The new range wars: Could food supply follow manufacturing across borders?

Free grass and range wars make up much of our western lore and literature. Here in Idaho, our heritage is deeply rooted in the livestock industry. Our current Lieutenant Governor’s grandfather, Andy Little, ranged more than 120,000 sheep from Emmett to Cascade. Former state Senator, Governor, and U.S. Senator Len Jordan supported his family by running sheep out of Kirkwood Bar below Hells Canyon during the Depression. This heritage lives on for many of us who grew up in rural areas of the West.

In her book, “Life Below Hells Canyon,” Grace Jordan describes those Depression years between 1933 and 1940. “The canyon could make or break a man… The opportunities here were unusual, because of the favorable climate and the good range… The stockman could have the range as long as he paid his fees and used it right,” she writes. And this was the way things stood for ranchers who grazed the public lands through much of the 20th century.

Free range was one primary factor in the development of the West. Ranchers could hold title to the home ranch in a fertile valley and still run their cattle and sheep on the un-deeded marginal land surrounding the valley. However, free range brought with it a number of problems. Foremost were overgrazing and disputes over range rights. These problems were eventually ironed out through a system of grazing allotments on public lands administered by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior.

Ranchers paid a fee for a set number of cattle or sheep to graze within a prescribed area each year. Cattlemen turned their cattle out at the beginning of the growing season and gathered them in the fall. They belonged to a Cattlemen’s Association that set rules and hired riders to look after their herds. Sheep men herded their flocks to summer pasture and herders watched over them throughout the season. They belonged to a Wool Growers Association similar to the Cattlemen’s Associations. This system supplied an abundant source of food and fiber for a growing nation.

This picture has changed in recent times. A stockman can no longer be assured of continued use of his range “as long as he paid his fees and used it right.” A consortium of environmental zealots, lawyers, bureaucrats, and judges seem to have taken over the system. They use court orders to set the rules that were traditionally set by stakeholders and the Agriculture and Interior Departments. Their goal seems to be a ban on all livestock grazing on public land. They use a variety of questionable environmental justifications to close off vast tracts of territory. The desert tortoise in Nevada, the bird sanctuary in Oregon, the sage hen in several western states, the caribou in Washington, and most recently, the big horn sheep in the Payette National Forest, to cite a few. In some extreme cases these rule changes have exploded into events reminiscent of the range wars of generations past. The Bundy Ranch roundup in Nevada and the recent dust-up in Burns, Ore., are prime examples. One person dead and several folks in jail demonstrate the gravity of these situations.

A more insidious result of these changes is the slow strangulation of ranching in the United States. It doesn’t take a team of economic experts to figure this out. Ample anecdotal evidence exists right around you. Visit your local dry goods store and see how many made in the USA wool products you can find. Go to the meat case in your favorite supermarket and see how many sheep products there are. While you’re at it, check the labels on the beef products that say Product of United States or Canada. Better yet go up to Rathdrum and sit in Stein’s parking lot. Count the Canadian cattle trucks turning off Highway 41 onto 53 headed for the slaughterhouse in Pasco. Unload those speeding trucks and round up their cargo into an ambling cattle drive and you’d create a scene that would rival anything observed in the days of the Chisholm or Goodnight trails. We hear a lot these days about the danger of our manufacturing moving out of country. Could our food supply be next?

Bob LaRue is a Hauser resident.