WWPBlog

Farewell to Kathleen Clarke – As She Gallops into a Methane Sunset Fleeing the Wake of Weeds, Dirty Water and Crony Deals Behind Her
 
Just thought I’d recap some of the hare-brained and privatization schemes we suffered through under Kathleen Clarke and the Cattlemen.
 
The first and only time I saw Clarke was in Boise not long after her appointment, when she was out shaking hands. I could immediately sense a façade of deep insincerity towards anyone lacking a three pound belt buckle or who didn’t say “crick”.
 
Next closest contact with Clarke was a DC-aid surrogate swaggering braggart fellow from the Wyoming school of land pillaging on a road tour talking to BLM RACs about the Director Clarke’s “Sustaining Working Landscapes”. What we came to call SWILL was a quaint theory that the universe revolved around the Working Ranch, and all things on public lands were to be subjects of the Working Ranch to enrich private cattle operations so they would prosper so that the world would not fall apart. It relied heavily on the myth of the poor Mom and Pop rancher types as benevolent stewards of the land (somehow APHIS aerially gunning coyotes was just not part of the PR package for SWILL), and was divorced from the scientific realities of the destruction livestock are causing today – with grazing and trampling converting sagebrush wild lands to cheatgrass and other weed monocultures.
 
The SWILL idea evaporated into a thick methane-choked cloud and finally disappeared when some paranoid ranchers sensed that it had to a UN conspiracy. Imagine the blue helmet and black helicopter nightmares these guys are having now with as a result of the great United Nations Report on livestock causing Global Warming! They had fantasized that SWILL somehow might have placed an undue burden on sacred deeded land owners to somehow have to comply with something  … even though they weren’t quite sure what. Maybe even reveal financial details - like what foreign-owned bank they had taken out loans against their public lands grazing permit on. This is an element of public lands grazing little understood by the public. A primary reason BLM is loathe to reduce the numbers of livestock grazing on public lands is that ranchers have taken out loans on their public lands permits based on the numbers of AUMs (livestock).
 
SWILL’s heir was the Bush Grazing Regulation changes that likewise were aimed at enriching the tiny hand full (18,000 or so) of increasingly corporate, hobby ranchers, or others who abuse BLM lands across 160 million acres of the West.  
 
The privatization elements of Bush Grazing Regulation changes were termed “minor” changes by Clarke. Yet in reality they would have pretty much handed over control of public lands and waters and their management to the livestock industry.
 
In fine Bush administration form, the Grazing Regulation changes would have cut the public out of just about every part of the BLM decision process. This would have resulted in management of public lands, exploited for forage for privately owned cattle and sheep, being based on backroom deals between ranchers and BLM.
 
Plus, the Bushco changes would have handed over ownership of new livestock facility developments on BLM lands to ranchers. Why? So that ranchers could get even more bank loans – on these damaging new facilities – such as fences that kill sage grouse that collide with them, or spring-gutting projects that kill all surface flows of wild land springs. Plus, BLM would not even be required to file for water rights on developments – giving the ranchers even more control of the exceedingly scarce waters in the West.
 
WWP and others challenged these terrible Bush and Clarke regulation changes and privatization schemes in federal court, and received an injunction halting most of the scheme to hand over control of public lands and public assets from going forward.
 
The legacy of Clarke is weeds, dirty manure-polluted water, and a BLM workforce where any manager with even a tad of responsibility has been driven into retirement or moved to some meaningless paper-shuffling role.   
 
Now it’s time for investigations into just how much Clarke squandered on deals with her rancher cronies. A good place to start would be the payment of at least $200,000 dollars to a livestock industry consultant to promote continued cattle destruction of public lands in Owyhee County. I’m betting there are hundreds of other such examples out there. What Congressional committee can we send a list to?        

    Starting as early as January, the federal government will begin lifting federal protections for wolves in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Delisting state by state is legal, and it is an accomplishment for the Endangered Species Act that has come under attack by Richard Pombo (R-CA). Wolves have made a remarkable comeback since their reintroduction in 1995. There are around 650 wolves in Idaho, 270 in Montana, and 309 in Wyoming.

