For his protest against rising tourism, Utah rancher lets his cows do the, uh, talking

Boulder rancher Mark Nelson has a beef with his town’s touristy direction, so he did what Americans typically do: He protested. But he did something else that Americans typically don’t do: He turned his own cows into message boards. Last week, as he prepared to turn eight head of cattle loose outside the scenic southern Utah hamlet he calls home, Nelson took some black paint and a brush and went to work, crafting a note for fellow residents of Garfield County. “COWS NOT CONDOS,” he splashed on the left side of one cow and the right side of another before putting them out on State Road 12. “Tourism is an extractive industry,” he said. “There’s no such thing as eco-tourism. The dark side of that is you make people think it’s OK to overrun an area if they are bird-watching.” While they may disagree over the national monument’s reduction, probably every one of Boulder’s 240 or so residents wants to see the town’s quality of life remain intact...MORE