[Ski]

Well... you've obviously chosen to misunderstand/misinterpret/misconstrue my comments here, and you are completely off the mark. Clearly then, there is no point at all in attempting to continue any sort of dialog or discussion with you - the noise inside your own echo chamber apparently doesn't allow you to hear what I've been saying here for twelve years. As for "mysticism", it has no place in public lands management policy. None.

[Sculpin]

Now that we are all in agreement about the moral imperative of re-establishing wild wolves, we can move on to the solution. End Cattle Grazing on Public Land A survey of Washington state grazing land in the 1870s led one expert to describe the range as "full" and much of it severely degraded. An additional 150 years of grazing has only made it worse, with much of the prime land now useless due to cheatgrass. In Oregon and Washington, as of 1989 (maybe you can find a more recent study), approximately 43% of grazing land was public, with the rest privately owned. With beef production being 4th in state agriculture in terms of revenue, when you do the math, you come up with public land grazing being at most 2 to 3% of our economy. Public land grazing occurs under leases that cost ranchers almost nothing. On state trust lands, intended to provide funding for public schools, grazing fees return almost nothing. You can find where land managers claim that cattle grazing improves the range. Nothing could be further from the truth. Forage plants are greatly reduced and replaced by toxic or invasive plants. There is an obvious reason why re-introduction of antelope has failed. When conflicts occur between wild predators and cows, those conflicts should be occurring on private land. The rules that currently govern wolf culling make sense on private land, but should not be used on public land. The ranches that run cattle on public land are not subsistence operations, nor are they "family farms" in any sense. For the most part, these are wealthy individuals running hundreds or thousands of cattle. A few hundred range riders and cowboys will be displaced and be forced to get a different job at the craft brewery that just opened in town. The same paper from 1989 also contains an assessment of range quality. With four categories - excellent, good, fair, and poor - the study found percentages of roughly 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, respectively. Where do you put the cows? On land already degraded, knowing it will get worse? On the 10% that still miraculously contains a few forage plants? There is no place for these cows! Who Pays for Maintenance of Public Land? There is this myth that if the land does not generate revenue, taxpayers must assume the burden of maintenance. The entire equation is wrong. Public land does not need maintenance, the humans who would abuse it do. This is law enforcement and that is a burden that should be borne by state and local governments. Any other amenities that benefit humans are also treated as human problems, not maintenance problems associated with the land itself. Unless there is a human problem to solve, just leave the land alone. Lewis and Clark crossed the Mississippi and gazed across a landscape filled with wild animals, herds of bison and elk that stretched over the horizon. Fifty years later, those herds were gone. Are they gone forever? That is partly up to you. By removing cows and severely restricting hunting, we could have those herds back again on our public lands. It is what I want, and I own those lands!

[pcg]

[Ski]

The herds of bison disappearing from the American landscape had nothing to do with cows, or livestock grazing. The United States Forest Service was established to provide "the greatest good for the greatest number over the long term" (I may be paraphrasing Gifford Pinchot there) and was intended to provide for resource extraction, which includes grazing. The issue of grazing fees on publicly owned lands is tangential to the subject. The issue has been raised in this thread innumerable times. Write to your member of Congress about it - it doesn't have anything to do with wolves.

[treeswarper]

Who is the author of that tidbit about grazing? Thousands of cows? Big ranching operations? I find this hard to believe. I've lived in these areas for some time and the allotment holders hardly fit this description. I can only think of one, and they do not run thousands of cows and are wealthy due to having a massive fruit business. I can't remember any other wealthy ranchers with allotments. My uncle had a small herd and a grazing allotment on FS ground. He was so wealthy that he picked apples every year to supplement all that cow money.

[Ski]

[monorail]

Actually, Len McIrvin runs between 6000 and 7000 cattle. https://www.capitalpress.com/state/washington/a-family-tradition-of-efficiency/article_51434e9c-c122-5d16-a8be-9de5aaa59d59.html Of the 30 wolves killed by WDFW, 26 were on McIrvin's behalf.

[Ski]

.... and that proves what, exactly? It's been almost three years since McIrvin's name was brought up in this thread. Last time it resulted in a WSU staffer losing his job, and a whole lot of people with egg on their faces. Really want to go down this path again?

[Anne Elk]

[Ski]

^ and that line there out of Genesis gets right to the crux of the problem - not just with wolves, but with the trees and the fish and pretty much anything else you can think of - nothin' quite like a good dose of some religious dogma to really get things irrevocably screwed up. About four feet to my left is a bookshelf and on it there's a first edition copy of Sir John Hunt's The Conquest of Everest. It wasn't enough to just gain the summit - it had to be conquered. Only within the last few decades have we been able to see past the ends of our own noses, and through the fallacies of the rubbish like Anne quoted just above from the Old Testament. It's quite possible that it's beyond our capacity to fix all the damage we've done. That does not necessarily mean that the effort should not be made, but it should be understood that, in the words of the late Harry Cody, District Ranger, Randle Ranger District, Gifford Pinchot National Forest: "Sometimes the best course of action is no action at all."

[treeswarper]

Did I miss something? I saw no mention of running cows on FS land in that article--no mention at all of running thousands of cows on an allotment. I saw mention of a circle, which to me, means an irrigated pasture with a circular sprinkler system. I saw mention of a feedlot, which definitely is not an allotment. A feedlot is that smelly place you drive by. A feedlot is corrals chock full of cattle being fattened up. Usually there is no green to the place. Sculpin, what is your expertise on ranching? Just curious, not meaning to insult you. Were you brought up around it? Lived amongst it? Please prove that thousands of cows are on an ALLOTMENT in the Kettle Falls area. I seriously doubt that is true. I do know that there have been a couple of wolf attacks on cows on PRIVATE land. Of course, don't let facts get into the way of emotions.

[Sculpin]

[Sculpin]

[Brian R]

[Jake Neiffer]

Cows and soil building are the the trendiest thing going in climate change mitigation currently. Its not the cow- its the how. The first photo is stocked at 4X greater on the left. https://www.planet-tech.com/blog/land-restoration-holistic-management