Cover artwork by Alé Silva
Summary
In this conclusion to our trilogy, we're looking at a proposal to move beyond the concept of "rangelands" through the rewilding of the American west — meaning, the return of forgotten landscapes, species, and ecologies not commonly seen in generations (not to mention improved water and carbon storage). But at least one thing isn't compatible with this vision: grazing cattle on public lands.
Catch up with Part 1 here, and Part 2 here
Click here to read a transcription of this episode
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Read the proposal: Rewilding the American West
See Laura’s writing and illustrations on the ecological history of California, and meet the Western Watersheds Project
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Show Notes and Credits
This episode was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski, with the voices of Bob Beschta, Ashley Ahearn, Jon Keely, Laura Cunningham, Lynn Huntsinger, Stuart Weiss, and Clayton Koopman.
With music by Thumbug, Meg Iredale, Saltwater Hank, C. Diab, and Sunfish Moon Light.
And thanks to our intern, Brennen King, for helping us out on sound design!
Special Thanks to Saxon Richardson
This episode includes audio recorded by Tomlija, Tiger_v15, TitusL108, tim.kahn, IESP, killyourpepe, roumahum, matt_beer (2), and SKrafft, accessed through the Freesound Project, and protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses.
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The “Home on the Rangelands” theme song features an archival recording of the black performer James Richardson singing the folk song 'Home on the Range', as captured by John and Ruby Lomax in July of 1939 at the Raiford Penitentiary of the Florida State Prison. The recording was accessed through the Library of Congress - see citation below.
The circumstances of this recording are of interest, and captured in a letter written from Ruby Lomax to her family, excerpted below:
"Dear Jim,
Having escaped from Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi penitentiaries, we are caught again in Florida. From where I am sitting we see only beautiful lawns and trees, and would never guess than a few yards away there are many hundreds of prisoners confined. Florida has a very fine superintendent, Mr. Chapman, who believes that every man should be at work, and here even the cripples have their jobs, every man who is not in the hospital. I have not been inside yet, but I imagine it is cleaner than some of the state prisons that we have visited, not to mention the name of our, or my native state! Our host was away yesterday when we arrived, but Mr. Chapman had left word and the trusties who seem to run the
house took us in charge. John Avery has gone scouting this morning and my work begins again when he spots the singers.
Later...
With the help of the recreational director and band leader Mr. Lomax found some singers. We set up the machine in a room that had had been used for an exhibit of arts and crafts of convicts. We set up our machine and worked several hours with a quartet who sang, with guitar accompaniment for some of the songs. James Richardson who sang Home on the Range said he had sung it for radio on some state official occasion. Next morning as we started out, Superintendent Chapman called me back and said he did not want me to go into the men's dormitory; he did not want to take any chance of the men's trying a break with me as hostage. So much for Sunday morning and afternoon. Some of the convicts had training as electrical engineers helped with the recording. I was allowed to
visit the women's ward. They had church service early after which we set up our machine for as many as wished to stay. The women were slow getting started and had to urge one another."
credits
from Auditory Compost: The Music of Future Ecologies Season 5 (Volume 1), released July 29, 2024
Citation for archival recording:
Lomax, J. A., Lomax, R. T. & Richardson, J. (1939) Home on the Range. Raiford, Florida, June 3. [Audio] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/lomaxbib000482/.
Citations
Beschta, R.L., Ripple, W.J., (2018) “Can Large Carnivores Change Streams via a Trophic Cascade?” Ecohydrology 12, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.2048.
Carter, J., Jones, A., O’Brien, M., Ratner, J., Wuerthner, G.. (2014) “Holistic Management: Misinformation on the Science of Grazed Ecosystems.” International Journal of Biodiversity: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/163431.
Center for Biological Diversity (n.d.) “Cattle Grazing and the Loss of Biodiversity in the East Bay”
Cunningham, L. (2010) “A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California”, Heyday Books
Cunningham, L. (2023) California Ecological Origin
Germino, M.J., Kluender, C.R., Anthony, C.R. (2022) “Plant Community Trajectories Following Livestock Exclusion for Conservation Vary and Hinge on Initial Invasion and Soil‐biocrust Conditions in Shrub Steppe.” Conservation Science and Practice 4, no. 12 https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12838.
Kauffman, J.B., Beschta, R.L. Lacy, P.M., Liverman, M.. (2022) “Livestock Use on Public Lands in the Western USA Exacerbates Climate Change: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation.” Environmental Management 69, no. 6: 1137–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01633-8
Kauffman, J.B., Coleman, G., Otting, N., Lytjen, D., Nagy, D., Beschta, R.L. (2022) “Riparian Vegetation Composition and Diversity Shows Resilience Following Cessation of Livestock Grazing in Northeastern Oregon, USA.” Edited by Janice L. Bossart. PLOS ONE 17, no. 1: e0250136. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250136.
Kauffman, J.B, Cummings, D.L., Kauffman, C., Beschta, R.L., Brooks, J., MacNeill, K., Ripple, W.J., (2023) “ Bison Influences on Composition and Diversity of Riparian Plant Communities in Yellowstone National Park.” Ecosphere 14(2): e4406. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4406
Root, H. T., Miller, J.E.D, and Rosentreter, R., (2020) “Grazing Disturbance Promotes Exotic Annual Grasses by Degrading Soil Biocrust Communities.” Ecological Applications 30, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2016.
Xueqin, Y., Xu, M., Zhao, Y., Bao, T., Ren, W., and Shi, Y.. (2020) “Trampling Disturbance of Biocrust Enhances Soil Carbon Emission.” Rangeland Ecology & Management 73, no. 4: 501–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2020.02.005.
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Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:01
You are listening to Season Five of Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 00:06
Okay.
Adam Huggins 00:08
Hey, everyone. This is Adam,
Mendel Skulski 00:10
This is Mendel. And you're listening to the final part of our trilogy on Rangelands. So if you're only just joining us, you may want to go back to parts one and two, and chew on those for a bit.
Adam Huggins 00:23
Yeah, there's lots to ruminate about. Okay, so Mendel, you know that classic folk song that's been running through these episodes?
Mendel Skulski 00:33
Yeah. [Singing] Oh, give me home, where the buffalo roam.
Adam Huggins 00:39
[Singing] Where the deer and the antelope play. We all know this song... I think. It's kind of the, I don't know, unofficial anthem of the mythologized American West. Would you agree?
Mendel Skulski 00:55
I would.
Adam Huggins 00:56
But have you noticed that there's kind of something peculiar about it?
Mendel Skulski 01:00
Hmmm.... I think what you're getting at is the fact that that song is completely absent any mention... of cows,
Adam Huggins 01:09
Not a single cow. In every version of the lyrics that I've reviewed, the singer waxes on about buffalo, and deer, and antelope and also the sky, and the streams, the stars and the wildflowers. Virtually everything under the sun, except —
Mendel Skulski 01:27
Except cows. The cowboy anthem has no cows!
Adam Huggins 01:31
Nope. And I find this kind of fascinating. I know, there are lots of folks who just love livestock, and they are a quintessential part of the American West. But this song kind of highlights, maybe accidentally, that the character of this place — what we love the most about it — goes way beyond that.
