Writer, rancher shaped by grazing dispute

Ed Marston and Scott Bedke come from far different worlds, but they share a link that changed both of their lives. Their connection was Don Oman, a feisty Forest Service ranger who stood up to Idaho ranchers, political leaders and his own bosses in 1990 while seeking to protect the streams and wildlife habitat. Oman showed that livestock grazing had degraded both. Marston, the son of a tailor and a hatter from New York City, had a Ph.D. in physics and wrote a story about Oman in High Country News, which he published about environmental issues in the West. Bedke, then and now, is a member of a four-generation ranching family who run their cattle in the Goose Creek watershed on the desolate Idaho-Nevada-Utah border. Marston interviewed Bedke for a story in the High Country News that eventually was picked by People magazine, bringing the growing battle over public land grazing to a national audience. The two men got together for the first time in nearly 20 years Tuesday in Boise to reminisce about that early dispute and its impact on their lives. Their conversation said a lot about how far we have come in the West in a generation. The Oman dispute started Bedke on a path that led him off the ranch and eventually into politics. Today he is the assistant majority leader of the Idaho House of Representatives. It led Marston to two other ranchers, Doc and Connie Hatfield in Oregon, who changed the way he viewed ranching and environmentalism in the West. The couple not only were seeking to leave a lighter touch on the land and helping to rehabilitate the streams, but also were promoting a new way to market beef that empowered ranchers. That meeting was one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands that have led to a collaborative movement of land management across the West that continues to evolve. Marston has been one of the movement's leaders, using High Country News as a forum where both grazing opponents and ranchers could express their views...read more