No Need to Talk

No Need to Talk
Stephen Capra 

In the wilderness lies the key to life. It is filled in perfect balance with the ingredients that sustain and allow life to be free. At least that is when wilderness is allowed to be wild. In 1964, when the debate over wilderness hit its zenith, one of the compromises that had to be accepted was allowing cattle to graze in wilderness. In 1990, the passage of the Arizona Wilderness Act added language to ensure ranchers more security on public lands and prevented much of the buying out of grazing allotments, which many in conservation saw as the promised land of allowing nature to regain control and to heal the lands and waters despoiled by cattle. 

It’s defies logic that in 2014, the ranchers are finding themselves embolden with their power in states like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada. Their personal war on wolves  has worked.    Watching elected officials bow and scrape to their endless demands and Wildlife Services   endless mission of destruction at the behest of cattle interests means that science continues to lose to a mindset of evil. 

Some, like the new Executive Director of the Nature Conservancy, Mark Tercek and his questionable   scientist Peter Kareiva, would want you to believe that nature now must be driven by eco-pragmatism, which means nature must be driven by human needs.  Ranchers not only co-exist, but thrive, in such a distorted reality.   Let’s face truth, man has never done a good job of managing wildness. The management of wildness for man currently is a trajectory to destruction.  However, it is the knowledge we absorb from nature that leads us on a path to sustainability. 

Ironically, our federal agencies that are charged with managing our lands are far too often the very people that turn a blind eye to the destruction that grazing our public lands does to wildlife and the land. The Bureau of Land Management has been referred to for years as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. Yet, despite their generous deference to ranchers, they are despised by the Cattle industry, who acts as though any regulations are simply too many for this select group of so-called “rugged individualists.” Such fantasy, allows people to believe they are above the law, therein lies the danger that we see played out by the likes of Cliven Bundy and by some in Utah who seem determined to steal the lands that are owned by all Americans. 

 There are solutions to the rancher problem. They begin with an aggressive campaign by the conservation community, one that is organized and committed to by all. It is also one in which our efforts at wilderness are now mired in the type of compromise that leaves us with protected lands that are slowly destroyed from the inside by grazing. In New Mexico, we faced a problem for many years in our efforts to protect the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. We attempted to gain a compromise with ranchers on acreage. For many years we looked at protecting 225,000 acres. Yet, the ranchers said no to our effort. At that point we decided to triple the acreage we wanted, and we succeeded. Now, that did not end grazing, but it made clear to ranchers that if they simply say No to all efforts of compromise on federal lands they will lose. Taking a tough stance with ranchers is important not just for legislation, but for their efforts of wolf killing. 

We know that within the sphere of rural communities, wolves are not well liked and are prickled by folklore and the ideology of generations of ranchers. Any attempt to organize these communities will equal small success.  Our ability to unite the urban centers of Rocky Mountain States is powerhouse in stopping the slaughter of wolves. The constant pressure that can be applied to not only federal agencies but  state elected officials and state Game and Fish Departments must be ongoing and aggressive. 

What remains   so shocking   are the attitudes of local and state elected officials who continue,  to be in lock step with ranching interests. How can wolves in the wild, present such fear, when   they are providing such a benefit to the water, land and sustainability of other wildlife populations? 

The answer is ignorance, custom and culture. It should be viewed through the lens of racism, for with racism we face the same ignorance and culture. Like racism, it must be fought aggressively and those that choose to continue with hatred and fear must be ostracized, and educated. They must be reeducated, giving them the will to change and accept a new reality. That insightful reality is sharing the land with wolves and reducing their impact though the voluntary selling of grazing allotments. 

For more than two hundred years ranchers have lived in the West. In that time Native Americans were robbed of their land, bison brought to the brink of extinction, grizzly bears saw their range destroyed and wolves were wantonly extinguished   all for the sake of cattle and greed. If we are to make peace with wild nature, there must be an aggressive effort to stop the malice that ranchers have spewed upon the land. 
We can find some common ground, but we cannot move forward while the land is being degraded and our brother the wolf is being slaughtered. The West is my home, with the time I have left, I want to see the lands healing and the cattle moving on and the wolf thriving. 

