Resource Management

Dust to Dust

Resource Management

Ashes to Ashes

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            I remember him well.

He was a flea bitten gray with dark hooves that must have been like grinding pig iron to trim. He was in my life before I knew he was in my life. Grandpa Albert and Tom McCauley had roped him as a weanling near the potholes in the narrows in Davis Canyon before the war. His mother was a wild horse in a band that ranged west of the Gila as far as Blue Creek. The rocks and malpais they ran on made tough feet a condition of existence.

My cousins and I knew about them only by anecdotal accounts because they were all gone by the time we came along. What we saw in our lives was the genetic strings that attached them to others before them and to the domesticated offspring that they left in their wake. Choctaw was the name he was given, but we knew him as “Chalky”.

We adored him.

He was the horse on which we all learned to ride. I suspect the extent of the lessons was being thrown onto the saddle and then handed the split reins that Grandpa tied together in a knot. We were told to hold them at that knot.

As far as I remember, the other point was, “Stay up or go to the house.”

Resource Management

The last two weeks of 2017 was spent in part in managerial assessment.

            Six independent sets of eyes were on the ranch reviewing the whole herd movement that has now been in place since 2010. Two sets were from the BLM. Three more were from our state’s Range Improvement Task Force, and one was from the USDA’s APHIS crew.

            The outcome was objective as far as I am concerned. A consensus reaffirmed the need to occasionally reverse the rotation for therapeutic reasons. Fencing improvement was also an issue that has weighed heavier each year as concentrated hooves push on them. Trough space is a personal concern, but the standing feed cannot be denied even if it is an extraordinary phenomenon of 2017. The bottom line is it works for us if, for nothing else, the matter of labor is considered. I find the idea of riding every corner of every pasture every time cattle are worked unappealing. I also like to see standing feed when we leave a pasture, but that is a personal thing. The longer I live, and, the more I understand what I am looking at, the criteria that rangeland turf evolved under several conditions that included periods of full rest is only reinforced. The other factors (wind, drought, fire, soil, and other) are not complete without hooved animals. In fact, a recent year visit to Allen Savory’s ranch was witness to Savory’s belief that the animal factor is the most important of all.

            Management and reactions to changing conditions can compensate for each component except the impact of animals. It is the responsibility of the steward, therefore, to learn and understand how his own universe responds and then manage animals in a manner that contributes rather than degrades the full complex.

            Dust to Dust

            The issue of wild horses in the West is a managerial debacle and the blame should be placed squarely on the land managers that have allowed the problem to worsen. It does no good to ridicule the land management committees that are the purveyors of gross neglect because they will never be in a situation to actually fix anything. They never understood the problem and certainly have no impetus or stomach to deal with it. Their idea of fix is to avoid the most toxic hostility of their efforts by expanding the Treasury drain that is now exceeding $70M per year in band aid packages. Heaven forbid killing hundreds if not thousands of horses they are party to creating and now starving on federal lands. That wouldn’t look good, but what they are doing to a depleted grass resource doesn’t look good, either.

            Their management of the commons is a classic failure.

            What should have been done long ago, the stepwise, incremental control of feral horses by individuals who would have understood and made hard decisions that were best, was disallowed. That is the hard love of a vested land steward. Unmanaged, too many hooves without rest or offsetting mitigating management has consequential results. Indeed, it is getting gruesome.

As it is, the truism of “dust to dust and nothing but dust” is only expanding.

            Ashes to Ashes

             Depending on how the data is interpreted, comprehensive and generational California fire management is going to create multiple years of annual carbon dioxide release in 2017 all by its lonesome. The hypocrisy is stifling.

            “Get involved in the management of your forest” the forest planning directives to the public are espousing.

            With such dreadful results, the reality is their management decisions have long been made under clueless public collaboration and collectivism. The “Do Nothing” banner has severe consequences. The current example is a national burn rate of just under 10 million acres per year.

            Sadly, that factor has gained the Forest Service a hefty reward in reworking budget considerations for future timber burning. It will get even better when the conflagration rate reaches 15 million acres annually and half of the tiny green enclaves of Santa Fe, Silver City, and Aspen burn to the ground.

            The burning of California is the reverse of the wild horse extravaganzas. If it actually exists, leadership must recognize everything would have been much better off by getting long absent numbers of hooves on the ground. Every ungulate would be welcome. Complexity of grazing is supremely important (although that is a subject simply too complicated for bureaucrats to understand much less adopt).

            As it is, the truism of “ashes to ashes and nothing but ashes” is only expanding.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “You understand, but they won’t.”