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Wildlife: An American Ideal & Her Values: Continued: #3

CHANGES NEEDED TODAY:

Going back and forth between all these Agricultural interests shows there is a common bond to change National Lands into WELFARE PROGRAMS. The Department of Agriculture through the Forest Service, including the Bureau of Land Management are willing to eliminate all National Forests from Wilderness Status before America wakes up to their dastardly deeds. They do this to pay off politcal favors and for election funds that high profits from timber gives encumbants.

For instance, a Paper Mill can take the profits from one tree they have made into toilet paper and donate $20,000 in soft money to the re-election of Max Baucus for instance. Civilians, going door to door trying to off-set such a singular donation have to go to thousands of homes to get the job done. The job, never gets done. The politician is re-elected by a single tree. If not one, how about the profits from just 10 trees? So when a politician such as George Bush starts off to be president with Sixty Five Million Dollars, you can now understand where that soft money comes from and how Special Interests are able to do it.

Federal trappers are hired to kill wildlife that competes with special interests. The problem with Federal Agencies that get to spend public money to exterminate valuable public assets is that they go to any means to perpetuate themselves. Once these Federal Agencies are conceived and born they are almost impossible to stop or disband. They are the closest things in the universe that may have solved the secrets of perpetual motion.

COMMON SENSE:

Private Agriculture is not a healthy process on public lands. The filth, disarray of road construction practices, sheep, cattle, timbering, placer-mining and open pit mining is a mess, that is worse than a city dump. Ponds and streams are trampled by cattle where thousands of assorted examples attest to the carnage. No one appreciates fishermen are investing between $40 to over $250 each fishing day. Outdoor Recreation leaves when the habitat and water quality disappear.

In the valley along the Salmon River, 50,000 fishermen spend between $47.50 and $250 dollars chasing trout and steelhead; is an average indicator of $148.75 for each. Multiply only 50,000 fishermen for only two rivers, (The Snake & the Salmon) which is a low figure, this amounts to Seven Million Four Hundred Thirty Seven Thousand Five Hundred Dollars.

Why allow the Forest Service to give our last stands of timber away? The fishing becomes silted and the cattle that follow timbering are busily eating all remaining Outdoor Recreational habitat. They take all of it.

In three months, one cow is an enviornmental liability to the American Public to the tune of over $75,000.00! The grazing fee collected was only $6.00. Three Elk are gone, eaten away by one cow. A herd of a thousand sheep or cows vacuum cleans all the habitat. They leave nothing but filth, destruction, and disease behind. The carnage again is unbelievable!

A RANCHER CONFESSES:

Ranchers, Sheepmen, and Timber men have given me some of the very thoughts that are in this research report. I remember one in particular over a cup of coffee in Saguache, Colorado (pronounced, "Sã-watch") in 1978.

QUOTE: "We, as a classic western state have more to gain than what we would lose if we kicked every last Jack one of those livestockers out. What the public doesn't realize is, when anyone takes cattle and sheep off of big game habitat (or any of the public lands for that matter) beautiful things begin to happen. The browse explodes like a nova and the land values are returned to tens of thousands of people, not just for ONE person who was getting it all. I'd call that a hell of a trade-off, economically. But tell any association member that I said this, George, and I'd have to deny it.

"Ride the LaGraita Wilderness sometime and see for yourself a pure miracle. (I did later, and
God was he right) I used to graze all my cattle up there and made A TON of money. I had a license to steal, but now I don't care if I ever have another head in that great country again. It's too nice to let anyone screw it up anymore. I hope it's kept that way forever now. We certainly need more wildernesses. We need to stop stealing it away from who really owns it."

"The days are past where all these ranchers can go around with that invisible sign over their head saying, "I'm a rancher!" and It's supposed to give them immunity or something, George. The sooner the public realizes we are NOT special, with the blue eyes and pulled down cowboy hat looking at the distant horizon, the better and healthier it will be for everyone."

Question: "What happens to the savings that the consumers receive by letting ranchers graze on public wildlife habitat or timbering by the loggers?"

"HA! We put it all into OUR pockets. What savings? The consumer lost those the second the government allowed us to public graze under the disguise of MULTIPLE USE and the day the very first cow was sold at market. I can't speak about the loggers except I know they do more permanent damage that never goes away, and I know the savings issue for the public is non-existent. Let's not be naive here George. That is a federal bureaucracy con-job to keep their jobs with witty catch-all phrases that keep open many doors and options.

Multiple Use hints at something for everybody. That's what makes it so hideous and as dangerous as a rattlesnake in a bed roll. Always was, always will be. You, me, everything; all life comes from grass. Grass in our high country is the only substance of life for our magnificent outdoor creatures and we continue to allow stupid decisions to strangle the only habitat capable of sustaining them. When I was grazing public lands, I didn't care. Hell, why should I? I'm getting a fortune, for nothing.

