Public Lands Grazing in the West- Costs & Impacts

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For anyone interested....

If you ever wanted a primer or more information on grazing issues in the West, this guy Jonathan Thompson lays it out for us, concisely.

https://www.landdesk.org/p/cows-climate-and-public-land-grazing?triedSig...

He's a great writer. His most recent book "Sagebrush Empire" is a very high recommend, all about San Juan County, Utah (Bears Ears).  

He also wrote "River Of Lost Souls" about the Gold King Mine spill in 2015. I have that but haven't started it yet. He's been writing from southwest Colorado since 1996.

He's got a great blog at https://www.landdesk.org/    you can subscribe to to support his work. The wonderful Torrey House Press is his publisher. https://www.torreyhouse.org/

Bring back the bison.  

Ya mon. I like when they thin out the "stupid tourist" population in Yellowstone each year. I think you'd like this guy, Ken. 

Yep, we've known for years that large scale mass cattle farming ~ isn't so wise.

Bill Bryson's 'recent' book, The Body:  A guide for its occupants, mentions the amount of antibiotics that are put into cattle.  In 1977, people complained about them, however the cattle industry managed to keep the antibiotics in their cattle.  This wasn't for preventing bacterial problems, (because many antibiotics are ineffective at that, after too much use), but because the cattle get fattened up more.

This was curtailed a wee bit, in ...2017.  According to this article:  https://www.newsweek.com/after-years-debate-fda-curtails-antibiotic-use-...

  It's a start, I guess.  A bit late, imo.

An easy way to combat too many cattle covering too much land is to quit giving the ranchers your money at the grocery  store and restaurants. Simple. 

Not much grabs someone's attention more than when an income dries up.

Yeah, not eating beef goes a long way to helping. But, then the ranchers sell their picturesque spreads to condo developers. It's always something. 

Big discussion happening now in Utah about how much of our water goes to growing hay in the second driest state in the nation with giant lakes drying up. People are noticing finally. 

No meat for me over the last few years. 

 

In the SF Bay Area I note that the ranchers and the US Military have left us quite a bit of open space that may have otherwise been turned into residential sprawl. 

 

Hmmm...