Mendel Skulski 01:52
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 01:53
And maybe, just maybe, we don't need cows to have healthy, biodiverse rangelands. In fact, some would argue cows are the central reason that we don't often have healthy, biodiverse rangelands. Their arguments are also backed up by a mountain of scientific evidence, and their vision is nothing short of the rewilding of the West. So let's get into it. From Future Ecologies, this is Home on the Rangelands, part three — Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.
Introduction Voiceover 02:32
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies – exploring the shape of our world through ecology, design, and sound.
Adam Huggins 03:39
Okay, so for starters, we're going to zoom out from California for a minute and take a look at the rest of the West.
Mendel Skulski 03:46
Finally!
Adam Huggins 03:47
And to do that, we're going to talk with Bob Beschta.
Bob Beschta 03:50
I'm Bob Beschta. I'm currently at Oregon State University where I've been for now 48 years.
Adam Huggins 03:56
Bob is a forest hydrologist.
Bob Beschta 03:59
And in that field, you very quickly find out that on Western landscapes, things that we do on the land such as harvesting trees, building roads, grazing livestock, all of these affect then this hydrologic cycle.
Adam Huggins 04:12
And Bob is probably most famous for his work, alongside his colleague, William Ripple on the ecological consequences of the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park.
Mendel Skulski 04:23
Oh, okay. I haven't heard of Bob. But I've definitely heard about the wolves in Yellowstone.
Adam Huggins 04:30
Yeah. At this point, I would say the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone is perhaps the highest profile success story in the world of conservation. And Bob has been there from the very beginning, documenting it.
Bob Beschta 04:43
My first entry into northern Yellowstone was 1996. And I was on a field trip with some folks and we came in to Lamar Valley and I was just dumbstruck by the impacts I was seeing — the river and the banks were unraveling, I saw no willows, I saw very few cottonwoods growing. And when I went there, I didn't realize it was going to be a wolf story. I just knew there was a herbivory story going on. Lots of elk were eating lots of cottonwood. And I just wanted to document that.
Adam Huggins 05:11
So this is textbook ecology at this point. But long story short, the extirpation of wolves from Yellowstone had allowed elk and other herbivore populations to expand dramatically. And all of the woody vegetation along the rivers was being consumed, resulting in lots of erosion, and the loss of the riparian ecosystem. And of course, this also impacted other wildlife.
Mendel Skulski 05:36
In other words, it's a classic trophic cascade, just like we covered in our Kelp Worlds series.
Adam Huggins 05:43
Yeah. And in this case, one of the keystone species, you might say the engineers of the whole ecosystem, were beavers. And the elk literally ate them out of house and home.
Bob Beschta 05:54
Beaver essentially disappeared from Yellowstone. There were probably literally thousands of beaver in the northern range of Yellowstone when the park was established. And by the 1950s they were gone, because they had nothing to eat.
Adam Huggins 06:08
And of course, without Beaver, there was nothing to prevent further degradation of the riparian areas. When wolves were reintroduced in the mid 1990s. This negative feedback loop slowly started to unwind.
Bob Beschta 06:23
With wolves back now, we are seeing the beginnings of recovery of woody species such as aspen, such as cottonwood, willows, berry-producing shrubs, alder.
Adam Huggins 06:33
With more predation came reduced herbivory, which allowed the riparian vegetation to recover, the beavers to return, and creeks to stabilize.
Bob Beschta 06:42
It was very slow, it was very localized, but through time has become more widespread.
Mendel Skulski 06:48
It's a classic success story. One I think most people are familiar with. But what does it have to do with our story, about rangelands?
Adam Huggins 06:59
Well, I mean, at a basic level, it launched Bob on a career trajectory of studying the impacts of herbivory.
Bob Beschta 07:06
Herbivory has such a powerful factor, influence on the landscape. The idea that, that an animal such as a deer or elk takes one bite at a time doesn't seem like it's a very important deal. But over the years, whether it's deer, elk, or cattle or sheep, they could have really significant effects on what's out there on the landscape, major effects.
Adam Huggins 07:29
So there's that. But also, there's an aspect to the Yellowstone story that I think will be new to most of our listeners, and which just completely blindsided me in this interview.
Mendel Skulski 07:41
Uh... what is that?
Adam Huggins 07:43
When you think of Yellowstone, what is the other major conservation success story that comes to mind?
Mendel Skulski 07:50
Are you talking about the big herd of bison?
Adam Huggins 07:52
I am talking about the big herd of bison. The buffalo, which were almost wiped off the face of the earth at the turn of the last century, have made a remarkable recovery in Yellowstone National Park.
Mendel Skulski 08:05
Another feel good story.
Adam Huggins 08:07
Yes. But with at least one massive wrinkle
Bob Beschta 08:12
In Yellowstone, interestingly enough, bison are limiting recovery of what's going on that ecosystem. If bison were not present in northern Yellowstone, I think the recovery story that we have seen would be fundamentally much larger, more extensive and more dramatic. It would be the ecological story of the century.
Mendel Skulski 08:36
Wait, I thought Yellowstone was already the ecological story of the century?
Adam Huggins 08:43
That very well may be. But it's not nearly the story that it could have been. According to Bob, while the wolf reintroduction reduced the elk herds. The dramatic recovery of the bison has partially offset those benefits.
Bob Beschta 08:57
Because bison have replaced elk. And wolves are not efficient at taking down bison.
Mendel Skulski 09:04
Sorry, I'm still not following. What are the bison doing?
Adam Huggins 09:08
They are doing what bison do.
Bob Beschta 09:11
Bison, throughout much of the valley systems in the northern range of Yellowstone, are just creating absolutely severe impacts to stream channels, to riparian vegetation, to soils, to the spread of exotic species. And willow can't grow, aspen can't grow, cottonwoods can't grow, native forbs can't grow, native bunch grasses get heavily foraged on, trampling is rampant throughout there, soils are compacted. It's literally like a cattle allotment, if I could put it that way, unfortunately. The effects look the same, except it's being done by a native large herbivore that is now in excessive large numbers in the wrong location.
Mendel Skulski 09:50
Oh, so he's basically saying that the bison in Yellowstone are kind of like cattle on an overstocked pasture.
Adam Huggins 09:59
Precisely.
Mendel Skulski 10:00
But what does he mean by "in the wrong location"?
Adam Huggins 10:04
Well, if I were to ask you where bison historically roamed, what would you say?
Mendel Skulski 10:09
The... Great Plains?
Adam Huggins 10:12
Well, the Great Plains are now mostly corn and canola and soybean fields. Yellowstone, on the other hand, is up in the mountains, west of the Great Plains.
Bob Beschta 10:23
Bison were never present inside the park in any significant numbers. Male bison will wander across landscapes, they could have been in the park, you know. But herds of bison permanently staying inside the park, we have no evidence of that, up until the late, let's say 1800s. When the great bison killing was taking place on the Great Plains, just about at the time, when bison numbers were approaching zero, some herds of bison showed up in Yellowstone National Park. And even there, they weren't protected. And so those numbers declined considerably, until they got down to like a dozen bison. And then finally the park protected them, and it's been a great success story — the recovery. So we went from a dozen bison, now to in the Northern Range, some 4000, bison. And 4000 Bison is way above the carrying capacity of that ecosystem.
