Saving the Last Cattle Drive

Sean Paige

...I was there in June with MSLF colleagues to see the famed Upper Green River Drift, believed to be America’s oldest and longest-running cattle drive. It didn’t disappoint. There it was, like something out of the movies—a mooing mass of cattle plodding along, with whistling cowboys and tireless cattle dogs in pursuit. But it’s not a movie set. It’s not a historic reenactment. It’s the real deal, an honest-to-goodness, good old-fashioned cattle drive, still alive and kicking up dust in the 21st century American West.

...It also takes a master logistician to pull off a cattle drive of this scale. Involved are roughly 6,000 cattle, belonging to a dozen different families or “outfits,” some of whom have been doing this annually since the 1890s. Cattle must be nudged, prodded, and cajoled up to 80 miles. It’s a long but gradual march, done in phases, usually in the cool of the morning. Driving the animals too far in the heat of the day would harm them. The herds and their mounted handlers cross a patchwork of public and private lands, using a network of overpasses, bridges, trails, and roads, paved and primitive. Some outfits are moving cattle for 12 to 14 days, depending on conditions. Those traveling the farthest can spend nearly a month on The Drift, before the livestock reach the summer allotments.

There the animals will be watched through the summer months by range riders, who keep predators at bay, as best they can, and move them from pasture to pasture to avoid overgrazing. When summer turns to fall, the process is reversed, as cattle “drift” back to lower elevations, instinctively prodded by the oncoming winter. There they are gathered, counted, sorted, and in some cases shipped to market.

Sadly, today’s ranchers also need to have familiarity with laws and courts, given how frequently public lands disputes and other matters of life or death to a cattle outfit can end in litigation. That’s what brought MSLF lawyers and our rancher-clients together on this June weekend—a court case, which could impact the fate not just of these ranchers, but of all ranchers who rely on public lands grazing.

The case, Center for Biological Diversity v. Bernhadt, could determine whether ranchers and federally protected grizzly bears can continue to coexist on the federal grazing allotments where these herds are headed. At issue is whether documented problem bears can be removed by the state of Wyoming, when repeated cases of predation occur, as has been the accepted practice since the 1970s. Otherwise these lands will essentially become a grizzly bear buffet, where open season is declared on domestic livestock and ranchers can figuratively and literally be eaten out of house and homestead.

The balance between profit and loss, survival or financial ruin, has always been precarious for ranchers. But the growing toll grizzlies and wolves are taking on these ranchers, and the determined efforts of organized antigrazing groups to use grizzly protection as a pretext for running them off their federal allotments, is pushing some families to the brink. This at a time when they confront a host of COVID-19-related supply chain challenges.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE