Who Owns the West?
Isn't this just a rhetorical question?
Here on Substack you can get into some interesting exchanges with people of differing viewpoints. You do have to put up with ad hominem attacks, strawman arguments, and a good number of people who don’t even listen to what you are saying preferring their prepared talking points.
In one case I was arguing about the viability of some ranches in the American West. We produce about 15% of the country’s beef on 40% of the land in 10 Western states (excluding Montana). The reasons are straight forward most of the territory gets less than 20 inches of precipitation a year and much of it suffers from a growing season of less than 120 days. It is a high and rocky country that hadn’t been homesteaded already. BY 1932 Herbert Hoover tried to grant the remaining land to the states. The states turned it down as it was overgrazed and managing it would have cost them money. (I write about the history of land in the West in the article linked below…)
Land in the West
The history of the American West is resplendent with conflict over the land and who has the right to own it and use its resources. With the recent passing of the fourth anniversary of that awful episode of January 6th I would like to explore some links between the two.
I suggested that in some parts of Utah where a cow-calf unit needs a square mile of grazing to feed for a season may not be the best use of the land. The response was, ‘what else would we do with the land’? That the land had always been grazed before the settlers arrived. The question answers itself. We return it to whatever was grazing there before. This probably involves the deer and the antelope roaming.
In another friendlier discussion a conservation-minded person was talking about the revenue and jobs created by public lands. He also offered up the view that we needed to offset the costs of conserving the land. I understand these attempts at economic justification for conserving our public lands. That is the language of business.
I fear also that we have been hoodwinked into negotiating on enemy territory. I am always troubled with the idea that wilderness and wild lands must always be reduced to some economic cost-benefit analysis. That thinking is what will propel the looting of the West that sits now like a pending storm. Where today’s administration literally refers to public land as an asset on the country’s balance sheet.
How do we put a price on a hike in the mountains, a view of mountains across a pristine lake, or the quiet solitude of a mountain meadow in summer? Americans, indeed all humans, need and appreciate wonder.
I am struck with the inherent dichotomy that the great outdoorsman himself Teddy Roosevelt didn’t make these kind of economic arguments. We know of his efforts to create the first National Park at Yellowstone.
Finally, given that before we 'tamed the west' it existed at no cost to anyone and to the benefit of many. We manage it because we are here and wish to use it or wish it would leave us alone. We are bearing the costs of our own making. Costs we should be happy to bear.
My problem in today’s world is that I refuse to adhere to the ‘sides’ in these arguments. There is the side that believes that federal land belongs to the states and should be sold to private individuals and companies absolutely. That any attempt to manage the land for conservation or multiple uses is an anathema to this western mythology.
Then there are the environmentalists, which I tend to cleave more closely to, that used to say “no moo in ‘92”. That called for the removal of all livestock from federal lands.
There are all sorts of uses of federal land that I find disagreeable. Off-road vehicle use, destructive grazing, the Mining Act of 1872, ponds of cyanide in the Mohave desert, the scarring of the landscape with oil extraction, clear-cut logging.
However we all have to get along and so I recognize that we can have areas of off-road vehicle use and trade this off against keeping areas more pristine for example.
Near me there are areas of the forest where motorbike and side-by-sides are allowed on trails set aside for such enthusiasts. Some double as hiking trails. I find however they make poor hiking trails. Some motorcyclists don’t stick to the trails and create ‘more challenging routes’ straight up hillsides leading to erosion and dangerous hiking conditions. Then there is the snarling of the engines which I find disturbs the solace I seek in the woods. When I have encountered motorcyclists I have found them polite and friendly, which of course I return as goodwill as all part of rubbing along together.
All of this requires management and, because some people don’t think the laws apply to them, law enforcement. I am old enough to remember when forest and park rangers did not carry handcuffs and guns. Now they have law enforcement as part of their mission. Even so they have a difficult time keeping track of activities across millions of acres.
Compromise
This has become a dirty word these days. We have become so polarized that each side of any given argument feels they have the power to have their way completely. Now bear with me because the next two sentences are guaranteed to make sure that nobody reads past them.
Today we are in the grip of the right which sides with the wealthy and oligarchs and preaches cruelty as a virtue. Before that we had to deal with uncompromising cancel culture and some extreme environmentalists. The pendulum swings though one must wonder why it must swing so far each time. I guess that makes me a centrist which today is probably the universally reviled category.
I think that ranchers do have a role in conservation just as hunters and fishermen/women do. They can be effective stewards of the land.
