A Taxpayer-Funded War Against Ranchers (PJM Exclusive)
There is a war going on in the West. It has nothing to do with guns and bullets. It’s an environmental war, declared by eco-activists against farmers and ranchers who work the land.
It’s not covered by the mainstream media. But environmental groups boast that their aim is to run ranchers off their land, put them out of business, and bar beef and other food from our tables. And the environmentalists get taxpayers to pay them for their attempts at destruction.
The tools they use are the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other acts, along with a small army of lawyers who find bureaucratic loopholes to bankrupt farmers and ranchers.
While ranchers struggle to pay attorneys to represent their interests in these lawsuits, environmental groups are getting paid by taxpayers. Even though the activists don’t win all of these cases, they are reimbursed for their attorneys’ fees through the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). The abuse of EAJA, where environmental groups collect up to $650 per hour for frivolous lawsuits, was covered recently by PJ Media.
“Essentially, these environmental groups are being paid to sue the federal government,” said Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen. “They file hundreds of lawsuits, and rather than fight the suits, the government often settles the case, agreeing to pay attorneys fees in the settlement.”
Here are some of their cases.
Wyoming sheepman Carl Larson and his family continue the operation founded by his grandfather 100 years ago. The operation is made up of private and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, which the family pays to use and maintain. Because of the land ownership in their area, the BLM land is critical to the operation. When the activist group the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) filed a lawsuit that would have stopped grazing on the grazing allotment, based not on proof of damage to the land but on procedural issues with the permit, the family was forced to intervene.
“Losing this permit would have been devastating to our family and our livelihood,” Larson said. “We intervened because WWP had requested a stay of any grazing on the allotment until all litigation was completed, which would have effectively put our family ranch out of business.”
The WWP could not show any proof that the Larsons’ use of their land was causing any damage, so after several months the request for a stay on grazing was denied. The litigation is ongoing, and some problems were found with the BLM’s permit renewal procedures. “We have absolutely no control over the BLM’s processes, but have to live with the consequences and had to spend $35,000 to keep our ranch,” Larson said. “There is no way to get that money back from the WWP, even though for the short term, we beat them.”
In addition to the cost of the litigation, the Larsons have invested a lot of money over the years in improvements to the allotment including fences, water developments, and bridges. “If the allotment were closed, it would be a major taking of private property rights and my family would lose its business,” Larson said.
Jordan Valley, Oregon, rancher Rand Collins was also forced to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the WWP that would have eliminated the family business that has been in the family for 46 years. In 1997, the group sued the BLM to eliminate grazing on 68 grazing allotments, including Collins’ allotment. “All of these allotments, like mine, have been grazed by livestock for over 100 years. Like the Louse Canyon Community allotment for me, the use of these allotments is necessary for the continued existence of our ranchers and way of life,” Collins said.
The WWP lawsuit claimed that the BLM had not completed the necessary paperwork under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for permit renewal, and requested that livestock be removed until that paperwork was complete. While the court agreed that the BLM had violated NEPA, livestock were not removed, but the case is ongoing.
“WWP’s website boasts that it wants to eliminate my livelihood and family, but because it cannot challenge me directly, WWP and other groups find errors in the bureaucratic process as a backdoor way to harm my legitimate use of the land I have loved for 46 years,” Collins said.
“So many times, these cases are not filed on anything substantive, but on paperwork and missed deadlines,” Budd-Falen explained. “It’s all on paper — nothing in the lawsuit even impacts the environment.”
Ranchers like Tim Lequerica, based in Oregon’s Owyhee River valley, were assured that their historic operations would be protected when Congress gave the river near Lequerica’s home its Wild and Scenic designation in 1984. That was put to the test, however, by litigation filed in 1998 by the WWP and the activist Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA), which joined WWP challenging the BLM’s management plan for the wild and scenic river.
The litigation claimed that cattle should not be able to get water from the river and requested that grazing be stayed or eliminated pending the outcome of the litigation. The river was the ranchers’ only source of water. Ranchers intervened, arguing that they would keep cattle from drinking from the river if they were provided alternative water locations. “Our issue was not whether we had to use the Owyhee River, we just wanted a source of water for our thirsty livestock,” Lequerica said. “Our argument was that if the court would allow us to install water pipelines and tanks on dry BLM lands, we would be happy to keep cattle from drinking in the river as the environmentalists wanted. The environmentalists wanted no water at all, which would mean our cattle would go thirsty.”
