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The Subsidized Destruction of the American West

May 8, 2024

Welfare Ranching – The Subsidized Destruction of the American West now available for download
May 1, 2024 - Jonathan Ratner

From time to time we will be putting out information on books and other resources, both new and old, of particular value and importance to understanding the issues that face our public lands and wildlife.

The first is the seminal work on public lands livestock grazing and its insidious web of impacts, Welfare Ranching - The Subsidized Destruction of the American West is now available for download, free, from Sage Steppe Wild's Resources.

Even though its out of print, paper copies of this masterpiece can be purchased from Abe Books or Amazon

Whereas the effects of urban sprawl and clear-cut logging are readily apparent, the far-reaching and devastating consequences of large-scale livestock production are less obvious to the untrained eye. In this excellent overview of the ecological and economic consequences of ranching in the arid Western United States, natural historian and photographer Wuerthner and environmental activist Matteson present a collection of impassioned essays by scientists, conservationists, and economists.

As writers like Edward Abbey, T.H. Watkins, and Carl Bock point out, livestock grazing has caused irreversible damage: it has degraded water quality, eroded the soil, introduced invasive plants, and endangered countless native plants and wildlife. Although the West accounts for less than three percent of U.S. meat production, livestock grazing occurs there on an enormous scale (a single cow uses one acre in Mississippi but 250 acres in Nevada). To provide enough space, three million acres of public land are being used by private ranchers with the help of government subsidies, a consequence of the ranching industry's political power. This oversized book has 175 full-color photographs plus a resource directory and a bibliography

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