Now if you have made it past the above sentences I will want to challenge some with a recommendation. Read the subStack
. Keely is an activist for the farming and ranching community. She is probably very effective. My discourse with her has indicated she is not interested in compromise (she is an activist) she replies to my comments as if she has not read them only assuming anyone who opposes what she says opposes her on all grounds. She has a take no prisoners approach which probably helps garner a large audience but does not seem conducive to seeking solutions. Here is one of her better pieces…
I personally believe if all we read is what makes us feel good we are not learning. She writes well and tells interesting stories. Frustratingly she sometimes tells half-truths and of course is slanted to her viewpoint which is of course her right. Not always easy to read but she is doing some real reporting.
Recently she wrote about the buyout of some farmers and ranchers on Point Reyes near the National Seashore. I cannot pretend to know the whole story here but in the end a deal was struck where the Nature Conservancy bought out these local farmers and ranchers. These ranchers and farmers were pressured by increasing pressure from an environmental group who objected to the impacts on the environment and the Thule Elk in particular from these farmers and ranchers.
I can believe that although the Nature Conservancy offered a way out, these farmers and ranchers took the offer as a last resort and with differing levels of resentment.
From Keely’s standpoint this was a bunch of urban lefties that wanted these people out so they could enjoy their seaside playground. Here is where I caught up on Keely’s article. I encourage you to read it.
And here is a piece written by
on the same subject from another point of view.
For me the pertinent point is that there was fear the land could be offered up to developers. In which case the whole argument may come down to a dispute as to who the buyer is. It is of course much more complex than that. Point Reyes has become a nexus of urban-rural conflict which is playing out increasingly across the country as it grows and expands.
Mythology
The mythology of the west is strong. It is tied up with our own sense of independence represented by tough pioneers, farmers, ranchers, loggers and trappers. We have all been taught to honor or worship them through our taught history, movies, television, books, songs, and stories.
William Kittredge, a former rancher from Eastern Oregon, writes eloquently about Western land and mythology. He grew up on the largest cattle ranch, purportedly, in the world in eastern Oregon. He writes in Who Owns the West.
Westerners should revere hay-camp cooks, and school teachers and florists and buckaroos and barbers and haberdashers. They did endless work, they took care, they were the people who invented civilization; theirs was a tradition of civility.
Those men who came north with French (Pete), the first buckaroos in the that country—Tebo, Chino, and Chico— horseback artists who brought the rawhide riata and the Spanish silver sided bits, quick-handed men who never dreamed they could own much beyond a saddle and a bedroll and a good pocket knife, they were our nobility; like old man Dollarhide. I think, they dreamed of capability and beauty. They knew better than to imagine you could ever own anything beyond a coherent self.
Those men, and the men I rode with on those deserts when I was a boy, lived in an ancient horseback world that is mostly gone. The nineteenth century lasted in our part of the universe until the spring of 1946, when my grandfather traded off some two hundred matched teams for a fleet of John Deere tractors. Everybody thought it was a bold step into the future. We didn’t know we were losing our ancient proximity with animals, with running horses. The shadows of clouds went on swiftly without us.
We have a mythology problem that persisted long before Kittredge wrote this in 1993 and continues to this day. Indeed his book ‘Who Owns the West’ seems as if it were written today.
This is used effectively by the advocates of these types in the American west. Here is an example…
What we have are some very wholesome photos of people in cowboy hats. The text is essentially true. Wilderness is an invention in the sense that we have a law to preserve one type of it. The land was actively cared for and managed for thousands of years. The rest is hogwash.
The people she is referring to are of course Indians (or native Americans if you prefer). The Wilderness Act does not, however, erase people. It allows many of the same activities the Indians engaged in, living in the landscape, hunting, fishing, and hiking. The people that were erased from wilderness were erased by the settlers and the government. These settlers who erased the people may well be the ancestors of some of the people in the pretty pictures.
And finally the whole quote ignores the history of the people’s interaction with the land. In fact it wants to confuse Indians and cowboys as the same people in her twisted historical narrative. As a piece of rhetoric it is as deftly written as it is disingenuous. But it works because it twists those myths that we have such an emotional affinity to.
I return to William Kittredge’s paeon to “hay-camp cooks, and school teachers and florists and buckaroos and barbers and haberdashers” as people to revere. These ranchers and farmers are just another category of workers. We don’t make movies about the long gone haberdashers or butter churn makers, why the disappearing cowboy? Why are they afforded special sympathy?
I am not looking to put these folks out of business. They perform as valuable a job as anyone in the economy. Some have been valuable in the conservation of our western lands and ecosystem as well. (Ranch land is not condo land.) But just as I have to put up with noisy motorcycles they too should make some accommodations. If however those accommodations are created to force them out merely for the sake of their removal we should all pause and think whether this is right. I personally don’t think it is.
(As a disclaimer I am using Keely as an example. I chose her because I respect her work even as I disagree with some of her conclusions. I am not trying to demonize her.)