  Idaho Governor, Jim Risch and others maintain that federal protections hamper control of packs that kill livestock and God Forbid, hunt elk. Let us hope that the management plans in all three states heavily weigh the option of non-lethal control measures for wolves, thus making delisting a win-win situation for all sides. The "turbofladry" has been found to be a very effective tool. This method creates an electical "corral" for livestock. The electrical field keeps livestock in one location making them less open to depredation.

I commend the Defenders of Wildlife for promoting and supporting non-lethal control measures.

The banking industry has recently come under attack in the critically acclaimed movie, “America: Freedom to Fascism,” by the successful film director, Aaron Russo.

In 1913, claims Russo, the banking industry took over the American government. In what sounds like implausible alarmist prattle, Russo builds a compelling argument that the federal government is a pawn to the enormously powerful, American banking industry. To see the award winning movie click here.

I will leave the very interesting debate about the role of the IRS and its legal justification for another time. My purpose here is to discuss the way in which the banking industry and the federal government conspire against the lawful management of public land and the enforcement of federal environmental protection laws.

Grazing Permits as Collateral 

Public lands ranchers are, for the present, able to use grazing permits as collateral for farm loans on their private holdings. These loans may be used to purchase farm equipment, make farm improvements and livestock purchases and anything related to the maintenance and upkeep of the farm.

The bank considers certain grazing allotments to be more valuable for purposes of collateral dependent on factors such as: the number of livestock capable of being supported, proximity to watersheds, roads, National Forest Land and other amenities that affect the allotment’s usefulness for livestock grazing. Andy Kerr notes, “Since ranching loans tend to be very generous, the number of livestock ranchers need to sell to make their loan payments is almost always more than the land can support without severe overgrazing.”

Logically and understandably the bank holding the grazing permit as collateral has a substantial stake in seeing that the loan is paid off.  Banks can and do influence public land managers to maintain higher numbers of livestock at taxpayer expense, thus protecting their investment. Why not use taxpayer money to build a fence or bring in a water trough rather than move cows off of the public land? This makes grazing permits even more profitable banks even if it is a wrongful use of public money.

Federal agencies should not be in the business of working for banks and our taxes should not  be used to keep banks prosperous.

The USDA and farm loan establishments have used the Forest Service and the BLM as loan brokers for ranchers for over fifty years. In this scheme, taxpayer money is used to protect the bank’s investment while public land is destroyed.  Once again the American taxpayer is made a chump twice over by the federal government.

Now who doubts, in the presence of this additional evidence, that the banking industry and the federal government are thick as thieves? Here’s a title for Aaron Russo’s follow-up film: “The American Rancher an Icon of American Individualism in Cahoots with Fascists.”

    I am now deciding which environmental ethics texts to include in my redesigned environmental ethics for next fall. Since publishers regularly send me review copies, I have plenty of books to examine at my leisure. Yesterday, I picked up Watersheds 4: Ten Cases in Environmental Ethics (Thompson Wadsworth). Of course, the book’s title caught my eye for obvious reasons, but I also wondered just what the authors had decided were the ten most urgent cases in environmental ethics since the third edition.
    The first case was as it should be global warming which was followed by genetically modified organisms and the other topics weren’t surprising: alternatives for energy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, worldwide trends in lowered biodiversity and others. But nowhere did I find any mention of cattle. As authors will normally explain their choice in the title, these authors referred to the ten as "defining moments," "human death," "polluted water," "poisoned soil," and "irrevocable damage" done to humans and the land.
    It is clear that in all four editions of this book, these authors did not consider the worldwide environmental impact of rearing cattle for human consumption on: other species, the land, human health, feeding the starving or any of the other numerous political and social issues nested in this controversy. What became clear upon finishing my review of this book that  these authors were ostensibly no more aware of the problem than the ordinary person. It’s not surprising, really, given the incredible hold that the family farm has on the conscience of the American people. We tend to jump on the bandwagon immediately when this icon of "American-individualism and wholesomeness" is attacked–remember the Grapes of Wrath? The family farmer is nothing more and nothing less than a businessman. Why should he be given any more or fewer favors than any other businessman?

I suppose this only underscores the need to write them a letter and start on a book of my own. In the interests of being a Good-Samaritan-Open-Your-Damn Eyes-type, I’ll suggest that these authors should call WWP for some information on the livestock impacts on public land in the West–that would be a great place to start.