Adam Huggins 11:13
So it's really an accident of history that there are so many bison in these ecosystems.
Mendel Skulski 11:19
Right, it's like we've decided where they can live, but not where they would have historically been in any real numbers.
Adam Huggins 11:27
Exactly. And I got the distinct impression that Bob feels like people just do not take this issue seriously enough. I mean, I didn't even know about it.
Mendel Skulski 11:37
So what does he think should happen with all the buffalo that we have now?
Adam Huggins 11:42
I mean, it's yet another big and complex issue. But he told me, he thinks the Park Service should get as many of them out of there as possible, preferably by distributing them to tribes across the Great Plains.
Mendel Skulski 11:55
Hmm. Sounds like a win win.
Adam Huggins 11:57
Sure, and also a story for another day. What's certain is that Bob is really concerned about what might happen if the population is allowed to continue to increase.
Bob Beschta 12:09
I cannot imagine the impacts, I cannot imagine. Do you think the American public is ready to be culling two to three thousand Bison out of northern Yellowstone every year?
Adam Huggins 12:19
So, the takeaway is really that the wrong kind of herbivore in the wrong place can just have devastating consequences for an ecosystem. And Bob has been studying this for decades, not just in Yellowstone, but also elsewhere in the West — including his home state of Oregon, where he sees livestock causing all of the same kinds of damage.
Bob Beschta 12:41
As I look across the landscape, the effects of livestock are pervasive and multifaceted. They occur in various ways.
Mendel Skulski 12:49
Right... all of the familiar consequences of cattle moving and eating their way across a landscape.
Bob Beschta 12:57
They affect plant and animal communities directly, just by herbivory reduces plants, the composition or the amount of plant matter that's out there, which then affects wildlife habitat.
Mendel Skulski 13:07
Not to mention soil compaction, erosion, water quality degradation, and impacts to streams and riparian zones.
Bob Beschta 13:17
The effects have been just major, and have been well documented.
Adam Huggins 13:21
Plus, of course, all of the climate impacts that we discussed in the last episode, not only the methane that cattle produce directly...
Bob Beschta 13:29
But there's a lot of other effects that go on related to climate, that is the loss of vegetation will allow a site to become more desiccated, if you will. So the drying or the increased aridity that's occurring in the West now is amplified by the loss of vegetation.
Mendel Skulski 13:47
Woah... so it's actually the local climate that's changing as a result of grazing. Less vegetation means fewer leaves, means less water transpiration, means even higher aridity.
Adam Huggins 13:59
And that's not all.
Bob Beschta 14:01
In the process of removing vegetation, we can't store carbon. Removing vegetation, having no beavers out there, just greatly reduces the amount of carbon that we could store on these public lands in the American West.
Adam Huggins 14:16
What Bob is saying here is that not only are there direct greenhouse gas emissions from livestock themselves and from the associated industry, there are also significant indirect effects or opportunity costs on water and carbon storage. And these add up to make rangeland ecosystems less resilient to the climate crisis.
Mendel Skulski 14:39
Yeah, not great.
Adam Huggins 14:40
And I will add that those impacts are sort of permanent, and they get worse over time. Whereas many of the benefits claimed in terms of carbon sequestration tend to be smaller in scale and not necessarily lasting.
Mendel Skulski 14:57
Bummer!
Adam Huggins 14:57
And this isn't just speculation. These impacts have been well documented in the scientific literature, by Bob and others.
Mendel Skulski 15:05
So I imagine just like with the bison, Bob's solution would be to get the cows out of there.
Adam Huggins 15:13
Bingo. But it doesn't stop there. You might have noticed he mentioned something besides excess grazers suppressing landscape carbon storage. And that is the absence of beavers.
Bob Beschta 15:26
Beaver were prevalent everywhere, almost all streams in American West at one time. But during the great trapping era, we were very efficient at removing beaver — just like we remove bison from the Great Plains, the same thing has happened to beaver.
Mendel Skulski 15:40
Right yeah, beaver, I guess kind of like the bison are another keystone species and are super deeply involved in the ecological history of of North America. Right all those millennia of beaver dams trapping sediment is why we have so many incredibly vibrant riparian ecosystems.
Adam Huggins 15:59
Have or had... of course. Because, you know, several 100 years of colonization later, we've removed beavers, and their dams, from the majority of ecosystems across the West. And that has resulted in a tremendous loss in water storage capacity, fertility, and of course in carbon storage. I mean, by draining all of the beaver wetlands, we've altered hydrology and the carbon cycle on a continental scale. And Bob says that his home state of Oregon, which is literally known as The Beaver State, should actually be called the beaverless state because of how deficient in beaver it is today, like so much of the West.
Bob Beschta 16:46
Two decades ago, I don't think beaver were on the radar screen for most ecologists in the American West. Now, maybe some, probably some, but not generally. But the scientific literature in the last two decades has become just so strong on what beaver can do. If we think having wolves on the landscape is important with regard to biodiversity for streams, and uplands and all that — and it is, they're a big deal — the biodiversity kicker or pump, if you will, is getting beaver back on the landscape, because they change moisture relationships along stream systems in ways that we can't imagine. And we can't do normally.
Adam Huggins 17:27
And it's not just Bob who thinks this way. In 2022, he signed on to this watershed proposal with a list of co-authors that reads like a who's-who of large mammal ecologists. And that proposal is called Rewilding the American West.
Mendel Skulski 17:45
Oooh! I like the sound of that. What are they proposing?
Adam Huggins 17:50
It's actually pretty simple. They've identified an interconnected network of public lands across the intermountain west, for which they make three key recommendations.
Bob Beschta 18:01
It's basically a three legged stool.
Adam Huggins 18:03
First things first, retiring livestock grazing allotments on federal lands across this area, reestablishing and protecting apex predators, like gray wolves, and in some cases, cougar. And finally, reintroducing beaver into suitable habitats.
Bob Beschta 18:20
We're not talking about everywhere, but we're talking about core areas. And these are areas that have sufficient native ungulates, deer or elk to support wolves. Let's reintroduce and protect beaver in these ecosystems. But in order to do that, we also then have to remove or greatly reduce the role that livestock has in those systems, because livestock and wolves do not get along generally. It's not everywhere that it's a conflict, but it's a significant deal. And livestock and beaver are incompatible. If you have heavy browsing or grazing of livestock in riparian areas, you can't have food for beaver. So the removal of livestock helps both the large predators and it helps the beaver.
Adam Huggins 19:01
Bob says that cows and wolves can be compatible in certain contexts, if stocking densities are low, and ranchers practice inherding and other conflict avoidance strategies, but on the same landscape, cows and beaver are basically mutually exclusive.
Mendel Skulski 19:19
Got it. So the recipe is to remove cows, add wolves, and beaver. And what do you get?
