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Peace at any cost is a prelude to war!
Ken Holliday has an even larger chunk of timberland at stake. But he has
other worries as well from the federal bureaucrats. He runs 2,500 to 5,000
head of cattle on his 35,000-acre ranch. He has been informed by officials
that a wolf released in Idaho had crossed over the Snake River and has been
seen on his property. But it is illegal for him to shoot the wolf even if it
is killing his calves. On top of that, he says, environmentalist "neighbors"
have moved onto adjoining property with "pet" purebred wolves and mixed-breed
wolves. "Itâs the eco-trendy thing to do for these urban doctors and other
affluent professionals who move up here to rural areas," Holliday told The
New American. "They see us as country bubbas who donât appreciate the
environment, but we were taking care of the ecology long before they
âdiscoveredâ it. They go up on the mountain with their expensive wine and
celebrate turning loose their wolves, but that represents a real threat to me
and my family and our livelihood. Raising cattle is around-the-clock
business, and many times weâre up all night nursing calves. We canât afford
to lose any."
Like most other western ranchers, the Hollidays depend on their grazing
rights on the Forest Service and BLM lands, in addition to their own private
land. But proposed new listings of endangered species jeopardize their
ranching existence. "Eighty percent of our cattle ranching is family-owned,"
Oregon State Senator Ted Ferrioli explained to The New American, "and they
are struggling to make ends meet and to provide healthy, grass-fed beef â not
injected, feed-lot cattle â to the American public. But theyâre under real
attack by the environmentalists. The slogan adopted by the radical enviros in
1990 was âCattle Free in â93,â by which they meant they were going to run
the cattlemen off the range â through regulation and litigation â by 1993.
Well, they havenât succeeded completely, but they did cause quite a few
ranchers to go under, and theyâre trying to get the rest of them. Loggers and
ranchers are both targeted for extinction by these people."
Ferrioli notes that the Endangered Species Act is one of their weapons. The
Canadian lynx, sage hen, bull trout, cut throat trout, red band trout, and a
host of other "endangered" creatures could choke off cattlemenâs access to
water and pasture. The proposed bull trout listing is an especially
aggravating example of federal malpractice to many Oregon residents. For a
number of years, federal and state authorities were poisoning the bull trout,
trying to get rid of it. Now they have decided that it is endangered and in
need of protection.
As if the ever-changing mandates of state and federal envirocrats are not
sufficiently onerous for the harried ranchers and timbermen, the well-funded
eco-activists are always ready to up the ante with lawsuits. A recent example
is Friends of the Wild Swan vs. U.S. EPA filed in Montana. The suit seeks to
force the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct Endangered Species Act
(ESA) consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when EPA approves
Montanaâs list of water quality-impaired streams pursuant to the Clean Water
Act. This could result in severe restrictions on landownersâ rights to manage
their property.
"Put simply, this is a direct attack on the agricultural and logging
industries in Montana," said Jake Cummins, executive vice president of the
Montana Farm Bureau. "Linking the Endangered Species Act with the Clean Water
Act means every other waterway in Montana could become restricted no matter
how clean the water." The Farm Bureau noted that, if the court rules in favor
of the plaintiffs, federal agencies could second-guess every state water
quality decision under the guise of an ESA consultation.
Ecological Carnage
Are farmers, ranchers, loggers, and other rural residents who are tied
directly and indirectly to these enterprises exaggerating the threat to their
livelihoods and way of life? Not at all. Admissions of intent to eradicate
these resource-based occupations are plentiful in environmentalist
literature. For instance, the May-June 1999 issue of The Salmon-Selway
Defender, the newsletter of the Friends of the Clearwater, published in
Moscow, Idaho, states: "Several years ago the membership of the Sierra Club
voted to endorse ending commercial logging on our national forests We
view ending commercial logging as a way to revitalize the economies of rural
Idaho and the state in general. The timber industry had its day, but that day
is gone and it is time to move on."
It is that view, as implemented by federal officials, that is responsible for
the horrendous condition of our national forests today. The previously
mentioned GAO report, Catastrophic Wildfire Threats, notes:
The most extensive and serious problem related to the health of national
