Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West. Edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson. Published in 2002 by the Foundation for Deep Ecology; distributed by Island Press. xv + 345 pages. Introduction by Douglas R. Tompkins. $75 cloth.
“Livestock grazing in the arid West,” writes Douglas Tompkins in the introduction to this volume, “is as outmoded as is whaling in today’s oceans. It is a thing of the past, a ‘tradition’ whose practitioners are still immersed in a livelihood in which ecological reality has yet to sink in.”
Alas, while many would agree with Tompkins’ comparison of ranching to whaling, stalwart defenders of both practices remain. For them, ranching (or whaling, as the case may be) is a way of life that deserves public support long after any minimal public benefits (assuming there were any to start with) have ceased to exist. And their success in winning subsidies, both hidden and overt, for their way of life should be seen for exactly what it is: nothing less than state support of religion. Or, as Tompkins phrases it: “all U.S. citizens who pay taxes are essentially subsidizing grazing permit holders to trash the public lands.”
Welfare Ranching documents the destruction of 300 million acres of public grazing lands in the American West. Hawai`i’s state-owned grazing lands are not discussed in the coffee-table-styled book, but that’s not because the same criticism of land use policies that apply in Western states don’t apply here. Indeed, the opposite is true: every single one of the problems associated with overgrazing that this volume documents in painful but needful detail – extinction or extirpation of rare species, erosion, degraded streams, starving cattle, encroachment on protected lands, and on and on – can easily be found to occur on public lands in Hawai`i that have been leased for pasture use. Hawai`i’s exclusion from the book, in other words, should by no means be taken as implying that such problems don’t exist here.
And many of the same arguments employed in defense of ranching in the West are also chestnuts regularly hauled out here. For example, the notion that ranching is the foundation of rural economies – as popular in Western states as it is, say, on the Big Island – is debunked as nothing but myth. “Ranching and associated activities provide very few jobs,” the editors write. And, instead of rural towns being dependent on the livestock industry, the reverse was found to be true by researchers at the University of Arizona: “Ranch families depend on nearby towns and cities to provide full- or part-time jobs that help keep the ranch financially afloat.” In the West, ranching accounts for less than half a percent of all income received by residents; in Hawai`i, it is even less than that.
If ranching is so economically unproductive, what keeps it going? There’s the Marlboro man myth, to be sure, but the editors also describe an “iron pentagon” of interests: the livestock industry, government agencies, universities, elected politicians, and banks. Together, they form “a fortresslike nexus of power and influence that keeps public lands livestock grazing safe from scrutiny, criticism, or reform.” Once more, the same model applies in Hawai`i, where state land agents often refer to ranchers as their clients (failing to perceive that the public’s interest in well-managed lands is far greater than the private interests of any given rancher), where university extension agents work tirelessly to help ranchers, where the Natural Resources Conservation Service regards ranchers as its chief constituency, where politicians bow to the numerically weak but politically strong ranching interests, and where banks (especially subsidized farm credit lending institutions) use grazing permits (pasture leases in Hawai`i) as collateral for long-term loans.
Much of the book is taken up with photographs – of cow-damaged lands contrasted with lands that have recovered after removal of cattle. Yet the volume also contains some of the most thoughtful and provocative writing yet on the state of ranching in the United States today.
Like whaling, ranching is in the end an extractive industry. And whenever it is carried out on lands where there is precious little to extract, whether it be the arid West, the leeward slopes of Pu`uwa`awa`a, or the koa forests of South Kona, the public ultimately pays the price. And the longer it continues, the higher the cost.
It is past time that the true expense of ranching on public lands is calculated and acknowledged. In the service of that end, this volume makes a pioneering contribution.
— Patricia Tummons
Editor’s note: Most of the book is available online at no cost: [url=http://www.publiclandsranching.org]http://www.publiclandsranching.org[/url]
A Green Muckraker
Greenspeak: Fifty Years of Environmental Muckraking and Advocacy. By Michael Frome. Published 2002 by the University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 290 plus xx pages (including index). $21.95 paper.
For more than half a century, Michael Frome has been on the cutting edge of environmental journalism, combining his passionate ecological concerns with a muckraker’s drive for a good story. Greenspeak, a collection of his speeches from 1963-2001, covers just about every major conservation issue to emerge over the last four decades. Time and again, the reader is reminded of Frome’s pioneering work: he didn’t just cover these issues, he brought many of them to the attention of the American people.
These speeches showcase Frome’s virtuoso command of topics ranging from the poisoning effects of pesticides and the mismanagement of national parks and forests, to the loss of wilderness and its effect on our humanity.
But Greenspeak is much more than a display of Frome’s wide-ranging knowledge. It is also invaluable in its ability to place the reader in the middle of the some of the most turbulent and exciting issues in this period through Frome’s descriptions of people and events. Remarks that preface each speech provide a rich and important backdrop.
This book is testament to Frome’s unusual skill of giving voice to idealism and integrity in a field often rife with disappointment. He empowers his readers with a feeling that they can make, and are making, a difference. He gives hope for a future filled with breathtaking mountain scenes and wilderness for mankind to experience.
Early on, Frome was able to embrace the very soul of the conservation ideal. In a 1963 speech to the Fifth American Forest Congress, he said people, “must do more to demonstrate responsibility to the land than to assert our inalienable rights to use it.”
In this time when our public parks and priceless wilderness areas are under siege from forces ranging from snowmobilers to the logging and mining industries, Frome’s words and insistent message – that such places should be inviolate – are as fresh and pertinent as the days they were first uttered.
— Miranda Watson
Volume 13, Number 7 January 2003