The ranchers spent $42,000 to participate in the litigation, and in the end, the court granted the ranchers’ requests. The ranchers were able to put in new pipelines and tanks to provide water for both livestock and wildlife. “However, because the BLM failed to jump through some procedural hoops with regard to the written wild and scenic river management plan, the federal government voluntarily agreed to pay ONDA and WWP $128,000 in attorney fees and costs. Thus, my money paid for every part of the litigation,” Lequerica said. “I paid my personal attorneys to represent me; my tax dollars paid the federal government and their attorneys who failed to do all the paperwork correctly; and my tax dollars paid the ONDA and WWP to sue the federal government.”
Millions have been spent on the reintroduction of Mexican grey wolves into southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, which started in 1998 as the result of environmental activist groups suing the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS). Today, very few wolves have survived in the wild, area wildlife is sparse, and livestock depredation is putting ranchers out of business. Since 2000, Gene and Ginger Whetten, of the Adobe Ranch in far southwestern New Mexico, have been living with dead and missing livestock, lost profits, and litigation caused by the wolves, and there’s no end in sight.
In 2007, the Whettens had nine wolves living right below the house, killing cattle every night. They estimate that they lost $100,000. “This year, we’ve found nine or ten dead calves, and pieces of 14 more. That doesn’t include those that you never see, that you just know are gone because a cow comes in with a tight bag,” Ginger Whetten said. “It’s been a big financial hit for us and an even bigger one for some of our neighbors who only run 50-100 head of cattle. When the wolves get in on them, it just wipes them out. It is heartbreaking to watch as they lose their livelihoods and way of life.”
Working and spending time together as a family brought the Whettens to the remote ranch, but much of that has been lost to the constant stress of the wolves. “The wolves are on our minds and on our property all the time. It’s not what we wanted for our family.”
To protect citizens like the Whettens, and others who feared for the safety of their families, Catron County, New Mexico, adopted an ordinance designed to give its citizens relief from wolves living in their front yards. “The federal government did not take any legal action against the county for the ordinance, and we felt we had a sworn duty to protect the health and safety of our citizens,” said Catron County Commission Chairman Ed Wehrheim. “The ordinance stated that if a wolf was harassing a person, the county would protect that person as allowed by the Endangered Species Act (ESA).”
In 2007, the radical activist group WildEarth Guardians (WEG) sued Catron County in federal district court claiming that the county ordinance violated the ESA. In the end, the court ruled in the county’s favor on all counts, and specifically held that the ordinance as written was lawful. Catron County spent over $100,000 in attorneys’ fees defending its ordinance. “Even though the suit was brought under the ESA, we cannot recover that money from the WildEarth Guardians,” Wehrheim said. “In contrast, they and other groups have filed countless suits against the government about the wolves, and are able to get their attorneys’ fees repaid.”
In another suit, the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) sued the FWS in 2001 to list slickspot peppergrass under the ESA. The FWS ultimately decided against listing the species as threatened or endangered, but agreed to pay the WWP $26,663 to reimburse their attorneys’ fees.
After this decision, a number of ranchers in the Mountain Home, Idaho, area, including Charlie Lyons and Ted Hoffman, came together with the state of Idaho to create a Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA), which was approved by the FWS under the ESA. The agreement, which was signed by many ranchers, included specific, on-the-ground actions ranchers and landowners agreed to take to protect the species. According to a 2009 report, the slickspot peppergrass had the highest recorded population numbers. “We believe these population counts show the actions in the CCA were working and making a difference,” Lyons and Hoffman said.
In 2004, the WWP sued again to force a listing under the ESA, the court agreed, and the species was listed. In 2007, the FWS withdrew that decision, based on the protection given by the CCA. The WWP sued again, and won. Following that decision, the governor of Idaho filed a suit contesting the latest listing, and that litigation is ongoing.
Due to the litigation, the CCA is useless and the faith and hard work that the landowners and permittees put into management for the plant is down the drain. No one can show that this plant is any better protected by some legal federal paper designation than it was by true on-the-ground management, Lyons and Hoffman said.
