
to resolve resource conflicts.
However, these changes, which are here to stay, are not yet
reflected in the work of most mainstream environmental organizations,
including the Sierra Club. As a result, environmentalists
have begun to marginalize themselves in the debate over the
future of our public lands.
If the Sierra Club desires to remain a player at the grassroots
level – by that I mean the level of grass and roots
– significant changes will be necessary. I will use
the issue of public lands ranching as an example.
It is critically important for the environmental community
to understand that a model of sustainable use of public rangelands
by livestock has emerged over the past 15 years.
Its takes a number of shapes – herding, planned or rapid-rotational
grazing, grassbanks, dormant season grazing – but its
underlying principle is the same: Controlling the timing,
intensity and frequency of livestock impact on the land can
yield positive ecological and economic benefit to resource
managers.
The science supporting this principle is strong and diverse,
as is the small but growing number of ranches who put the
principle to work with demonstrable results.
There is also a growing body of evidence that says well-managed
ranches harbor as much biodiversity, or more, than "protected"
landscapes, such as wilderness areas.
This is not to excuse overgrazing, which remains a persistent
problem in the West. But the existence of ecologically sensitive
ranch methods means the goal of activists needs to shift from
extermination to reformation.
However, this requires a big first step – an admission
by environmentalists that work is no longer a dirty word.
The history of the environmental movement is chiefly the story
of the struggle against bad management. Clear cuts, strip
mines, overgrazed rangelands, toxic dumps, poisoned rivers,
and, now, rampant oil and gas drilling – the catalog
of abuse is all too familiar.
As a result, a prejudice against commercial
use of public land developed among activists, and rightly
so. Ed Abbey was on target in his outrage when he called the
West "cowburnt."
But it is not the 1980s anymore. The emergence of the progressive
ranching model across a wide variety of western landscapes,
including those that receive less than 12 inches of precipitation
a year, means the goal of public lands environmentalism can
no longer simply be to "protect" the land from human
activity.
Instead, its goal should be same as the progressive ranchers'
- to figure out how to live sustainably in our native landscapes.
In the fall of 1999, 22 environmental groups (not including
the Sierra Club) took out a full-page advertisement in the
New York Times entitled "End Welfare Ranching."
It called public lands ranching "ecologically and economically
unsustainable" and proclaimed livestock production to
be "the single largest source of water pollution, soil
erosion, and species endangerment in the western U.S."
In support of its call for the abolition of ranchers, the
advertisement cited an article published in the peer-reviewed
journal Bioscience, which claimed that livestock grazing had
contributed to the decline of 22 percent of endangered animal
species and 33 percent of endangered plants in the U.S.
This article reported the conclusions of a study conducted
by a group of scientists who had analyzed the effects of various
extractive industries on the viability of endangered plants
and animals and ranked them according to their severity.
Contrary to the claims of the ad's authors, however,
the greatest threat to endangered plants and animals, according
to the researchers, was NOT ranching. At the top of the list
was water diversion, principally dams. Ranching checked in
at number three, ahead of logging and mining.
In second place was recreation.
Although the chief recreational threat to wildlife was identified
as off-road vehicles, the underlying message of the study
was clear: Recreation is officially an "extractive"
industry on public lands and should be treated as such.
Naturally, there has been no full-page ad in the New York
Times calling for an end to public lands recreation. The reasons
are obvious, including a huge case of denial. However, the
800-pound gorilla called "recreation" can no longer
be ignored, and if the environmental community does not begin
to put play on public land under the same microscope as it
does work, then its credibility will continue to erode.
Work and play need to be treated equally and fairly. To do
this, environmentalists should heed Aldo Leopold's advice
– that any activity that degrades the quality and quantity
of an area's ecological integrity should be curtailed,
changed or stopped; while any activity that enhances, restores
or expands ecological values should be supported.
It should not matter if that activity is recreation or ranching.
There is a chunk of BLM land west of Taos, N.M., that will
never be a wilderness area, national park or wildlife refuge.
It is modest land, mostly flat, covered with sage and very
dry.
In its modesty, however, it is typical of millions of public
land across the West. It is typical in another way too –
it exists in a degraded ecological condition, the result of
historic abuse and recent neglect.
As humble as this land is, it is not unloved. The wildlife
like it, certainly, but so do the owners of the private land
intermingled with the BLM land, some of whom have built homes
there. The two new ranchers to the area also have great affection
for this unassuming land, and want to see it healed.
