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wildlife habitat, soil stability and livestock forage than conditions shown in the earlier pictures. And the records are by no means isolated occurrences.

These photographs deal far more directly with conditions on the land than do the numerical assessments and opinion questionnaires that are the basis for General Accounting Office reports to Congress. Equally compelling evidence of the improving health of the public rangelands comes from population trends of native wildlife. Huge increases this century are not the product of declining conditions on public lands, degraded riparian areas and bungled management but of substantial improvement. And these changes occurred in the presence of livestock grazing and despite increasing human population in the West.

Why the disparity between actual conditions on public rangelands and the negative depictions in many government reports? Subjectivity versus objectivity. Agency assessments are often driven by political and funding considerations. These agencies, much like special interest groups, owe much of their existence to the perpetuation of problems rather than to their solutions. Range condition methodologies are at best crude approximations; there is lack of consistency between agencies; reports are often colored by personal philosophy regarding grazing on public lands; and young professional resource managers are notoriously impatient and lacking in historical perspective. Often information bases are questionable abstractions far removed from the land and resources.

Admittedly there is much work yet to be done, but another seldom mentioned fact remains: grazing is low impact, low input, natural food production. Ranchers are producing food for people; they take care of their livestock and the land, whether private or public, because they care, but also because it is in their best interest.

If meat is raised in a feedlot there are enormous environmental consequences, including damage from intensive farming, fertilizers, pesticides, and increased use of fuel. All natural plants are removed for crop production, nutrients are taken from the soil, which is depleted, and waste products from the fattening cattle that should have gone back on the land causes a pollution problem in place. Natural grazing damages little and is based on a renewable natural resource that can be harvested in no other way.

Professional critics earn their living, and boost their ego and political power, based on a crisis. They can walk into the halls of Congress and be listened to even though reality is seldom discussed. Never mentioned is the fact that plants grow and produce tissue in excess of their own needs and this surplus organic material has to be periodically removed. If it is not, two things occur: nutrients that need to go back into the soil are tied up in litter and accumulation; and plants stagnate, grass is not healthy and they cannot thrive.

Doesn’t a lawn look better if it’s mowed? Grazing is a way of periodically removing the excess tissue. Fire is another. And fire, from the sagebrush up to the highest forest, has always been an important part of the natural system. Periodic burning stimulates, rejuvenates and controls balance between woody and non-woody plants. The non-woody plants are not killed by burning but the woody ones are set back temporarily which gives grasses and forbs an advantage, at least for a while.

It is ecologically and biologically proper that this country’s rangelands be used by livestock. Grazing takes very little from the public lands and when properly managed is good for plants, good for wildlife, and good for public range.

J. Wayne Burkhardt, Ph.D., is associate professor emeritus of range management at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has been studying western rangelands for more than 35 years. He and his wife Julie Briggs, a resource specialist, operate Ranges West Consulting from their home in Indian Valley, Idaho. This story is reprinted from RANGE, Spring 1991.