“Nature binds Truth, Happiness and Virtue together as by an indissoluble chain.” Marquis De Condorcet
No Need to Talk
Stephen Capra 

In the wilderness lies the key to life. It is filled in perfect balance with the ingredients that sustain and allow life to be free. At least that is when wilderness is allowed to be wild. In 1964, when the debate over wilderness hit its zenith, one of the compromises that had to be accepted was allowing cattle to graze in wilderness. In 1990, the passage of the Arizona Wilderness Act added language to ensure ranchers more security on public lands and prevented much of the buying out of grazing allotments, which many in conservation saw as the promised land of allowing nature to regain control and to heal the lands and waters despoiled by cattle. 

It’s defies logic that in 2014, the ranchers are finding themselves embolden with their power in states like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada. Their personal war on wolves  has worked.    Watching elected officials bow and scrape to their endless demands and Wildlife Services   endless mission of destruction at the behest of cattle interests means that science continues to lose to a mindset of evil. 

Some, like the new Executive Director of the Nature Conservancy, Mark Tercek and his questionable   scientist Peter Kareiva, would want you to believe that nature now must be driven by eco-pragmatism, which means nature must be driven by human needs.  Ranchers not only co-exist, but thrive, in such a distorted reality.   Let’s face truth, man has never done a good job of managing wildness. The management of wildness for man currently is a trajectory to destruction.  However, it is the knowledge we absorb from nature that leads us on a path to sustainability. 

Ironically, our federal agencies that are charged with managing our lands are far too often the very people that turn a blind eye to the destruction that grazing our public lands does to wildlife and the land. The Bureau of Land Management has been referred to for years as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. Yet, despite their generous deference to ranchers, they are despised by the Cattle industry, who acts as though any regulations are simply too many for this select group of so-called “rugged individualists.” Such fantasy, allows people to believe they are above the law, therein lies the danger that we see played out by the likes of Cliven Bundy and by some in Utah who seem determined to steal the lands that are owned by all Americans. 

 There are solutions to the rancher problem. They begin with an aggressive campaign by the conservation community, one that is organized and committed to by all. It is also one in which our efforts at wilderness are now mired in the type of compromise that leaves us with protected lands that are slowly destroyed from the inside by grazing. In New Mexico, we faced a problem for many years in our efforts to protect the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. We attempted to gain a compromise with ranchers on acreage. For many years we looked at protecting 225,000 acres. Yet, the ranchers said no to our effort. At that point we decided to triple the acreage we wanted, and we succeeded. Now, that did not end grazing, but it made clear to ranchers that if they simply say No to all efforts of compromise on federal lands they will lose. Taking a tough stance with ranchers is important not just for legislation, but for their efforts of wolf killing. 

We know that within the sphere of rural communities, wolves are not well liked and are prickled by folklore and the ideology of generations of ranchers. Any attempt to organize these communities will equal small success.  Our ability to unite the urban centers of Rocky Mountain States is powerhouse in stopping the slaughter of wolves. The constant pressure that can be applied to not only federal agencies but  state elected officials and state Game and Fish Departments must be ongoing and aggressive. 

What remains   so shocking   are the attitudes of local and state elected officials who continue,  to be in lock step with ranching interests. How can wolves in the wild, present such fear, when   they are providing such a benefit to the water, land and sustainability of other wildlife populations? 

The answer is ignorance, custom and culture. It should be viewed through the lens of racism, for with racism we face the same ignorance and culture. Like racism, it must be fought aggressively and those that choose to continue with hatred and fear must be ostracized, and educated. They must be reeducated, giving them the will to change and accept a new reality. That insightful reality is sharing the land with wolves and reducing their impact though the voluntary selling of grazing allotments. 

For more than two hundred years ranchers have lived in the West. In that time Native Americans were robbed of their land, bison brought to the brink of extinction, grizzly bears saw their range destroyed and wolves were wantonly extinguished   all for the sake of cattle and greed. If we are to make peace with wild nature, there must be an aggressive effort to stop the malice that ranchers have spewed upon the land. 
We can find some common ground, but we cannot move forward while the land is being degraded and our brother the wolf is being slaughtered. The West is my home, with the time I have left, I want to see the lands healing and the cattle moving on and the wolf thriving. 

“Nature binds Truth, Happiness and Virtue together as by an indissoluble chain.” Marquis De Condorcet