Bob Beschta 19:28
Well, our goal is to recover biodiversity. We believe and have knowledge that our western ecosystems were incredibly diverse in wildlife species and plant species, had stream systems that had high water quality, had flows that were regulated by beaver and soils in good condition. And so we would see an increase in productivity of native plant species, we'd see an increase in biodiversity we'd see improved wildlife habitat. And basically we'd begin to put these riparean as well as upland ecosystems back into a condition that would be helpful with regard to moving forward with climate change. Climate change is going to be the new stressor. The best way to be able to resist the impacts of climate change is to have very healthy and intact and functioning ecosystems. And to do that we need all the species present that we can get. And right now, we don't have that.
Mendel Skulski 20:25
We don't have that. It'd be nice to have that.
Adam Huggins 20:29
I think so too.
Mendel Skulski 20:30
But from everything we've heard earlier in this series, this proposal feels like it's probably a nonstarter for the people and the communities who have strong ties to ranching, and all of the economic arguments they like to make.
Adam Huggins 20:46
Yes. And Bob will tell you that he and his fellow scientists are just proposing what they think these ecosystems need in the face of climate change, based on the best available science. He acknowledges that the plan would require buyouts of small ranchers in core areas, and other cultural and economic changes. But it's not all costs. Bob suggests that, besides saving us from some of the worst economic impacts of climate change, improved habitat also means improved recreation and tourism, of course. And from his perspective, despite being the status quo for land use in the West, the economic contribution of cattle ranching is actually pretty marginal.
Bob Beschta 21:29
If you look at total livestock production on public lands in American West, it's a small, small percentage of the total. And so it's not necessary for meeting national production goals, if I can put it that way. But in the process, the ecological impacts, and the effects in regard to climate change are very important and very severe.
Mendel Skulski 21:48
Just how marginal are we talking about here?
Adam Huggins 21:52
So in terms of the amount of forage that public lands in the West provide to the beef industry as a whole, in the United States, it's in the range of 2 to 3%.
Mendel Skulski 22:06
Okay, so in other words, we use and damage a lot of land to produce a tiny amount of the actual meat that gets consumed.
Adam Huggins 22:17
That is a fact. What is much more contentious is what a proposal like this would do to the economy and culture of small communities throughout this region.
Mendel Skulski 22:27
Right, just like Ashley was saying in part one, cattle are the glue that holds some of these communities together.
Adam Huggins 22:34
Yes, and just because their economic production is marginal on a national scale, doesn't mean it isn't significant locally.
Mendel Skulski 22:46
Well, I can only imagine what the right wing would do if the Biden administration actually embraced this proposal. Like back when the Green New Deal was still new, I remember that it was at most tepid when it came to agricultural reform.
Adam Huggins 23:01
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 23:01
Right. Like, was there even any mention of beef or cattle?
Adam Huggins 23:03
I don't think so.
Mendel Skulski 23:04
No. And that didn't stop Republicans from hollering about the war on hamburgers.
Sebastian Gorka 23:10
They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about, but never achieved.
Adam Huggins 23:16
I mean, if you can find something that will stop conservatives from hollering about the war on hamburgers, just let me know, okay?
Mendel Skulski 23:23
Sure.
Adam Huggins 23:25
We might as well have one. I mean, it's clear that certain members of government are very happy to performatively eat fast food or collect campaign contributions from the US Cattlemen's Association, right?
Mendel Skulski 23:37
Yeah, big ranch.
Adam Huggins 23:39
On a more serious note, this whole series, we have been talking about ranching as if it is, you know, all small family-run businesses – the multi generational cowboy rancher operation.
Mendel Skulski 23:52
Sure, like Clayton and his family.
Adam Huggins 23:54
Yeah. And there are still lots of folks like Clayton around. But they are increasingly the exception in what is otherwise a mega-scale industry.
Bob Beschta 24:04
The western mythology has just provided us with this concept that Western ranchers are doing wonderful things on the land, and we should just leave them alone. It's a mom and pop operation. When the reality today is most grazing is not mom and pop anymore.
Adam Huggins 24:22
And that is not just the rewilding people talking. Ashley also pointed this out.
Ashley Ahearn 24:28
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the mega businesses that are trashing public lands. Like, full stop, don't really give a shit about those ranchers and how they're doing their business is like frankly, upsetting to me on public lands. I will say that full on.
Adam Huggins 24:40
And the consolidation within the meatpacking and ranching industries is not just a huge issue for the land, but also for the remaining mom and pop operations like those that Ashley featured in Women's Work.
Ashley Ahearn 24:53
I would not presume to say that the ranchers that I featured in this series represent a giant shift that is happening. I think that the entrenched system is very, very strong. It is very, very wealthy. It is fighting attempts by the Biden administration to regulate it and to break it apart.
Mendel Skulski 25:11
Okay, so a friendly reminder that agribusiness is often big business, and maybe doesn't deserve our sympathy when it's wrecking wildlands, reaping huge profits, and then playing the victim.
Adam Huggins 25:27
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 25:28
So I was counting arguments in the pro-cow episode. Why don't we track them here too?
Adam Huggins 25:34
Oh, sure. Go ahead.
Mendel Skulski 25:35
Okay, so I would say argument number one would be that the rewilding folks point out that ranching in the West is often big business that represents a tiny amount of overall national production.
Adam Huggins 25:49
But uses a lot of land and water. And while the issue of smallholders is a concern for this rewilding proposal, it might not have to be a make or break because of this. There's no question that, even if implemented in small parts, in stages, this proposal has the potential to be transformative for Western wild lands facing down the climate crisis. And Bob says, ecologically, cows just don't have a place in it.
Bob Beschta 26:18
From an ecological perspective, I would suggest there's probably no reason why we need to have livestock in our western ecosystems. Overall, these ecosystems thrived, did very well, without this large herbivore at large densities across the landscape every year. We have no analogue for that prior to the introduction of livestock.
Mendel Skulski 26:46
But what about bison? Right, like aren't aren't those an analogue for the livestock we have now?
Adam Huggins 26:50
You could make an argument for that, again, in the Great Plains, and also perhaps in some parts of the intermountain west and even out east. But most of California, the coastal West, and other parts of the intermountain west, don't appear to have much of a history with bison, at least within the Holocene.
Mendel Skulski 27:09
Okay, then what about all the benefits of grazing in California? Like, everything we've been covering in the last two episodes?
Adam Huggins 27:18
You know, I asked Bob about that. Because it's been a central question of this series for me. The conservation community in California, for the most part, has embraced the cow. And so is that something that is happening elsewhere in the West? Or is it like so many things, a California thing?
Bob Beschta 27:38
Um, I guess I would almost have to say it's a California thing.
Adam Huggins 27:43
I gotta say, that's been my general observation as well. There are lots of pro-cattle folks throughout the West. And they're, you know, are some notable circumstances where cows are being used for conservation. But outside of California, that's just not that common.
Mendel Skulski 27:59
So what would a rewilding proposal like this look like in the state of California?
Adam Huggins 28:06
That is what we are about to discuss... after the break.
