Credit: AP Photo/Ben Neary
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, now run by attorney William Perry Pendley, wants to take our nation back to the 1930s Dust Bowl.
That was when ranchers lorded over public land and their cattle grazed away the natural vegetation, destroying topsoil.
The bureau has scheduled meetings this month in Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming about “updating and modernizing regulations” and “improving permitting efficiency.”
The bureau administers almost 18,000 permits and leases for livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, grazing on 155 million acres of public land in the western United States.
Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, compared livestock grazing to “a slow and invisible cancer.”
Cattle, unlike bison, evolved in northern Europe where rain is plentiful. They are basically unsuited to the Dry West where sagebrush is sometimes the most common plant. Cattle like to gather in or near streams where they wallow in the water and manure.
Cattle have helped transform deep, narrow streams of the west into wider, warmer streams where silt smothers trout eggs and salmon eggs. Bacteria from the cows’ manure can […]
We do need a revolution like Bernie Sanders’ and Liz Warren’s or both of them together to stop Trump. I think they should get together and run together as one or the other for president and the other for vice-president. They may be able to reverse the horrific trend that has happened since Trump has become president. I am pretty sure together they could win and do the right thing to stop the insanity of Trupicans and all Republicans involved in the horrific things they have done.
Not that I condone Trump’s actions of exploiting our Public Lands and National Parks, but when there were millions of buffaloes roaming North America, weren’t they as destructive to our land, creeks, and rivers?
You express a pov that our civilization has reasoned for sometime that we are here to tame and improve on nature using our superior intelligence. These days of profit being the only thing monetizing “undeveloped” land is a high priority before the animal lovers and tree huggers stop them.
As for grazing animals destroying the land and water it is just the opposite as you can read here: https://managingwholes.com/grazing-heals-land.htm/ or https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/food/the-plate/2015/12/23/is-more-cattle-grazing-the-solution-to-saving-our-soil/