Ranchers have spent $30,000 in litigation, plus time and effort developing the CCA, on this issue. The environmental group WWP has received a total of $238,163 in taxpayer money in settlement agreements on this species. “WWP’s objective is to run ranchers off the land in the spring,” Lyons and Hoffman said. “If they are successful in their efforts, it would mean a death sentence to the slickspot peppergrass and ruination of our ranches.”
Southwestern New Mexico rancher, farmer, and Catron County Commissioner Hugh B. McKeen has been battling environmental activist groups and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for years, just to keep the family operation, established by his grandfather in 1904, in business. Today, the family’s farmland is at risk of being washed away because of a lack of forest health work, and the family is ten years into a lawsuit against the USFS regarding punitive cuts to his grazing allotment.
Because the endangered loach minnow has been found in the San Francisco River, the McKeens are no longer allowed to use equipment to maintain the river and its channel. The river is now aimed directly at the McKeens’ private land irrigated field, and the USFS is requiring a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis and Corps of Engineers permit before work can be done in the river. “They just don’t care,” McKeen said. “Part of my land has been destroyed — the floodplain is gone, so now the river is aimed right at my field.”
The problems with their grazing permit also involve the loach minnow. The activist groups the Center for Biological Diversity and the Forest Guardians (now known as WildEarth Guardians) filed a suit claiming that the USFS had not considered the impacts of grazing on two fish and a bird species and requesting that all livestock be removed from 42 allotments until the consultation process was completed. Ranchers intervened, spending about $100,000.
In the end, the court ruled that extra work would only be required on allotments where the fish are actually found. “Even though our attorneys stopped the groups from eliminating all grazing and then won most of the case on the merits, the federal agreement voluntarily agreed to pay the two groups $300,000 in tax dollars,” McKeen said.
The fish species were found on the McKeen’s allotment and private land, so the USFS built a fence to keep his cattle out of the river. Maintaining a fence along the river is difficult, and when the fence is down the cattle get in the river. In punishment, the USFS has cut the family’s grazing permit for 25 percent.
The McKeens suit against the agency has been ongoing for ten years. “Even if we win the suit, all I get are my cattle numbers back, no restitution, no compensation for lost income, nothing,” McKeen said. “They cut my numbers by 25 percent, reducing our income by 25 percent. No business can sustain that.”
Good article. This stuff has been going on for years and the federal agencies are chock full of New Agers and Earth Worshipers that are complicit in all this. But the worst offenders are our Senators and Representatives. They don’t get all those campaign contributions from the Trial Lawyers Association for nothing. Can you say legalized corruption?
Then you have guys like Ted Turner and others that buy up massive amounts of land, especially in New Mexico, and decide that wildlife is superior to human life. Some of them would like to basically depopulate the entire US from the Great Basin to the Mississippi River. I wonder how the Native Americans feel about that?
However, the real culprit in all this is the federal government. Most people don’t know that the largest landowner in the West is the government which took ownership of millions of acres of land and then, through the act of establishing the national forests, took millions more thereby dispossessing thousands of Hispanic and Native American residents of just New Mexico, not to say what happened in other states like Arizona, Nevada, etc.
So, yes, the ranchers and farmers are under a disability because they have been reduced to having to use publicly owned land to make a living because in a lot of areas of the west there isn’t much deeded land and a lot of what there is is tied up in the hands of multimillionaire hobby ranchers like Ted Turner.
Q: What’s the difference between an environmentalist and a developer?
A: The environmentalist already has a house in the woods.
I believe it was a former head of GreenPeace who declared that we needed to bring the Earth’s population of humans to under 100 million and do it as quickly as possible.
Yes, a good article. In addition to the environmental groups, the ranchers have to deal with multiple government agencies which on occasion have missions that oppose one another. The BLM says you have to build fences to contain your cattle in your allotment, while the Fish and Wildlife Service says you cannot have any fences because the reintroduced Bighorn Sheep have a hard time getting over the fences. One makes you put it up, while the other one takes it down. I can hardly wait for Government Health Care — efficiently run — yeah, right!!
Over the decades we have seen great progress made between corporate interest(s) and the need to protect and preserve our environment. This issue has also been very bi-partisan (until recent years) in Congress. From Roosevelt to Reagan, folks have seen the need for “balance”. Even the forest products industry and environmental groups have learned to work together over the years for mutual benefit. However, the issues concerning the ranchers in this article should be looked at as the situation sounds very serious indeed. It would be nice if they could pursue arbitration rather than the courts. It is not good when all the lawyers get involved either and that cannot be a good thing. I just hope they get some help with this situation and find some “common ground” to come up with a solution. Good Article, thanks.