Mendel Skulski 28:25
Hey, it's me... again. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who answered our call for support. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that so many of you care about what we're doing here. And frankly, just how much of a privilege it is that I get to crowdsource a job that I deeply enjoy. And with your help, hopefully, jobs for others, too. So we just passed the 400 patron milestone. And to celebrate, we made some custom embroidered touques — or beanies, for you Americans. They're black, comfy, stylish, and suitable for any occasion. You could buy one off our website, futureecologies.net/merch, but we think you might prefer to wear it as a badge of honor — as one of our proudest supporting listeners. It's one of the perks of supporting the show for $12 a month, along with an embroidered patch, which you get at $6 a month, a pair of weatherproof stickers at $3. And of course, our community Discord server, bonus episodes, early releases and your name on our website for just $1 each month. Or, if you prefer, you can now subscribe directly within Apple podcasts. Although then we can't mail you any goodies, or simply make a one time donation on our website. So to help us do what we do, and do it better every time, head to futureecologies.net/join and choose whatever option works for you. Okay, back to the show.
Adam Huggins 30:13
We are back. I am Adam.
Mendel Skulski 30:16
I am Mendel. This is Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 30:21
And today we are all about rewilding, and maybe not so hot on cows. And we're coming back to California now to ask what's going on here. So, I've got two folks to introduce you to, Mendel.
Mendel Skulski 30:36
Let's do it.
Adam Huggins 30:37
The first is Jon Keeley.
Jon Keeley 30:39
I'm a research scientist with the US Geological Survey, and an adjunct professor at UCLA. And in my research specialty is fire and the ecological impacts of fire and how climate impacts fires.
Adam Huggins 30:53
John has been studying and writing about fire in California for decades. And I just want to read you a few of the titles of some of his many published papers.
Mendel Skulski 31:03
Sure.
Adam Huggins 31:04
Fire as global herbivore
Mendel Skulski 31:07
Woah...
Adam Huggins 31:08
Fire as an evolutionary pressure shaping plant traits.
Mendel Skulski 31:11
Wow.
Adam Huggins 31:12
Wildfires as an ecosystem service.
Mendel Skulski 31:14
Mm.
Adam Huggins 31:15
The role of fire in the history of life.
Mendel Skulski 31:19
Fire... it's everywhere, and everything!
Adam Huggins 31:21
It feels like our entire podcast is just one long running series on fire sometimes.
Mendel Skulski 31:26
Sure does. Okay, who else are we talking to?
Adam Huggins 31:29
Last but not least for this series, we have Laura Cunningham. She's an artist, naturalist, author, and California director for the Western Watersheds Project. And she is also, Mendel, the rare person that I encountered who has changed their mind about livestock.
Laura Cunningham 31:46
Yeah, I actually was sort of a little more pro livestock grazing. And now I'm a little bit less pro livestock grazing. So I mean, I'll admit that my perspectives have shifted over the decades, when I get new input and more experience and maybe broader experience outside of the Bay Area.
Adam Huggins 32:06
Among other things, Laura wrote and illustrated a book called A State of Change - Forgotten Landscapes of California. And I haven't really seen anything else like it. It's this fascinating combination of paleo-ecological research, archival work, natural history studies, all culminating in these beautiful illustrations, imagining the landscapes of pre colonial California.
Mendel Skulski 32:32
Oh, that's so cool. And I bet there aren't any cows in her illustrations.
Adam Huggins 32:40
No cows in the cowboy song, and no cows in Laurens book. But there are birds, and bunchgrasses, and grizzly bears, and salmon.
Mendel Skulski 32:50
Deer, antelope?
Adam Huggins 32:52
Playing even. And of course, Indigenous people, and the ecosystems that they were stewarding using fire, among other things.
Mendel Skulski 33:00
Of course.
Adam Huggins 33:01
So when you ask someone like Laura, what a rangeland is, she has a very different answer from Lynn.
Laura Cunningham 33:07
Yeah, I would call a rangeland, kind of an extractive use of a grassland. And I would call a native grassland, a grassland. So I'm a little bit thinking that range land is like a artificial, managed system for production of, you know, livestock and forage. So my, my idea of a range land is it's post European contact.
Mendel Skulski 33:35
Right. Okay, so rangeland is a utilitarian term from her perspective.
Adam Huggins 33:41
I mean, would you call a forest a timberland?
Mendel Skulski 33:45
Only if I were a logging company.
Adam Huggins 33:47
So no surprise, ranchers use the term rangelands.
Mendel Skulski 33:50
I guess not.
Adam Huggins 33:51
But I should add that Laura works with ranchers a lot. And so she has a healthy respect for what they do, and the problems that they face.
Laura Cunningham 34:00
Not all ranchers are the same, obviously. And I've seen really well-managed ranches. Then I've seen ranchers who are struggling, and they try to stuff as many cows onto that landscape as possible. And it looks like crap. So there are some ranchers who you just can't justify that they're doing a good job managing the land. To be fair, I think that a lot of ranchers, and I talk with a lot of them, do a better job. And it's a hard way to make a living too. I don't think the goal is to, you know, we're just gonna go out there and get rid of all the cattle immediately. A lot of what I do is work with ranchers and land managers to make things better on the land.
Adam Huggins 34:47
But when it comes to the new science supporting cows for conservation in California, her view is actually pretty dim.
Laura Cunningham 34:55
I mean, there's a lot of so-called scientific papers coming out now that are claiming cattle and ranching can benefit landscapes. But I kind of call them gray literature, because I think they're taking the conclusion that some groups want and coming up with that conclusion.
Adam Huggins 35:14
And there are a few reasons for this. For one, all of the rangelands people will tell you that it was from witnessing the negative impacts of removing cattle from conservation areas that we started to learn about and finally study the benefits. It's a bit tough to generalize about all of this, obviously. But so many of the studies promoting the benefits of grazing compare grazed to ungrazed areas. And these studies generally share some common features. They are relatively short term, and the ungrazed areas don't usually have any other treatments applied. They're just left alone,
Laura Cunningham 35:50
We've had a huge impact with cattle. You take the cattle out, you're left with a heavily disturbed impacted landscape. And so yes, if you just leave it, like passive restoration, yeah, it may just take a trajectory that you don't like. But I guess I'm looking at active restoration, as opposed to that passive restoration. You have to maybe actively go back in there and use things like cultural fire, or native elk grazers, or hand pulling the weeds to get it back into a trajectory where you're gonna get more natives.
Mendel Skulski 36:28
That sounds like a lot more work, but it makes sense. You have what everyone agrees is a highly altered, highly invaded ecosystem. So if you compare some treatment —
Adam Huggins 36:40
Any treatment...
Mendel Skulski 36:41
Yeah, to no treatment, then it will probably make the treatment look good. If your treatment is grazing, grazing looks good.
Adam Huggins 36:51
Exactly. And the other critique is all about time. Here's Bob, again,
Bob Beschta 36:58
They'll talk about all the wonderful things they can do. And I'll say that's great. And I said, we should be doing some experiments, and they'll say, yeah. And my experiment always is "let's remove livestock temporarily". Initially, they might be agreeable to that kind of thing. But then I will indicate by temporarily, I mean at least two decades. We've been grazing Western landscapes with exotic large herbivores for over a century, okay — every year for over a century. So a period of rest is not a one year phenomenon or a two year phenomenon. These ecosystems need a significant period of rest. So my argument would be is we need to rest these systems for at least two decades, and then we get to assess whether or not we should be grazing these landscapes at all, or if so how much.