These ranchers intend to use cattle as agents of ecological
restoration. Through the effect of carefully controlled herding,
the ranchers intend to browse and trample the sage and bare
soil, much of which is capped solid, so that native grasses
can get reestablished again. The ranchers are calling this
act of restoration a "poop-and-stomp."
Using cattle to restore rangelands is not as crazy as it sounds.
In fact, Aldo Leopold once remarked that wildlife could be
restored using the same tools that had destroyed it: "cow,
fire, gun, axe, and plow." The difference, of course,
is the management of the tool, as well as the goals of the
tool user.
The goal of the Taos project is ecological and economic restoration,
and two of the tools are qualitative and quantitative assessment
and monitoring.
The science community has developed new protocols over the
past decade to measure range health, focusing on the functionality
of ecosystems. These protocols do not measure "wildness"
or "pristineness"
Instead, they ask a fundamental question: Is the land healthy
at the level of soil, grass and water? If the answer is "no",
then we need to look into our toolbox for a new, or old, tool
to repair the damage.
This project is emblematic of a new conservation approach
in the West. In fact, I am convinced that land health and
restoration, not wildness and protection, will become the
principle paradigms of a new environmental movement in the
not-so-distant future.
I was encouraged to learn that Wendell Berry spoke recently
to the Sierra Club's Board of Directors. His invocation
that "You cannot save the land apart from the people
- to save either, you must save both" has been the guiding
principle of my environmental activism.
I believe the ecological crisis confronting us is, at root,
a cultural crisis. Poor human behavior caused
much of the environmental damage that surrounds us today,
and only good human behavior will restore the land to health.
Isolating people from nature, a current
trend of thought among some activists within the club, will
only further alienate us from our roots, and compound the
environmental challenges confronting us.
Take the homesteaders, ranchers and BLM managers of the "forgotten"
sageland near Taos, for example. They love the land and have
developed a strong sense of place by living on it, working
it sustainably, and acting collaboratively to restore it to
health. Each values the land in a different, but legitimate,
way, with the common goal of seeing it become healthy and
productive for wildlife and people.
Their sense of place, along with the new toolbox and scientific
protocols for measuring land health, is the key to the future
of the environment in the West.
This is something difficult for the average city-bound Sierra
Club member, much less an activist, to understand –
that our western lands, all of them, need more, and better,
stewardship, not less.
The Sierra Club's sense of place needs to expand beyond
wilderness and national parks. It needs to include the "forgotten"
lands and the people who live there; and it needs to expand
beyond knowing a place principally through recreation.
Club members, and leaders, need to support reasonable rural
people and encourage good stewardship. There are plenty of
both out there, as well as a ton of common ground, literally,
where urban and rural people can meet to bridge their differences.
As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. Ranching
is enduring big changes to its very nature, but so is public
lands environmentalism.
Where this evolutionary process is headed is anyone's
guess, but I remain hopeful the club will develop a new sense
of place to go along with the changing times.
Sincerely,
Courtney White
I never received a response to that letter.
I included a "cc" to three sympathetic board members,
but never heard a word from them either.
I wasn't surprised. People lead busy lives.
There is a great deal of activism to do, especially in the
current political landscape.
They also get a lot of mail, I'm sure. That's the risk of
writing uppity letters from remote locations – there
is a good chance they will be ignored. Maybe I should have
kept my thoughts to myself.
In the intervening 20 months, however, my conviction that
environmental critics of public lands ranching are in danger
of throwing the baby out with the bathwater has only deepened.
So has my concern that a cultural and economic "functionality"
crisis is spreading across the West to go along with its ecological
ills. Whatever your role in the region, it is hard to argue
that the West is working properly anymore.
Ranchers, struggling to stay in business, are on the verge
of becoming an anachronism in America; the conservation movement,
struggling with its vision, has fallen into a rut; the federal
management agencies, struggling with their courage, have appeared
to lost their heart; and everyone else, struggling with political
and social gridlock now endemic to the West, appears to be
pretty much exasperated.
There is reason for optimism, however. In various nooks and
crannies across the West, positive change is taking place.
Land is improving and people are resolving their differences
collaboratively – one acre at a time.
Take the case of Jim Williams, a third-generation rancher
from Quemado, N.M., located at the northern end of notoriously
cranky Catron County.
Eight years ago the Forest Service cut the number of cattle
they allowed Jim to run on public land because of overgrazing
by his animals. The cut made Jim angry; not only did it wound
his pride, but it also threatened his livelihood.