We cattlemen have the politicians by the throat. What do you have? You and the public? I'll tell you what you have. Nothing. Incompetent? You betcha. It all comes down to whose ox is gored and who can holler the loudest, doesn't it? Cattlemen have a great set of lungs. I know. I used to holler the loudest." UNQUOTE

We are led to believe we cannot raise cattle without taking AMERICA'S WILDLIFE HABITAT. We are led to believe we cannot have enough timber unless we give away all our tree stands. This is nonsense.

RANGER RICK enrages ranchers
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) --- "Raccoon Ranger Rick, Odie Skunk and Roberto Ringtail are being used to unfairly paint all ranchers and farmers as villains who abuse public land, according to some angry members of Wyoming's agricultural community.

"Members of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation are up in arms over the contents of a recent issue of the "Adventures of Ranger Rick," a magazine put out by the National Wildlife Federation to educate children about the outdoors.

"Farmers and ranchers contend the magazine is being used now to brainwash children into thinking they're all evil.

"In one story, the characters complain that their camping area has been ruined by overgrazing by cattle.

"Don't the ranchers care about the land and wildlife?" Odie Skunk asks. "Oh, some do." Roberto Ringtail replies. "But it seems more care only about making money."

"Later, raccoon characters look at hoof prints near a stream, and Raccoon Ranger Rick says, "This stream is really polluted, and I know who did it . . . cattle.

"At another point, the characters say, "Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam and the ranchers get richer each day."

"A statement in the raccoon story indicated deer and antelope were driven out because cattle had eaten all the forage. And a raccoon says, "I don't even want to think about beef anymore. How about a peanut butter sandwich?"

"Wyoming farmers and ranchers object and have asked some schools to remove the magazine because it portrays abuses as the general rule, according to Ken Hamilton, a Farm BureauField assistant.

"These people felt this is a pretty one-sided article and it was going out to an audience that really wouldn't know how to get the facts," Hamilton said Wednesday.

"Hamilton said he's even heard reports children are writing in to the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service asking for a halt to grazing leases.

"Ranchers in southwestern Wyoming are equally upset that the article is attacking American ranchers and farmers through their children,

"Applequist said he wants the magazine banned from the Eden Valley School.

"Larry Bourret, executive vice president of the Farm Bureau said, "I think the worst thing in Ranger Rick's story is trying to portray eating of beef as bad. I guess you could call that a secondary or a primary boycott and I don't think that's legal,"My personal opinion is, what about the enraged Public?

1) If this article is trying to portray eating of beef as bad, it is an opinion. People who eat beef are more apt to die of heart attacks.

2) That what cattle or livestock do on public lands as reported by Ranger Rick is not only courageous, but TRUE.

3) That to ask the magazine be banned from public schools is not American and is indicative of the beef grower mentality and industry regarding public rights.

4) I'm surprised the some agriculture didn't start a World War II book-burning demonstration.

In the Salmon National Forest, the balance of elk, deer, martin, squirrels, woodpeckers, bear, (Grizzly included) is in balance. NATURE determines the balance because "man" has not been allowed to interfere. This means the Agricultural Department, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Cattle, the Sheep, the Mining, the Oil, the Mineral explorers, and the Power companies cannot be allowed to "Multiple Invade" here.

President Teddy Roosevelt:

"Next to the bison, the wapiti is of all the big game animals of North America the one whose range has most decreased. Originally it was found from the Pacific coast, east across the Alleghenies, through New York to the Adirondacks, through Pennsylvania into western New Jersey, and far down into mid-country of Virginia and the Carolinas. It extended northward into Canada, from the Great Lakes to Vancouver; and southward into Mexico, along the Rockies."

Research confirms, where are the Wapiti in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, in North and South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and around the entire Great Lakes where cities abound today? They are here, in the last stands of the West. They are for all Americans to take pictures of them in pure, contaminated Forests and Wilderness.

MORE EXAMPLES:

Local Forest Service District Chiefs should be elected, not appointed so that their positions and especially their decisions don't affect the status of their jobs by political superiors. The local citizens would know when to fire men who compromise public assets quickly.

Under the present system, the Forest Service is immune and insensitive to public out-cries.

Most citizens are unaware of wasteful, outdated grazing and timber cutting policies. We must understand that there is nothing wrong in thinking or demanding facts about our wildlife in terms of DOLLARS and CENTS and as a Business, which MAKES society a lot of money.

