New Paths Toward the Loss of Our Public Lands Much of our land has for decades been under the iron grip of a small but powerful segment of the livestock industry – holders of grazing permits (“permittees”) who, as a group, tend to dislike the very “big government” of by and for The People – read American taxpayer – that has made them rich and is keeping them that way. Their livestock dominates on tens of millions of acres of federal land, replacing entire landscapes of America’s wild creatures. When state and county lands are added to the federal count, livestock grazes some 300 million acres of the American West, an area three times larger than California. Even in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Yellowstone Park and the mostly public land surrounding it), all of the great hoofed natives there -- mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, moose, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and bison – all taken together are outnumbered 2:1 by domestic livestock. And that’s supposedly our premier wilderness. (To see areas in the Yellowstone Ecosystem where permittees graze livestock, look here. Were it not for livestock grazing, the vast expanse of the people’s domain in the western U.S. could be a North American Serengeti with wild herds extending beyond the horizons in all directions. And here’s the kicker: We subsidize these permittees....