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Keeping Cattle on Public Land Is Bad for People, Cows, Wildlife, and the Planet

From Erika Schelby, Independent Media Institute, Earth/Food Life
October 2023

Ranching may be forced to change under the iron laws of climate breakdown. The number of animals raised may become much smaller. Beef could soon be a far more expensive food, something that will be indulged in every now and then.

grazing Cattle

When conservationist Aldo Leopold persuaded the U.S. Forest Service in 1924 to establish the nation’s first federally approved wilderness of more than 500,000 acres around the headwaters of the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico, he did not anticipate that this priceless pristine land would be invaded by cattle. This problem would take root around the mid-1970s after a bankrupt rancher “abandoned his cattle in the wilderness.”

Similarly, he did not foresee the shrinking of global wilderness areas, the issuing of destructive grazing permits for 1.5 million cattle on U.S. public lands, or the challenges posed by planetary climate change.

To this day, unbranded feral livestock in the Gila Wilderness cause extensive damage to a delicate riparian ecosystem and the land and wildlife on this protected federal terrain.

Livestock waste also harms the Southwest’s last free and untamed stretch of a major river—the Gila, a tributary of the Colorado River. As soon as this wild stream leaves the Gila Wilderness and continues its long journey to Yuma, Arizona, where it joins the Colorado River, every drop of it is spoken for.

Native Americans who have lived along the river course for 2,000 years had to compete with European settlers to access this water. Eventually, the competition for it became one of the most enduring struggles in developing the arid Western U.S. The water demand has intensified under the influence of the ever-rising population in the American Southwest, paired with severe droughts experienced in this region.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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