Whether made with pictures, campers and camping, bird-watchers, vacations, fishing, hunting, boating, hiking, trail riding with horses or only on foot in pure wilderness, mountain climbing, or by river rafting and in hundreds of more different ways. It's all the same. Without Wilderness, without wildlife on our lands, in our streams and lakes, we are all poorer for it.

The road to wilderness bankruptcy is the continued intrusions against recreational maintenance under the stuwartship of the Department of Agriculture. Congress is long overdue in transferring all our National Forests over to a NEW CONSERVATION AGENCY designed to preserve and protect our Public Lands.

The fact that a man can hunt in the hopes of reducing his grocery bill, has merit in the best outdoor economical scheme of things.

Special interests want the free money "in wilderness" or otherwise, they would leave what remains alone. The logic of the American Indian has much merit here objecting to what the Forest Service wants to do.

WILDERNESS IS NOT A RENEWABLE RESOURCE:

A river damages a river bank on a rancher's land during spring runoff is a natural event. Man's intention is "to fine the river" and proclaim a natural event as a damage so he may profit from it. Ranchers take junk cars and embank them along the shores and visually everyone suffers who passes by. No one sees fit to point out, the river, like deer and wapiti, always have been here and that man CAME to the river. He has no previous right to claim upon nature, that which always was and should be.

It behooved the Indians of yore (but not today) how the white man could POSSESS land. The concept was as repulsive as owning the free blowing wind or the rays of The Sun. They knew, upon death, at that instant all of us truly never owned anything and never did.

Should a rancher settle for a ranch that will support 200 head of cattle if WE ALLOW him to take wildlife's food instead? So you live in Chicago, Washington D.C., New York? You're there. He is here, so this is what many ranchers do. First, he puts out 400 head of cattle on your land if he has 400 Animal Unit Months (A.U.M) permitted to him. This means, for pocket change, he is allowed one but it also can mean ONE cow and HER Calf as one A.U.M. Remember this.

"You allow one cow or one cow and her calf to graze one month. (At $1.25 rates), but this is what cattlemen do. [This includes sheep growers where ONE A.U.M. allows FIVE SHEEP plus lambs including TWINS.]

I know of an exact example. The rancher's name is confidential to expose Grazing Policies for what they really are.

A modem rancher can buy 400 calves and mixes them with his herd. Who's to know if the calves don't belong to the adult female Cow? Here is what he does. He has 400 cows and artificially breeds them for spring-timed-births. He then goes to auction sales and purchases 400 weaned calves and then mixes them with his herd of 400 cows because NO ONE KNOWS if they belong to his original cows. It would take a genetic tests to prove otherwise. That has not been done yet to prove 'range theft' today.

In early spring, he drives four hundred cattle and calves onto public range. Remember, ONE A.U. means one cow and her calf. Therefore, his subterfuge is complete, slick, unknowing, and shrewd.

Soon after the cows and calves are driven on public land rights the pregnant cows soon begin calving. Suddenly, this rancher has SIXTEEN HUNDRED head of cattle on Public Land. For how much? For $1.25 per Animal Unit Month.

Is he charged additonally for that new born once on your Federal Land?

No.

SUDDENLY ON PUBLIC LAND ARE:

1) 400 COWS
2) 400 CALVES NOT BORN OF THE COWS
3) 400 NEW-BORN CALVES (Pluse Twins) DUE

1600 TOTAL

What does the B.L.M. charge this rancher? Well, he is NOT CHARGED FOR 1600 HEAD OF CATTLE, but for only the original 400 A.U.M.'s of Cattle. How much American-owned Wilderness HABITAT will be removed by this rancher for $1.25 EACH that year?

1) Each day, 400 cows will consume approximately 16,000 pounds of habitat including all reproductive seeds. Also all endangered species of rare plants.

2) Each month, 400 cows with calves will consume approximately 480,000 pounds of habitat equal to 12,000 bales of grass!

a) Equivalent to $36,000 of rich grasses at $3.00 a bale.

3) In four months, 400 bead of cattle will consume approximately one million nine hundred twenty thousand pounds (1,920,000) of habitat equivalent to $144,000.00

He steals TONS OF GRASS to feed THREE HEAD for the price of ONE.

A bale of hay costs $3.00 bought from the same rancher in 1984. A few months later, back goes the rancher to drive down slick, waddling cows because they are literally to fat to walk.

The B.L.M. or Forest Service charged only $370 dollars a month and in five months, his total charges amount to only $1850, for SIX HUNDRED HEAD OF CATTLE that ate over a million nine hundred thousands POUNDS of habitat, (Equivalent to several thousand acres)

***DIVIDE $1850 BY $144,000.00***

The money the American People got to graze cattle on our land is only ONE CENT PER DAY
Additionally, nobody can drink from the polluted mountain streams that the cattle waded in. The ground and flora are trampled to bits. There are watery cow piles all over, the flies have increased beyond camping tolerances, plus the land will take eons to repair the visual impacts of cattle violations.

