Billionaires at The Public Trough

I have talked with quit a few ranchers over the decades. I even stayed overnight in one small ranchers home that put me up when the weather made it impossible to travel (I had never met him before that night he invited me into his home). We had a long talk after enjoying a wonderful dinner his wife prepared. The ranchers are always very honest and forthright when discussing their problems, and they have many problems from many different directions, many of their problems are caused by government agencies.

I wish I could tell you I have a good handle on the problems the ranchers face, I do not. It is a very complex topic. I have a better understanding of the problems the Native American Indians have than I do about the ranchers.

The one impression I always have when talking with a rancher is, they all appear to be feed up with our government, they do not trust our government, and they all believe they have been mistreated by our government.

 

I have nothing against ranchers with sustainable farming practices that don't contribute to polluting the watersheds and squeezing out the indigenous wildlife. Imagine herds of hogs wandering the BLM land or sheep. Imagine African wildlife not being able to compete with herds of domestic livestock. Imagine the deforestation of the canopy in Brazil to make large cattle factories. The range wars between sheep farmers and cattle farmers is interesting because sheep overgraze. Wild horses are being eradicated to eliminate competition from free range cattle farming. Here's a photo of one of those meat factories that some rich person far removed from its reality probably owns..where I was raised the local small farmer called them all New Yorkers...common saying was Don't sell anything to the New Yorkers...they'll leave a mess, make their money and leave ..

 

Does "degraded" means that she has let empty land revert to nature due to her disinterest, or does it mean that animals are suffering?

 

This is probably true of a large majority of rural American farmers and ranchers..my father wasn't one though..he was a stong believer in buying govt bonds and a proud veteran of WWII....he didn't like Wall Street though.

 

Riverman, I respect your views and opinions, however, you tangent off on too many blue herring topics.

I have never heard of a permit for pigs to free roam graze on public lands. There is a bad problem in parts of Oregon with feral pigs that have migrated up from CA. The feral pigs do cause a lot of damage to our environment. That is why there is an open hunting season on them. You can kill as many feral pigs as you want in Oregon, every day, without a hunting license.

I did not know there where permits for sheep grazing on public lands? Is that really true? From this and other conversations we have had, the areas we each know are very different. All I ever see is cattle on public lands, not sheep or pigs.

The topic of the article is free range grazing on public lands. Including pictures of overcrowded stock yards and discussing issues and problems caused by stock yards does not verify these same problems are now present on our public grazing lands.

 

I think you're confusing permits with my point omf...to simplify, I'm against domestic livestock feeding in our wildlife preserves. It is happening in Brazil, it does happen in the States...it's not allowed in the African plains for wildlife protection...all these blue herrings and tangents are to highlight my reasoning. I also stated that I have no problem with sensibly managed ranching. Might be a tangent, but this thread led me to an article about the eradication of wild horses..another cause and effect to free range ranching. I respect your opinions as well....and believe there are ranchers who take measures to ensure a healthy practice. Problem is, a lot don't as well. As I mentioned before...my experience was not in the high country of the Northwest...it was the plains of the Midwest. It can be discounted because I don't have any experience with the ranchers in your neck of the woods...comes down to trusting people to do the right thing and in most cases....I don't...as to the thread title....rivers have tributaries..my father had three grazing valleys in the hill country behind our farm ...a neighbor cut the fence and let thousands of hogs pollute the seasonal watering pond our dairy cattle drank from..they messed up a beautiful place in short order. That tangent is one of personal concern for me..and animal husbandry is a diverse topic....domestic production vs wildlife and flora protection. I believe if you go into that line of work...you should limit yourself to the ways and means of your ranch...if you need to invade public lands to feed them..cull the herd

 

and with that...I'll leave you all to discuss the local laws and practices of that particular area...apologies if I steered the conversation away from the thread title...back to basketball

 

Just one quick minor tune-up.

There has never been a program to eradicate the wild horse as mentioned in the article. It is just more PETA BS.

The wild horse herds were getting too large; so large they were causing damage to the ecosystem. The herds were culled to maintain a more balance ecosystem. Many of the wild horses that were removed from the herds where adopted by individual families. The wild horses were not eradicated.

Again, these are agenda driven articles you are quoting. They are not unbiased reporting. PETA is well known for their miss-information campaigns. Their goal is to gain support from the majority of people that are un-informed about these topics. They use information in these articles for its drama effect that will gain support for their agenda, not for its accuracy, truth or to educate.