Adam Huggins 37:46
He told me that it took years and years for an intervention as dramatic as reintroducing wolves to show positive impacts in Yellowstone.
Mendel Skulski 37:56
Okay, so then, argument number two, the evidence supporting grazing for biodiversity and associated values is often based on short term studies that don't consider other forms of active management.
Adam Huggins 38:13
That's what the rewilding folks say. Plus, if ranchers are such great land managers, like they say they are, and good management can mitigate the negative impacts that we've been discussing, then why do we continue to see those negative impacts on rangelands everywhere?
Bob Beschta 38:30
Well, I've heard those arguments — that we can avoid things, we can do a better job. And my comment is, well then do it. Show me.
Mendel Skulski 38:38
So argument number three, good management is better than bad management. But even well managed herds can have obvious negative impacts.
Adam Huggins 38:50
Yes, for the rewilding folks, not all that much has changed since the bad old days of the 60s 70s and 80s.
Mendel Skulski 38:58
Let alone the gold rush.
Laura Cunningham 38:59
There's a new trend in California called "conservation grazing" or "conservation ranching", which I disagree with. But there's an attempt to sort of cover up the big impacts of grazing livestock on the land, and it involves things like, you know, "Oh, we're going to reduce fuel. We're going to provide a carbon sink. You know, the manure from all these cows supposedly puts carbon back into the soil". But when I go look at what I call my reference sites, these are relict native bunchgrasslands or meadows of perennial meadow grasses. I really see what we have lost. Wait... I thought the native grasses were all but wiped out by introduced species. What's Laura talking about here?
Adam Huggins 39:54
What Laura is talking about are the small pockets — not many, but a few — where you can still see fragments of native California grassland, relict grasslands, just hanging in there. So when she thinks about what's possible for rangelands in California, she sees more than just this novel ecosystem that we have to accept and graze with cows.
Laura Cunningham 40:19
People say "Oh, it's a changed California annual grassland. Now it's permanent. You know, all you can do is use cattle to graze it". I think that's wrong, because I changed my perspective since the 1990s, where I've collected data on all these relict reference sites, I call them, of ungrazed, or lightly grazed lightly, disturbed native grasslands. They're not just on serpentine areas. They're not just on north slopes. They're everywhere. And the key is they're protected from heavy grazing, or disturbance of some kind. They're not grazed, except maybe by an elk here and there. But you get down on your hands and knees. And it's like, there's this cloud forest of lichens and mosses under the bunchgrasses, and you walk on this prairie and it's spongy. It feels like you're walking on a sponge. There's no bare ground, no erosion. When the rain falls onto this prairie, the water soaks in. And then you go to a cow pasture on the other side of the barbed wire fence, and it's completely different. It's bare dirt, there's erosion, there's manure, that in our wintry rainstorms gets washed into the creeks and starts polluting, you know, salmon habitat. You have a lot of invasive European annuals, thistles, poison hemlock, it's just a completely different thing.
Adam Huggins 41:48
And, you know, this tracks with my own personal experience, Mendel. For every spectacular success story like Tulare Hill, there are a dozen pretty barren hillsides that don't really look like they're benefiting from grazing. On the other hand, these relict grassland sites that Laura is talking about. They just don't seem to need cows to be beautiful and biodiverse. All on their own.
Laura Cunningham 42:15
It's like I call it "old growth grassland". That is actually what sequestering carbon — deep, six feet down into the soil with the roots of these perennial, long-lived bunchgrasses. And I try to take groups of people like field trips to show them and some of them don't even believe it. They see the actual native grassland. And they're like, astonished. It's completely different than what you see when you're driving around most of California.
Adam Huggins 42:43
And interwoven with those deep, long lived perennial bunchgrass roots. You have something called biological soil crusts.
Mendel Skulski 42:52
They're so cool. They deserve their own episode.
Laura Cunningham 42:55
Yeah, biological soil crusts are really interesting because they're a symbiotic network of plants, and lichens, fungi, and blue-green algae that are doing their work mostly in the soil. So you don't see it most of the time. The mycelial networks, and blue green algae filaments of the soil crust connect with the root tips of shrubs, trees and grasses, and actually help deliver nutrients to these plants. So there's a symbiosis going on under the soil, and we just completely, mostly aren't aware of it. And when you trample it, drive on it, over-graze it, or scrape it, you lose that... you completely lose that. Those are very delicate, old growth living systems. Finding an intact biological soil crust has actually become rarer now, especially on rangelands where they can't take the heavy hoof trampling and constant grazing of cattle and sheep.
Adam Huggins 44:04
Bob also mentioned these remarkable living soils.
Bob Beschta 44:08
It's something we've almost forgotten about in the American West, but these were common everywhere. They protected soil surfaces from erosion. They provided micro habitats for plants. And in many cases that they're gone.
Adam Huggins 44:22
In my own personal experience, I just haven't seen these on annual grasslands with livestock grazing.
Mendel Skulski 44:31
So argument number four, maybe these ecosystems don't have to be thought of as novel. Maybe they're just really, really damaged by centuries of cattle grazing, but there is still some potential that they could be restored.
Adam Huggins 44:47
Yeah, and Bob can point to sites where this has occurred in Oregon, like Hart Mountain.
Bob Beschta 44:53
Hart Mountain National antelope refuge in Southern Oregon. We've now got 30 years of recovery. Every year it gets just more impressive. It takes time. Hart Mountain today, 30 years after livestock removal, from an ecological standpoint is just an incredibly different place than it was 30 years ago, after almost a century of livestock grazing.
Adam Huggins 45:14
And then Laura pointed to all sorts of different initiatives in California, from Indigenous tribes like the Karuk Reclaiming cultural fire.
Mendel Skulski 45:22
Which we covered in season one.
Adam Huggins 45:23
To small projects in city parks, just using handtools. Restoring California native grasslands is hard, she says, but not impossible.
Laura Cunningham 45:34
Using cattle to manage ecosystems, to me is kind of the lazy way to do it. And in the last 10 years, I've learned that you can restore native grasslands without cattle. And maybe it takes a little bit more planning. I think it's lazy to just say, "Okay, put cows on it. Now we can justify the cattle and say that they're all these conservation management tools", when there are other options. And I have had personal experience looking at these other options, and they're working.
Mendel Skulski 46:06
So instead of cows, it's fire and mowing.
Adam Huggins 46:10
And elk, and beaver.
Mendel Skulski 46:12
Okay, so it's also rewilding.
Adam Huggins 46:15
Yes. Laura, and the folks at the Western watersheds project really love that proposal.
Laura Cunningham 46:20
Oh, yeah. We've been talking about that proposal a lot. Western Watersheds Project, I mean, our focus is livestock grazing, but our mission is restoration. And we definitely support rewilding with beavers and wolves. That would be a paradise to me.