His first response was typical "Catron County" -
he sued the feds and prayed for relief from the courts. But
when that failed his next response was not typical: he asked
for help.
It came in the form of advice on a new way of managing his
cattle. He learned that overgrazing occurs when a grazed plant
is not given enough time to recover before being grazed again.
To avoid this, he agreed to bunch his cattle together and
kept them on the move so that all parts of his ranch are allowed
to rest and recover for most of the year - which is how nature
intended things to be.
Additionally, Jim agreed to graze his privately owned stretch
of Largo Creek, an ecologically significant riparian area,
only in the winter, which allows the grasses and sedges to
grow tall in the summer.
In other words, contrary to what the critics of public lands
ranching will tell you, Jim demonstrated that overgrazing
can be corrected without requiring that the rancher go out
of business.
In fact, Jim Williams is so pleased with the improving condition
of his ranch that he has embraced a variety of restoration
activities.
He has voluntarily thinned and burned parts of his overgrown
woodland; he has actively assisted in the physical repair
of his damaged riparian area, working side by side with "greenies"
from Albuquerque and Santa Fe; and he has helped a bird-watching
conservation group locate and study ferruginous hawks on his
ranch – and become a fan of the beautiful bird in the
process.
And all this work took place on his private land – unlikely
eight years ago, but a virtual impossibility today if he had
been driven off public land.
The economic hit Jim would have taken if his cattle had been
removed from the national forest would likely have driven
him out of business, thus jeopardizing this vital restoration
work.
In other words, eliminating the public lands rancher means
removing a valuable steward from the land. Who, after all,
is going to do this important restoration work if not the
very person who lives there and has great affection for the
land?
And what about the fate of Jim's substantial private land?
Critics of public lands ranching like to remind us that one-half
of the West is public land and therefore should not be in
the grip of a handful of commodity interests. But they rarely
mention the other side of that equation – that one-half
of the West is privately owned, much of it controlled by ranchers.
This private land is critical to the recovery and maintenance
of wildlife populations, especially the riparian areas, which
were the first areas to be homesteaded.
By one estimate , more than 100 million acres of private land
are owned by public land ranchers, who need the public forests
and rangelands to maintain a viable economic operation. Much
of this private property directly abuts public land and all
of it is vulnerable to disposal the old-fashioned way –
by sale to developers.
Take Jim Williams' private land, for instance. It borders
a national forest, has a paved highway, tons of cottonwoods
along the creek, and views to die for. It is worth big bucks
– but not as a cattle ranch.
In fact, when I first met Jim, there was an offer on his kitchen
table from a subdivider. At the time, he said, he was sorely
tempted.
Others have succumbed. In the Quemado area alone, more than
50,000 acres of private land have been subdivided in the past
five years, with more being "plowed" under every
day.
That it is a lot wildlife country busted up for a long time
to come.
Taken together, the progressive ranching model, the big job
of ecological restoration, and the rapid loss of open space,
tell us that the goal of eliminating the public lands rancher
is a bad idea for the environment. Overgrazing can be fixed,
as can damaged riparian areas and uplands, without putting
the rancher out of business, or forcing him to sell his private
land.
There are many stories of a similar nature across the region
– of individuals and organizations using new knowledge
and new methods to heal land and repair relationships.
They are slowly, but steadily, figuring out how to make the
West work again, ecologically, economically, and politically.
The Taos restoration project, ranchers like Jim Williams,
plus the work of many other individuals and organizations
across the West, are all signs of an emerging conservation
movement in the region.
This new movement emphasizes collaboration over conflict,
restoration over protection, land health over land segregation,
watersheds over Washington, and prosperous communities over
perpetual crisis.
It seeks tangible improvement on the ground and in the lives
of people – demonstrable and long-lasting.
It asks not what the land has done for you, but asks instead
what you can do for the land.
Aldo Leopold once wrote that "the only progress that
counts is on the back forty." This is where a new conservation
movement is coalescing. Whether the Sierra Club decides to
get involved on the back forty or not, and I pray that does,
I hope all of us can find a role in this new movement –
fixing creeks, buying food from local producers, relaxing
on "wild" ranches, measuring progress, ranching
sustainably, making friends.
The road to creating a West that works will be long and bumpy,
but if we join together there is a real possibility that we
can fulfill author Wallace Stegner's famous instruction "to
create a society to match the scenery."
Courtney White is the executive
director of The Quivira
Coalition, a Santa-Fe-based nonprofit organization. |