At market, four of these cattle pay for the entire fee rate.

Ranchers don't lose when it comes to free assets on PUBLIC land. Like the rancher said to me, "I know it's a good deal for me, but I have to tell you, even a hibernated groundhog works harder than I do on my grazing area."

The Department of Agriculture, the Cattleman's Association, and the Bureau of Land Management care not to point out, it literally costs more to feed a canary, than what we charge for A.U.M.'s or for a thousand board feet of lumber.

ONE COW eliminates enough HABITATS in one season to support $128,746.87 dollars in WAPITI value. In nature, nothing converts wildlife browse into protein as efficiently as Deer, Mountain Goat, Big Horn Sheep or Wapiti. This fact can be pointed out when comparing, believe it or not, the dung piles. Cattle dung is watery and science confirms that cattle have low exchange rates protein to body wastes. Buffalo dung is proven to be the same. Wildlife pellet dung is extraordinarily efficient, and delivers the greatest meat profits with the least amount of habitat consumed.

I have heard stockmen argue that cattle and sheep, along with "rotation grazing" is better for public land because when livestock graze (believe this or not!) the cattle's feet knock more seed to the ground and thereby increase "range" growth. (As reported to the B.L.M. in Gunnison, Colorado, and to which, the B.L.M. accepted as logical).

AXIOM:

There's nothing one cow can do with four legs that three Wapiti with 12 legs, or seven Deer with 28 legs, or 14 antelope with 56 legs can't do better. These are the number of big game animals one cow will starve out each month it grazes on public land.

Recent Wilderness Bills and Plans, such as this Draft Environmental Impact Statement have provisions allowing stockmen IMMEDIATE access to local wildlife food as soon as it's degraded with an alternative.

Since no one in the Forest Service can explained what wildlife habitat and it's life values are to our national and state economies with comparisons, Forest Service mismanagement continues.

Not that long ago, Teddy Roosevelt had the courage to set aside West Yellowstone National Park for the children of the future.

We Americans are the children of the future he was thinking of, yet, with each passing year; West Yellowstone becomes less of what it originally was. Roads, buildings, parking lots have eroded away the once grandeur in "naturalness." Today, with many millions of visitors arriving in increasing numbers each passing year, it's but an outdoor zoo and is no longer a "wilderness."

As our population continues to explode, the daily demands upon wilderness and wildlife increases each day. We must be wise enough to protect our future needs. How often have we heard this, without appreciating exactly what it means? It means our children cannot provide it for themselves. It means children are factual entities on the way. That we are fortunate, men such as Teddy Roosevelt gave pause to remember US.

After years of hard work, I have come to know certain things. The public doesn't understand how much of their paychecks come from Outdoor Recreation dollars and few outdoor writers are doing their homework on the economics of the world of wildlife.

CONCLUSION:

While answering this Draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the Salmon National Forest Act Areas and all the surrounding attachments involved, the reader should always keep in mind the following thoughts.

We Americans came here over two hundred years ago, starting with the North American Indians, then Christopher Columbus. In that time, we have conquered a whole continent of wilderness filled with life-chains containing thousands of species of insects, animal and bird life of which we have caused 60% of the total, as we originally found it, to become extinct! (NOTE: This figure is much higher since this research paper was first submitted).

For every 100 species of life forms you have invalidated, 60 of them will never be seen in the universe again. Incidentally, half of the remaining 40 are endangered. All the Draft Reports don't address their situation, home, or requirements for preservation. Why? Because Forest Service timbering plans would fail because they are dishonest to the American Trust.

In Ohio, which was once nearly a total forest, now is an open plain by comparison. There isn't an eastern river or stream that isn't polluted. Acid rain is poisoning daily and it continues without one response or willingness from industry to put a stop their crimes. Everyone complains without action. Mercury poisons the fish of the Great Lakes and where once May Flies flew thick on Lake Erie, remains but a lifeless shoreline that hasn't seen a Hexigenia Limbada for over twenty years.

The remaining homes for many of the endangered, reside ONLY in virgin forests. To consume this remaining area without regret or conscious is unforgivable. To ask us that we throw all remaining caution to the winds and allow the Forest Service "the FINAL intrusion, is unreasonable. America has only a "token amount" of wilderness remaining. What she has remaining is but a whisper of our Nation's past.

Without "wilderness", no one will know the greatest comparisons. Wilderness is the only mirror that reflects sanity in your tomorrows. You cannot afford to lose it.

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