When the goal is to remove humans from the landscape, there is no common ground to be found.
Hers is moldy-oldy for scott @ 28:
However, the real culprit in all this is the federal government. Most people don’t know that the largest landowner in the West is the government which took ownership of millions of acres of land and then, through the act of establishing the national forests, took millions more thereby dispossessing thousands of Hispanic and Native American residents of just New Mexico, not to say what happened in other states like Arizona, Nevada, etc.
Mike2, you’re telling the truth. The federal government owns over 80% of all the land in Nevada and over 50% of the land in several other western states as shown on this map. There are vast areas out west that have little economic value. However, if the land is suitable for grazing or mining, it has economic value. The federal government should sell that land. And to prevent the inevitable strawman argument, no one is talking about selling Yellowstone or any of the other national parks. I’m just suggesting that the land within states should belong to the states and their citizens, not the federal government.
Why not swap grazeable land with border Arizona ranchers and actually get a fortified border remiscent at least of the border between the Koreas? If Obama had marched in with some units from Fort Bliss and Twenty Nine Palms, Sarah Palin would not be gnashing her teeth about some blond lady named Jan.
My novel, “REVOLT” (www.revoltthebook.com) was originally drafted in 1997. The story is about a town in Idaho under assault by the overreaching federal government using land and animal issues as a weapon to drive them out of business. The people refuse to submit and a subsequent standoff and demonization occurs by the President and the MSM. The story involves a president who believes he is destined to rule the nation, using the opportunity to start his overthrow. Aided by a corrupt congress and a compliant media he begins to take the steps necessary to destroy America.
The story goes on from there involving the Russians, CIA and others. But the point of the book was that sooner or later Americans are not going to take anymore. Especially those out west who support their children and their children’s future by using the land.
It was supposed to be a work of fiction and I decided last year to publish it because I saw way too much happening that I had predict. Gird yourself, it will only get worse.
The sorry part of this is all government agencies protect their turf even if it hurts the people paying the bills. The National Park Service will not allow the Border Patrol to use motor vehicles in some areas along the border. In order to receive federal money colleges are supposed to allow military recruiters on campus, yet HEW continues to pay collages that violate this law. The lost is endless.
Much of the slick trick in the massive litigations against anything logging, ranching, grazing, and water use is not to prevent misuse or protect the environment. It is to make publicity for the Eco-Nazis so that with their tax protected status they can hustle donations from the trust fund babys who are being conned into thinking that they are saving the earth. The lawyers of the defenders of the earth justice whatever, acting as vigilantes against the fed, only need to start a suit, winning or losing is optional to the publicity. The eco-groups then rake in donations which are virtually unlisted income under tax exemptions. We, the tax payers, get to pay twice, for the harassment of ranchers, loggers, recreationalists, and miners, the eco-defenders groups get rich, and the trust fund babies get to feel righteous about ragweed, wolves, or saving the water.
The Irony of this tragic situation is that by harming mainly family farms, the environmental movement gives more power to a group which it hates far more than ranchers: Corporate agriculture.
Excellent point. The family ranchers actually give a damn about the land because they want it to be in good shape to hand down to their children/grandchildren. The corporate ranchers/farmers don’t care because caring is not profitable, and lawsuits are nothing more than fly bites to them. Like you said, the eco-bullies will not like what will come to replace the family ranch.
This is really a war against American agriculture. The wealthy yuppies who control the big American cities hence the American government do not want American farmers or ranchers to prosper. They think that using the land for agriculture should be forbidden. I see here in the East in Lancaster county where the rich yuppies are waging war against Amish farmers and others who raise crops and cattle in the county; they want to put them out of business with phoney campaigns like save the Chesapeake Bay (the playground of rich Washington insiders). They make up false arguments of how manure gets into the water and then flushes into the bay and upsets the millionaire Americans with their yachts in Annapolis and Eastern Shore. They really want the food for American to come from outside; so importing our food from Central and South America seem like good ideas to the rich yuppie Americanized lawyers who now reign supreme over the rest of us. Maybe when the American farmer stops producing food the urban eco warriors will find out what faminines are really like.
