Rewild the West (7050)

The West’s greatest deforesters; the enemy of biodiversity … beef cattle! Last week this writer drove Route 84, a 45-degree NW angle road from Salt Lake City, to Boise, to Washington’s Tri-Cities. Along the way, we saw a few deer and 100,000 beef cattle (most steers, cows are trapped in stalls, living areas, for much of their lives). After the Pioneer’s initial deforestation of this corridor (logging, fires, clearing), cattle have roamed for a hundred years and nary, but a few conifers and deciduous trees have been allowed to grow: their seedlings candy to these beasts. Much of this corridor is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that controls use of 1/8th of the U.S.’s landmass. If 22 Western U.S. Senators (with 11 Governor’s support) would cease issuing grazing permits on publicly owned property and allow this land to naturally reforest, a great ocean of trees could cool America’s air flowing East (BC might also contribute greatly). It would create a carbon sink of grand proportions.

Scrub pine and cattle grass in the photo, the mountains with Douglas Fir and Sword fern, are less biodiverse than most deserts. Again, the Federal and State governments own and manage the majority of the West (the U.S. owns ~50% of the land area of the 11 contiguous Western states; States’ ownership pushes the percentage to 60%): livestock grazing, and Douglas Fir plantations, (100 million & 100s of millions) dominate. If politicians were serious about addressing global warming, they’d redirect Western land resource management practices, re-establish biodiversity, and cease their commercial exploitation of hundreds of millions of acres of public lands.