 

I don't have any info about PETA or their lobbies...I'm just a guy who's forming his own opinions..and I have no reason to believe they dramatize situations any more than to believe cattle ranchers dramatize their agenda....we all read what we read, see what we see but there's no reason to turn a discussion into a team sport with two sides. It's ok....take it for what it's worth. To believe there's no mismanagement of cattle ranching practices is a choice you make from information that rings true to you. Isn't that what we all do? I sincerely hope the ranchers in your neck of the woods have our best interests at heart

 

The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, Section 4 requires that the BLM remove wild horses from private land if requested by the land owner.

This removal also complies with the court-ordered 2013 Consent Decree which directed that all wild horses be removed from checkerboard BLM lands within the HMAs. Not removing all wild horses from the checkerboard would result in non-compliance with the Act and Consent Decree.

BTW. The very same organization that wrote the miss-information article linked above, agreed to the terms and conditions of the 2013 consent decree.


Adoption. Removed wild horses will be sent to BLM holding facilities in Canon City, Colorado and Rock Springs, Wyoming, and prepared for adoption. The wild horses will be available for adoption at the Rock Springs Wild Horse Holding Facility, the Mantle Adoption and Training Facility in Wheatland, theWyoming Honor Farm in Riverton, the Wild Horse Inmate Program in Canon City and through the BLM's online adoptions.



Less than half of the wild horses are to be rounded up, and then adopted. That is not eradication.

 

I agree, every special interest group on every side is now guilty of dramatizing their information. Which is very sad.

That is why I question everything I read. If a topic interests me, I start researching the information to find the entire truth, not just the info that supports one side of an agenda.

Another angle I have used is to research where the money comes from to finance a miss-information campaign. Concerning environmental issues, the same few foundations keep rising to the surface. Follow the money.

As far as this public lands grazing issue we are discussing. My opinions are based on 6 decades of boots on the ground eye witness encounters. I have seen very little if any damage caused by cattle free range feeding. I have never seen a conflict with wildlife due to overgrazing. Now are all the ranchers in compliance with their permits? I have no way of knowing if their permit is for 100 cattle or 1000.

 

Here is another related story.
The bison herd in Yellowstone is going to be culled.

I wish the title of the article did not say ranchers against conservationists. I consider myself a conservationist and believe too many of a species creates as much of a problem, and sometime more, than a species that is endangered by too few.

The goal should be a balanced healthy herd to create a balanced ecosystem. The bison herd in Yellowstone is too large. About half of the bison herd is infected with brucellosis which is contagious and can spread to other species. The herd needs to be culled.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ers-against-conservationists/article28776843/

 

What's all this fuss over a wild horse? There are none. All horses in the wild in North America are domestic or offspring of domestic horses. Perhaps lost by a Spaniard a long time back, but domestic none the less.

 

It is all about special interest groups with agendas fighting over management of our public lands, wildlife and fish.

Management of our ecosystem is now handled in the courts, not by science and research with the goal of achieving a balanced ecosystem.

The side with the most money and political clout wins. The loser is always the ecosystem. The more courts cases and legal filing made the further out of balance the ecosystem becomes.

The problem with over protecting one species is that it never takes into account the affect it will have on the other species that share the same habitat. People that support the “save this or that” feel good campaigns do not realize how much damage they are causing to the rest of the ecosystem.

 

You bring up an interesting point. Horses are not native to our hemisphere or country. By the old definition, they are an invasive species. However, the definition of invasive species gets changed to satisfy agendas.

Example.
Horses and hogs where first introduced into the USA by Europeans at about the same time. Wild hogs living on public lands are considered an invasive species, wild horses living on the same public lands are not.

Another definition that has changed drastically is old growth trees. The old accepted definition was determined by the age of a tree. A legal filing now has the definition set by the diameter of a tree. This was done by a special interest group to take control over larger middle aged trees that did not fit the originally definition of old growth.

 

We aren't too far away from lab-grown meat, eggs and milk. It exists now, but big improvements will be needed to make it financially and palatally rewarding. But it is coming and all these farming, environmental and humane ideals should be put largely to rest once that future arrives. It's going to be weird, to purchase Lab-grown beef or chicken, a lot of people will reject it at first, but it's coming.

 

so, no wild dogs either eh?