Why am I not surprised? The ambulance chasers have been doing this for quite a few years. In California there was a law firm we suspected of having their “victims” getting them selves arrested on drunk and release charges just to test the law enforcement procedures of various jurisdictions for civil rights violations. I would not be surprised if that trolling for lucrative clients does not happen in the health care industry too. No wonder a steak dinner costs 50 dollars, that American doctors earn four times the average income of a European doctor, because lawyers have to eat too. It’s the food chain life cycle for the American Bar Association, when there isn’t a victim, go out an create one.
If some family has been renting Federal land for a number of generations I think that the just thing to do is to give them the option to buy the land. And contrary to popular notions, ranches (unless the owners are total fools, in which case they won’t be in business long) in the western states don’t create unnatural changes in the environment. If they screw up the environment it means their livestock won’t have anything to eat.
And if you want to see wildlife, go to such a ranch. Its there in abundance. Cattle fill in the ecological niche that was formerly taken by the buffalo.
And as far as people suing them I think the law should be changed so that any “non-profit” that sues can’t collect any money from the federal government for attorney’s fees and also should be required to pay the attorney’s fees of anyone (including the government) when they sue and lose, otherwise they lose their non-profit status.
Wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out that BLM and other govt “workers” are deliberately messing up their paper work in order to give these so called “environmentalists” an opening to sue.
My moniker, Rancher, is in relation to what I once did for thirty years, not what I do now. Sheep ranching is become more and difficult in the southwest and in my small section of New Mexico it has become almost impossible. What was once a vibrant wool producing region has now become primarily cattle country. The reason is coyotes and our inability to poison them. Because you might occasionally kill a skunk or a rabbit the environmentalist made poisoning of coyotes illegal forcing ranchers to rely on trapping or hunting to control the population. Keep in mind that none of these critters are in any way endangered. It didn’t work, the sheep industry is dying, and now I work in a prison. Cattle ranchers aren’t immune; Calf predation by coyotes is now becoming an increasing problem. The irony in this is that cattle and sheep together are more efficient and beneficial to the health of the range than cattle alone. By getting rid of us they are actually harming the environment and now
The problem is that the environmentalists are not using their own money. Using the force and resources of the government to allow one set of citizens to harass another set of citizens is wrong. If the eco-commies feel so strongly about it, let them use their own resources and duke it out on a level playing field. This is just plain old tyranny.
Mary: You hit a home run. Eco lawyers and their many eco-organizations use federal tax dollars against Americans.
I would cut off all legal aid to eco-lawyers and institute loser pays in these cases.
Why as a nation do we allow these eco-lawyers and groups control our lives? They are ruining our agriculture and farming industries; they are making us unsafe and captives of foreign sources of energy; they are causing our economy to suffer-needlessly; and they are using the government against its own citizens.
What kind of a hold do they have on the Dems? Do they have pictures?
The war of the subversives against America has a very simple strategy: they create serious problems to each and every kind of activity (agriculture, manufacturing, services, production and distribution of energy, etc.)
In this way they destroy America from inside, they rip the fabric of the society, they enhance the elements of chaos.
They follow the Alinsky’s method, they overload the system with needs and requests, they cause the whole system to crack.
It’s the subversives’ strategy.
Our real problem is that nobody has taken it seriously until now.
There is only one question left: have we got enough time to save Freedom or the destroyers have already caused America to jump the cliff and we will be compelled to go through a long period of extreme poverty and stress before Freedom can reconquer the country ?
That’s the only question.
Is this part of a larger picture?
The war on prosperity!
Who are these men of lust, greed and glory? Rip off their masks and let’s see! But oh no that’s not right what’s the story? There’s you and there’s me…
Any chance of pursuing a class action suit on behalf of taxpayers against the US Government for its encouragement and support of this lawsuit adventurism by WWP? Even if what WWP is doing is technically legal it is still functionally defrauding the taxpayer.
So, they want to eliminate people in order to make a course correction for our environment? Did anyone ask what year it was when everything was in perfect environmental harmony on our planet? Environmentalism is a completely baseless pseudo-science. No one has the first clue whether we are ever correcting anything. We might as well believe in astrology.
