The successful reintroduction of wolves is heartwarming, though sadly one of the very few environmental success stories.  However, full reintroduction is being blocked by ranchers.  Eric's comment that "a few ranchers and herders have ... justifiable concerns about predation of stock" is incorrect.  Their concerns are far from being justified for the following reasons.

Generally speaking, the cattle industry has turned our western grasslands into deserts. It has done more environmental damage to the western U.S. than any other industry, some say more than all industries combined.  (To a smaller extent my comments also include the sheep industry.  That industry has not caused as much harm in the west, because there are far fewer sheep, though individual sheep actually do more harm by grazing.  For the purposes of this post, "cattle industry" includes the sheep industry.)

Specifically, the cattle industry has caused the folloiwng problems:

1. Cattle are, of course, not native to the west, nor is or was any animal like that native here.  The grasses in the west cannot take the pressure from heavy grazers like cattle and sheep (cattle are "heavy" both in literal weight and how much they graze, sheep only in the latter sense, but both cause ecological problems).  The root systems of native western grasses are different from those in the eastern U.S. and cannot take heavy grazing.  This is the main, but not only, reason for desertification caused by the cattle industry.

2. The cattle industry has removed native western grasses, replacing them with non-native species that are better for feeding cattle and sheep.  Native grasses in the west are all but gone.

3. Ranchers have fenced off OUR west, creating a plague of barbed wire fences. Wildlife are often maimed or killed by these fences, but beyond that, "open" space should remain open, not fenced.

4. Cattle tend to hang out in riparian areas, destroying them.  Again, the riparian areas in the west did not evolove with any heavy animals like cows.

5. Most relevant to this discussion, ranchers view all animals as competition for their cattle.  They were in the forefront of the movement to kill wolves and other native predators that might kill their unnaturally slow, stupid, and clumsy cattle (cattle were bread that way in order to be easier for humans to kill).  Ranchers also try to eliminate native ungulates, as these are seen as competing with their cattle for grass.

What should really be done is removal of cattle and sheep from OUR public lands in the west, then from the west in general.  The concerns of ranchers are not "justified" and both they and their animals have been a blight upon this part of the country.  I think all good environmentalists should boycott beef until, at the very least, cattle and sheep are totally removed from our public lands in the western U.S.

Finally, I feel that I must add that in my experience as an environmental activist, ranchers have impressed me as the most viscious, selfish, violent group of people I've encountered, far beyond anything I've experienced from, say, loggers or developers. They illegitimately colonized the west in the 19th century, running roughshod over everyone else and everything there, and now think they have a right to do whatever they want in furtherance of their industry, regardless of how ecologically harmful it has proven to be.  It's past time to put an end to this!

Jeff Hoffman

I'm familiar with the issues you raise and, as I said, I basically agree with you. Cattle are a plague on native ecosystems. But the thing is, lots and lots of stuff that people do alters or harms native ecosystems and (speaking as a fulltime greenie) we must strike a balance between human activity and conserving pristine ecosystems. Of course, the dichotomy isn't always that stark, but it's always there in some form.

I wish wolves were free to roam across a much, much larger range than they have now. And I think our agricultural policies, particularly with regard to public lands, are nothing short of asinine. But still, still, I can understand why ranchers don't want their animals killed by wolves (or anything else) even though wolf predation is a much rarer occurence than they'd like us to believe.

Should we kick ranchers off public land? Yes. Should we remove fences from the West? Yes. Should we restore the native grasslands? Yes. But I'd hope there would still be some place left for sustainable farming and ranching.  

One final note. You wrote, "the riparian areas in the west did not evolove with any heavy animals like cows." That's not true, of course. They evolved with huge herds of bison. The point I'm sure you meant to make is that bison don't hang out in riparian areas and tear them apart like cattle do.

Anyway, thanks for your comments--they're great. And keep up the good fight!

ofcourse:
I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

YES = YOUNG ENLIGHTENED SOUL

bish, we're all gonna die & i love it!

who wants to stroke my ego as i read sun tzu?

First, I agree that "we must strike a balance between human activity and conserving pristine ecosystems," so long as humans greatly lower their population and quit acting like a cancerous tumor on the planet (i.e., start living in harmony with nature instead of fighting it).  As only one of I-don't-know-how-many millions of species, humans are not entitled to more than a very small percentage of the Earth.  They can perform their "human activity" in that small area.

Second, Bison lived east of the Rockies, almost exclusively in the prairies.  The large ungulates in the west were deer, antelope, and elk.  Western (i.e., from the Rockies on west) grasses did not evolove with anything like bison.  If they had, cattle and sheep would not have done so much damage to them.

Jeff Hoffman

On the other stuff, two things. 1) I don't think I put my point very clearly in the post, so maybe you didn't misinterpret it so much as I didn't say what I meant very well. 2) Sure, human population (and consumption) is totally out of whack with the world's ecosystems. I think we have a moral imperative to reduce our impact on the earth and help restore it. But "cancerous tumor"? Yikes. I like people; and while we produce a lot of crap (like Wal-Marts) we also create some pretty cool and beautiful stuff too (like farmer's markets and good novels and gin & tonics). Most days I don't want us to die out, I just want us to celebrate the earth instead of trampling it.

"Until the 19th century, as many as 60 million bison lived on the Great Plains from Mexico into Canada, and some were found east of the Mississippi River."  (Tracker-Outdoorsman.com, http://www.tracker-outdoors.com/buffalo.htm); "Cattle replaced the buffalo and antelope on the plains and foothills of the Rockies."  (Waste of the West, http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter1.html; " The reasons for the success of Old World plant species in the New World are varied, but a major player in this success seems to be the fact that the Old World species, and especially those accompanying the cattle, had evolved under grazing pressure while the native species had not."  (Website unknown, http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/~desert/cattle/cg.2.html).

Jeff Hoffman

Re my "cancerous tumor" comment, allow me to more accurately articulate it.  A medical doctor told me about 20 years ago that the human race fits the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the Earth (an out-of-control growth that consumes the host).  As far as I'm concerned, this is fact, not opinion.  We can argue about whether it's OK to live like this or, if not, what to do about changing it, which are opinions.  But the fact is, we fit that definition.

Jeff Hoffman

--Washington State University says, "The vegetation in the rangelands of the Pacific Northwest coevolved with small herds of large herbivores such as deer and elk and sparse bison but not with large herds of bison, as in the Midwest." http://ext.nrs.wsu.edu/watershedrangeext/washingtonrangelands/Rangeland_Stewardship_website/Rangelan dsoftheWesternU_S_IntroductionForm.htm

--Encyclopedia Britannica Online says, "Originally great herds ranged from Mexico to the region of the Great Slave Lake in Canada and from Pennsylvania and the Carolinas to west of the Rockies." http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article?tocId=9273235

--Lastly, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has established the National Bison Range refuge in Montana's Flathead Valley, which is west of the main spine of the Rockies. I'd hope they are establishing them in native habitat! They even have a photo of a bison standing in a stream (click on "habitats"). http://bisonrange.fws.gov/nbr/

So currently, my best guess is that bison occurred in low numbers west of the Rockies, with gaps in their distribution. I also seem to recall reading in Timothy Egan's book, "Lasso the Wind" that cattle were especially destructive to streams because they congregate in riparian areas and don't move, whereas bison tended to move away rather quickly. I wonder if this, rather than their absence, could account for cattle's destruction of Western wetlands.