Adam Huggins 46:36
So beavers were almost completely extirpated in California. So much so that many people just assumed that they were never even here in the first place. It's a kind of beaver erasure. But they are making a comeback. And the argument from the rewilding folks is, "Why should we rely on stock ponds for amphibian habitat, when we could just restore their actual historic habitats using beaver? And for that matter, why should we have cows grazing all of these grasslands when we have the native Tule elk, which are also making a comeback?" And so on, reintroducing wolves and traditional cultural management. With all of this, we could recover a richness of species and habitats not seen in generations. And you know, as dreamy as that would be, everyone I spoke to — both the rewilders and the rangelands folks — agree that it's simply not compatible with ecosystems that are managing cattle for meat production, and barbed wire fences.
Mendel Skulski 47:47
Okay, but we're calling today "Rewilding Day", right?
Adam Huggins 47:52
My favorite day of the year.
Mendel Skulski 47:53
So can we at least entertain the idea?
Adam Huggins 47:57
Oh, yeah. I mean, what are we doing? Right? I will take elk and beaver and wolves over cows any day of the week, personally. I think that's clear. But while we're entertaining wild ideas, I have one more for you.
Mendel Skulski 48:11
Is that so?
Adam Huggins 48:12
Yes, as a matter of fact. So all of this time, I've been talking with rangelands folks. And as you'll remember from the first episode, they're really concerned about how many of California's grasslands are being invaded by shrubs.
Mendel Skulski 48:27
Shrubs!
Adam Huggins 48:28
Here's Lynn Huntsinger.
Lynn Huntsinger 48:29
Now shrubland is interesting around here. We have certain species that tend to be very invasive, they're native. One of them is coyote brush.
Adam Huggins 48:37
Coyote brush is an early succession native species, very common in California. But all of the rangelands folks refer to it as invasive, because they're concerned with keeping these grasslands open — for the grass for the cows, and for all of those rare grassland species.
Mendel Skulski 48:56
Fair enough, I guess.
Adam Huggins 48:58
Yeah. But at the same time, this discourse of "shrub invasion" has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. You know, my own personal values are, I'd love to restore native cover. And meanwhile, these folks are intent on killing the one native plant trying to make a go of it on these invaded grasslands. And I kind of thought I was alone in thinking this... until I spoke with Jon Keeley.
Mendel Skulski 49:25
Oh, right, fireman! I was wondering when you're going to bring him back.
Adam Huggins 49:31
Right now. When I talked to Jon, it was like a light bulb went off. He's like, "Well, of course, the coyote brush moves in. And so what you're looking at"
Jon Keeley 49:40
Is what the natural successional processes are. And eventually the coyote brush will be invaded by other more permanent shrubs and produce a coastal scrub vegetation. And that's really the natural state. The problem is, is people don't necessarily like that natural state.
Mendel Skulski 49:59
I actually don't get it. What does he mean by "natural state"?
Adam Huggins 50:03
I mean, what does anybody mean what that term? What he's referring to is succession.
Jon Keeley 50:08
People talk about how shrublands are encroaching. The word encroachment is really a misnomer. Encroaching means you're moving into a system where it's not natural. When we see shrubs moving into grasslands, that's not encroachment, it's returning to the original state, due to the removal of human interference through frequent burning. Get over the idea that they should be grasslands. They're not grasslands.
Adam Huggins 50:36
One of Jon's papers compares the Bay Area — so that's coastal California — with the Sierra Nevadas, in the interior. Up in the mountains, lightning strikes are super common, and so were wildfires historically. But in coastal California, lightning strikes are almost unheard of.
Jon Keeley 50:53
The bottom line is historically, those landscapes which are dominated by grasslands, if you take livestock off and you don't do anything with the burning — you just allow a natural frequency to occur. They all return to shrublands. And it's because there is no natural frequent fire regime in the East Bay. If you look at lightning ignitions in the East Bay, I think counties like Alameda and Contra Costa maybe have two lightning fires every 100 years. They don't have a high fire frequency.
Adam Huggins 51:25
So historically, if fire was keeping lands clear, and there's no lightning to light the fires...
Mendel Skulski 51:33
Then Indigenous people were lighting fire, which we know because they've been telling us.
Adam Huggins 51:39
Yes, Indigenous people were lighting fires throughout coastal California, to create open ecosystems — to produce acorns, and wildflower seeds, and game, and other cultural values.
Jon Keeley 51:51
I would call this familiar history. What's your point? The grasslands produced seed bearing plants that were a lot more valuable to them than the shrublands. So Native Americans started managing their landscape through burning. When the Europeans came on the scene, they basically exacerbated the situation by greatly increasing fire frequency, in large part because they wanted to get rid of woody vegetation and replace it with herbaceous vegetation because it was better for grazing. And in fact, this is a global pattern throughout the world. Wherever Europeans invaded a landscape, they eliminated the woody vegetation, and they replaced it with herbaceous vegetation. They also brought a lot of herbaceous species from Europe. Those species were very aggressive and have the ability to take over disturbed landscapes. A lot of what we see today, when you look in California at any herbaceous vegetation and coastal region, most all of it is non-native, invasive species from Europe that are better adapted to that disturbance regime. And so we've lost a lot of our native shrubland vegetation. It's been replaced by non native grasslands.
Adam Huggins 52:21
Well, my point is that, if many of these non-native annual grasslands aren't really doing what Indigenous people created them to do, and at the same time they are creating fire danger, and require all of these inputs to maintain as mostly novel ecosystems, like what are we doing here? Why not just allow the native shrublands and native oak woodlands that are trying so hard to come back to do just that? They are super biodiverse and super important for native wildlife as well. They're more fire resistant, and they require much less work to maintain. We could use our, you know, admittedly limited resources to restore native grasslands wherever it seems practical or feasible. And then we could allow shrub lands and woodlands to return on other sites — where it's not so practical.
Mendel Skulski 54:01
So you're saying that just because Indigenous people, and then Europeans kept all of these ecosystems open manually, it doesn't mean that we have to keep doing it. And that it might not even be the best approach in the climate crisis.
Adam Huggins 54:17
Yes.
Mendel Skulski 54:18
So is this Jon's proposal or yours?
Adam Huggins 54:22
Oh, this is maybe my realization. And, you know, I guess it's blowing my mind because I grew up in these novel grasslands, breathing in all the pollen and sneezing like crazy, but I'm not alone.
Laura Cunningham 54:34
I actually completely agree with you. You know, my vision for parts of the Bay Area would be to have a mosaic of coastal scrub, coyote brush, and then you know, a patch of prairie here and an oak woodland there. And I actually think that's how it used to be for hundreds of years. I think it was a complex shifting patchwork of different habitats. And so yeah, have one area full of coyote brush. It's a native plant. It shouldn't be, you know, always eliminated. Rabbits and white-crowned sparrows nest in coyote brush — you need that too. You know this, either-or absolutism we get in our restoration thinking land management? No, I think we should have a complex mosaic, including the coyote brush.
Mendel Skulski 55:25
Well, that makes two of you. What about Jon?
Adam Huggins 55:31
Well, Jon is a fire guy, remember? So while Lynn was expressing concern about the higher fuel loads that you find in shrublands, and woodlands and forests, in part one, Jon is actually much more worried about the places that tend to ignite more easily. Because no ignition, no fire.
Jon Keeley 55:50
Most fires start in grasslands. And most of those grasslands are non-native annual grasses, because they're very flammable, they carry a fire very rapidly. So if your concern is to reduce fires in the landscape, then we probably want to convert those systems back into the native shrublands, which are less amenable to frequent fires.