At least half the problem would melt away if the government stopped paying these leaches their attorney’s fees. If they are that worried about these things they can just pony up their own cash and stop robbing the American tax payer.
Oh, and for the Greenpeace people who want the worlds population reduced to 1/60th of its current numbers I say let his group and his family lead the way. No monuments to them though because that would mar poor old Gaia.
Okay, we’ve identified the problem: self-anointed “environmentalists” and a virtual army of legalistic thugs are trampling on the rights of good Americans by using the law and taxpayer money to force social change that benefits only them and harms the rest of us. Judging from your comments above, we’re in agreement that what they’re doing is evil.
So now its time to ask the only question left to be answered: what hell are we going to do about it?
We could do what most of us have been doing: averting our gaze in helplessness, wringng our hands in dismay. Or, we could grow red in the face, shout about the naked injustice of it all and stomp our feet in frustration. I guess we (or the foolish among us) could grab our guns, challenge the government and go to war like they did in Waco. (I’ve gone to a shooting war once and I don’t mind telling you I don’t want to do it again.)
Or we could choke-off this massive injustice at its source: the U.S. Congress and the 50 State Houses. We have the power to do it. The Constitution enshrines that power. But it won’t be easy (the Founders designed it that way). First, we need to raise public awareness about the asault on the people who feed and clothe us. Start by printing this article and send it to any media you think might just use it. (Today I’m sending a copy to Western Horseman Magazine, for example.)
Then turn to our legislators. They made this mess. We need to hold their feet to the fire until they clean it up. If they won’t help, work to replace them by identifying someone who will. But before we bestowing your vote on any challenger, question him/her agressively on what they would do to turn this around. When we find one who sounds like he/she is as outraged as we are, give support with money or other help.
The time has past when we can stand back and let someone else do the hard work. Each of us needs to do his/her part. If we don’t, we’re going to lose this great land of ours. This November, and the one in 2012, you and I are going to be called upon to cast the most important vote we’ll ever make. Start now, time is growing short!
This is less about the environment and more about collecting legal fees. If these people were the least bit concerned about the environment they would pony up the money to contribute to a true conservation organization . . Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation etc etc etc. These type of conservation groups are primarily funded by hunters, fishermen and like minded people, and they do a thousand times more to preserve the environment.
The WWP and their ilk are only interested in the money they get from the taxpayers and the hollywood guilt ridden wealthy. Win or lose, the next day they are on the prowl for a new lawsuit without the least bit of concern for the very environment they were fighting about.
If the law gets changed to loser pays, these lawsuits will come to a screeching halt.
Agreed. The criminal link to the ‘lawyers in love with ecology’ is the tax exempt status. That status maintains that that group does not have political ambitions. Ha! What part of Defenders of the Earth, Greenpeace, ELF, or WWP is not political, and how do they defend their tax exemption, hence the inspection of their books?
#21 Dave Smith is right. We know what environmentalists are. They profess to love humanity but hate people. They use green religion as a cover for attacking capitalism and advancing collectivism. We know that the rules are stacked in their favour. The problem is how to change the rules. I don’t know anything about this Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), but why do environmentalists benefit from “equal justice” but ranchers don’t? If the government will fund the accusers, why won’t it fund the accused? Or maybe ranchers can hire someone to search for one of these lawsuits that can be defeated, or overturned. Then defeat it or overturn it.
I personally wouldn’t place much hope on politicians. I think efforts at public ridicule of this nonsense would be more effective. An embarrassed government official keeps his head down and might not help his fellow statists.
I wish you guys would try the following thought experiment: imagine what North America would be like without the hundred plus years of environmental activism.
Environmentalism is a lousy cause for a practical politician. Unlike immigration or drug abuse, government action actually makes things better. People look around and say, “Gee, things don’t look too bad. What’s with these goddamn tree huggers?” as if the tree huggers had nothing to do with why things don’t look too bad. In contrast, you can rile up the troops year after year about illegals or drug pushers or abortions since none of the steps you propose actually accomplish anything beyond making things worse. (Of course it certainly helps if your base is made up of natural born tools, but that’s a different matter.)
Everything has a cost and environmental activism has exacted a huge cost on water supplies, waste removal, automobile prices, gasoline prices, utility costs, wood product prices, and agricultural produce prices among them. Agreed that environmental activism has produced cleaner water and cleaner air, but when we push for nebulous benefits at tremendous costs, we have reached the point where more regulations cause more problems than they comparatively solve.
You’re forgetting something important by only looking at the subsidy and support the environmentalists get from the government. There’s also support and subsidies to the ranching communities by the government as well (in terms of water as well as agricultural subsidies). Routinely in Salt Lake City I’m asked to pay taxes so that ranchers and farmers on marginal lands can get water without which their business wouldn’t be economically viable.
In true mercenary arms dealer fashion, the government arms both sides of the conflict while claiming impartiality.
Something else to consider is that BLM land is checkerborded all over the Southwest, many ranches have BLM land, ours did, and that greatly effects what you can do with your ranch in terms of grazing and leasing. The purpose of this, or at least the result, is government control of not just the BLM lands but also the deeded lands interspresed among them. Ranches with BLM land invariably sell for significantly less than fully deeded ranches.
From #24: “I wish you guys would try the following thought experiment: imagine what North America would be like without the hundred plus years of environmental activism”:
I liked you suggestion so much, I tried a John Lennonist style “thought experiment” and imagined the following:
1. Highly compensated WWF execs flying wealthy contributors about the planet thinking themselves superior beings while spewing a carbon footprint I could only, well, Imagine.
2. Tree huggers chaining themselves to trees and spiking same in hopes of saving a tree from fulfilling its purpose, (tables and houses), and perhaps maiming those who are trying to actually earn a living. I know, just trying to live as One.
3. Old school conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited actually doing things for their feathery fellow travelers – quack, quack. I hope some day you’ll join them, #24.
4. Land owners planting trees for the future – not living just for Today -providing lots of stuff for us.
5. Cow owners – well – cowering under the weight of lawyers and enviromentalists – reaching to join hands and being met with derision.
6. Christians being taught true stewardship in their Religion too all the while being watched by that Cloud of Witnesses above them in the Sky.
You may say I’m just a tool (fool) of the old school conservation advocate group I used to be a member of – The Boy Scouts – where I learned to respect the land, open doors for other people, tie knots and carve stuff out of blocks of wood (from dead trees). But I think I’m just a guy with some big dreams – a dreamer really who is proud of my Country – the USA.
Here in Tejas our ‘wildlife conservationists’ ( they’re too scared to call themselves environmentalists ) are limited to using logical persuasion to convince land owners to listen to them. That’s the way it is when nearly all the land is privately owned. This makes them so much more reasonable.
It even makes them more logical. They tell us how often we can make more money with recreation on our land than with agriculture. Especially in the very hilly rocky areas. The sheep and goats really did do a lot of damage here in the 100 years they over-grazed the land. Venison provides a much better yield with so much less effort. Bird watchers will cough up extraordinary amounts of cash to look at tiny little birds most of us never notice. Then there’s photographers and fly fishermen. Good pay all.
Of course all such activity depends on a healthy economy where lots of folks have ‘disposable’ income. Something else we still have in Texas. I feel sorry for folks who allowed their state to be raped by DC.
#25 Not just ranchers, but all of agriculture in the US gets government subsidies. Same in Canada. Worse in the EU. It’s a silly state of international affairs that shouldn’t be, but is.
It may be a surprise to PJM readers, but in Canada the Federal Government doesn’t own the land-based natural resources in the ten Provinces (States). The ten Provinces have full ownership and control of timber, minerals, oil and gas. Canada has no resource ownership rights on Provincial land. Canada does have these rights for offshore oil and gas and does control the management of the Oceans and fish species that spend part of their life cycle in the Ocean (eg salmon,and steelhead). Canada also owns national Parks, Indian Reserves, military bases and the three Territories north of latitude 60.
So in the ten Provinces, Canada doesn’t figure in the management of land, timber, oil and gas or minerals. Each Province has its own set of laws and its own tenure systems. This arrangement was put together as the different parts of modern Canada agreed to form a new federal nation in 1867.
If you are looking to strengthen States Rights over natural resources, there is a precedent just North of you. Problem is, you would have to travel back in time about 140 years.
All you have to do is drive from LA to Sacramento. As you drive along you will see miles and miles of dead fruit tree, thanks to the Fed protecting some endangered species of minnow. Eventually these environmental activists will effect food supplies in this country. The result will be starvation, riots and revolution. Maybe this is their real intent?