Mendel Skulski 56:13
This has been a lot to take in. But I guess I'd have to say that argument number five goes something like these novel grasslands could be allowed to develop into native shrublands and woodlands. And that there are benefits to that.
Adam Huggins 56:29
Yeah. And I mean, one thing that all of the folks that I talked to agreed about is that all of these questions are really a matter of what we value the most. Do we value beef production and small family ranches? Do we value the recovery of riparian ecosystems? Or the survival of grassland birds? Or super rare wildflowers? Or beavers? Do we value grasslands or shrublands?
Jon Keeley 56:56
That's really the heart of the problem — coming up with what your goal is. There's no question that, for a lot of reasons, people prefer open grasslands. If you want just a pleasant scene with lots of grasslands, we're probably there for a lot of people. If your concern is natives versus non-natives and the conservation value, we're not there for a lot of our landscapes. If your concern is erosion control, we're not there for a lot of our landscapes, because the grasslands don't hold it. If your concern is the length of the fire season, right now we're seeing fires that have increased in the duration of the fire season, lasting much longer. A lot of that is due to the invasion on grasses which carry fire for a much longer period in the year than the native shrublands. So you really have to decide what you want.
Adam Huggins 57:52
And on the other side of the fence, Lynn said very much the same thing.
Lynn Huntsinger 57:57
That's the problem with all these things. It's an opinion, a policy decision, a human decision, a value judgment. What's good or bad is up for grabs. It's a definition by people. Shrubs, grass, forests — it's a human decision, to a certain extent. There's natural limitations, of course. But what we're experiencing with climate change means that we have to come to terms with that, because we're heading into a new climate.
Mendel Skulski 58:27
So here we are.
Adam Huggins 58:29
Here we are, heading into a brand new climate at the end of our final episode, with more questions than answers, as usual.
Mendel Skulski 58:38
Yeah, maybe that was to be expected.
Adam Huggins 58:40
Yeah. I mean, it's difficult for us. I have done my best to present these arguments clearly. But I do think it's really important to reiterate that there are just some fundamental disagreements here, both in terms of values and also basic facts. For example, here's Jon, reflecting some of my own frustrations in reporting this series.
Jon Keeley 59:02
I've heard at least four different accounts from different proponents of grazing. And they only talk about the positive things, and they don't talk about the negative. And, for example, I travel a lot across the coastal ranges of California, and those landscapes are grazed and they've been grazed for a long time. That's the most horrible looking landscape I can imagine. It's nothing but cow tracks all across the landscape. They try and suggest that "Well, grazing has value as increasing biodiversity", and they refer to the fact that "Well, grazing reduces the thatch of non native grasses and that opens habitat". I haven't seen it. I've seen a lot of grazed areas, and I've never seen grazed areas that have higher biodiversity, just never seen it.
Adam Huggins 59:52
And then on the other hand, from folks like Stu Weiss, you hear things like this.
Stu Weiss 59:57
What I often find is that the kind of hardcore anti-grazing people always pick what have to be the high impact areas, like around watering troughs, and places that are very heavily used. And then they they don't go, you know, a couple 100 meters away and see that, "oh, look, there's lots of room for the wildflowers here, as opposed to the ungrazed areas that are just, you know, a build up of thatch"
Adam Huggins 1:00:27
And if you speak to ranchers and rangeland managers like Clayton, you might hear something like this,
Clayton Koopmann 1:00:33
You still have your your hardcore doubters or anti-grazers. I don't think you're ever gonna change their opinion no matter what you show them, which is unfortunate. But that's going to be the way it is with I think any subject — you're just gonna have your far left and your far right and probably won't change their opinion.
Mendel Skulski 1:00:50
Well, Adam, I'd say we've heard more than a few discouraging words.
Adam Huggins 1:00:56
More than seldom. And I know it's easy to feel grazed and confused. But even with all of the disagreements, I think everyone that I spoke to cares a lot, and knows a lot about the land. And they are all working in different ways to promote biodiversity, to address the climate crisis, and to support human values as well. And since it does all come down to what we value, I want to leave listeners with a few final thoughts about the lands where the sky isn't cloudy all day.
Mendel Skulski 1:01:28
So definitely not here.
Adam Huggins 1:01:31
That's right. So one last time, let's hear it for rangelands.
Lynn Huntsinger 1:01:37
Grazing is not a black box. It's not a yes or no thing. It's a when, where, how many, why thing, right? It's complicated. You can have three cows, you can have 10, you can have 100 sheep. There's a lot of decisions. They can be there in the spring, fall, they can be there for two weeks, they can be there for a year. You make that decision based on what you know about the impacts of what they do. It's not just grazing.
Ashley Ahearn 1:02:02
It's the fabric that stitches the community together. And that, to me is something that I'm not okay with just giving up on or just throwing out because we've decided beef is bad. What I want is a way to see those values. And that way of life is something that is worth preserving. But does need to be changed a little bit, does need to be made more sustainable, does need to be brought into the 21st century in terms of how we care for the land and how we use cows as a tool.
Adam Huggins 1:02:30
And finally, let's hear it for rewilding.
Laura Cunningham 1:02:33
I mean, I'm definitely for more wildlife and more native grasslands. And I think it would be nice to have less cattle. Cattle are so abundant. Even Point Reyes National Seashore is full of cattle, in a lot of it — and takes away from the elk. If we could have some parts and preserves that are truly rewilded — that are managed, maybe with prescribed fire, and native elk grazers, and less cattle on the landscape. Where maybe wolves could be able to travel through the state more like they're trying to do. Big networks of rewilded parks and preserves that are connected by wildlife corridors, where wildlife can safely move without traffic impacts or hunting. It seems like a gigantic ask to me, but I think we really should consider it.
Bob Beschta 1:03:26
This is based on our best science as we know today, what we think these ecosystems need. And so this is why we put forth this proposal. But in order for it to move forward now it really has to be grabbed by others, particularly those with political component. See if we can get changes in how we manage public lands in the American West so that agencies change what they do. So, it's like recovery of an ecosystem. You may start slowly at first, but after we begin to see the benefits, we think that this would increase the pressure to do more and more and more on public lands.
Mendel Skulski 1:04:07
This episode of Future Ecologies features the voices of Bob Beschta, Ashley Ahearn, Jon Keely, Laura Cunningham, Lynn Huntsinger, Stuart Weiss, and Clayton Koopman. Music by Thumbug, C. Diab, Meg Iredale, Saltwater Hank, and Sunfish Moon Light, cover art by Ale Silva, and was produced by Adam Huggins and me, Mendel Skulski — with sound design help from our intern, Brennen King, and with special thanks to Saxon Richardson. You can find the proposal to rewild the American West, along with all of our other citations, a transcript of this episode, and lots more on our website - futureecologies.net This podcast exists because of support from listeners just like you, and those supporters get access to exclusive bonus episodes, early releases, stickers, patches, our Discord server, and now toques! Head to futureecologies.net/join and choose the option that works best for you. Or just leave us a review and tell a friend about the show. As always, thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.