Rating: 
Summary: Eyeopening, superb book
Review: Through wonderful pictures and thoughtful essays by leading historians, scientists, and economic and policy experts, this book superbly shows the environmental crisis that the US West faces due to livestock production, an industry that uses more land and water than any other. A statement on the cover flap summarizes the problem well: "Over decades, the placement of exotic, water hogging, ill-adapted livestock on western lands has changed diverse native plant communities into monocultures of weeds; turned perennially flowing creeks into dry stream beds; relegated large predators such as wolves and grizzly bears to only the most remote wilderness areas; and forced many wildlife
species to the edge of extinction.
The book is awesome. Instead of the common book size, 5 inches by 8 inches, it is an eye-catching 12 inches by 13.5 inches. Many of its spectacular pictures completely cover two facing pages. Particularly effective are three consecutive such pictures, showing (1) "How It Was" (a beautiful natural area with a variety of covered plants), (2) "How It Is" (many cows and their manure on land completely devoid of plants), and (3) "How It Can Be" (another natural area with grass and some native animals). There are over 90 consecutive pages of pictures under the heading, "How to Look ... and See," with text referring to numbered places on the pictures that illustrate harmful effects of animal grazing.
The wide variety of photographs vividly show the contrast between land used to raise cattle and the relatively few places that have been protected from its damaging effects. To dramatize the scope of the problem, each odd-numbered page without a picture has "300 million acres at stake," written at the bottom of the page. This area, equal to that of three Californias, or the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from Maine to Florida, with Missouri added, is the amount of public land grazed by livestock in the U.S, West, at great cost to society. What makes the situation even worse are the many subsidies, courtesy of taxpayers, that public lands ranching operations receive, including low-interest loans, predator "control," fencing, government-funded range "developments," and emergency bailouts - hence the book's title: "Welfare Ranching."
The book does not only paint a negative portrait of current conditions on public lands. It also presents an alternate vision that can renew and restore these lands, if enough citizens demand that governments shift land management priorities to benefiting people and the environment and away from facilitating private gain.
I am proud that my article (co-authored by Mollie Matteson), "Eating Is an Agricultural Act: Modern livestock Agriculture from a Global Perspective," appears in the book. When I was asked to submit an article, I readily consented, but I never imagined that it would appear in such a spectacular book.
While not a typical vegetarian-promoting book, the book's giant size, marvelous pictures, and cogent essays give it great potential to capture people's attention to how harmful animal-based diets are and thereby to help shift them away from unhealthy diets and help shift society away from harmful agricultural practices. I hope that it gets the wide audience it so richly deserves so that it can help move our precious planet away from its present perilous path to a more sustainable one.
Rating: 
Summary: When a spade's a spade
Review: Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West. George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson, Editors. 346 pp. Sausalito, California: Foundation for Deep Ecology, 2002. [$$$] paperback; [$$$] hardback.
At 12 x 13 inches, with beautiful and startling photographs, Welfare Ranching: the Subsidized Destruction of the American West deserves a prominent place on the environmentalist's coffee table. Don't expect a balanced view of the current issues, however; this book, a compilation of essays and articles, celebrates only the anti-livestock perspective in the conflict concerning cattle grazing on federal land in the West. The book is divided into seven parts. I, II and III introduce readers to anti-grazing views and objectives. Part IV consists of ecological research reports. Parts V and VI offer essays about related subjects such as economics, nutrition, suburban sprawl and the use of grazing permits as collateral. A handful of solutions are reviewed in two essays in part VII, followed by "Our Vision," the editors' wrap-up. The federal lands grazing conflict pits environmentalists against family ranchers and the cattle industry. Environmentalists, among whom the authors of this book count themselves, want an end to livestock grazing on federal land because it harms water, land and wildlife. And they object to leasing land to ranchers at prices below market value, which explains the book's title. The ranchers' point of view is barely mentioned. Ranching has supported generations of families for close to one-hundred-fifty years. Food for livestock is sparse in the arid West so cattle need to roam over a wide area to find enough to eat. At the same time, ranchers must raise and sell a certain number of cattle each year to avoid debt. Because there is insufficient forage on the ranchers' own land to feed the quantity of cattle needed to break even financially, ranchers lease additional grazing land from the federal government. The loss of grazing leases will, quite simply, put them out of business. Overall, Welfare Ranching is well-written and researched, and accompanied by generous footnotes and bibliographies. Some pieces were published earlier in peer-reviewed journals, a further indication of their high quality. Ninety-five pages of striking photographs illustrate the dramatic difference between grazed and natural or restored land, ranging from wildflowers scattered across rolling green hills in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley to livestock-damaged cracked earth and dry creek beds in Coronado National Forest in Arizona. The book's minimal use of degrading anti-ranching clichés makes it easier to read than some of the activist literature and websites. However, the transcript of a lecture given by Edward Abbey, one that encourages the harming and killing of cattle, seems self-indulgent and ridiculously inhumane. His and a handful of other essays employ language that may strike some readers as smug and elitist. Enviro-speak like "rewild," "keystone species" and "dewatering of fish" may strengthen the bond with the converted but grates after awhile. Can't we just say the fish died because the river dried up? "Livestock abuse" sounds like cattle torture but means land, water and wildlife abuse caused by livestock grazing. The occasional tendency to imply wrongdoing, by applying late 20th century standards to 19th century actions, seems careless in a work compiled to validate the anti-grazing position. To a certain degree, Welfare Ranching promotes a common concept in "livestock-free" literature: that federal land leased to ranchers is somehow owned by and available to anyone at any time. References to "our public land" often imply that federal land belongs to each individual American when, in fact, it belongs to the American government as a corporate entity. The grazing controversy is not as simple as removing cattle from federal land, as Welfare Ranching may lead some readers to believe. Factors other than ecology fuel this debate and need acknowledgement, for example, prejudices about city vs. ranch people, on both sides; refusals to communicate and/or negotiate; and the efficacy of the Bureau of Land Management offices in affected states. It's unfortunate that these obstacles, and the underlying history and values that motivate the parties involved, aren't within the book's scope. The small space devoted to possible solutions is surprising in view of the book's purpose to show that environmental damage needs to be repaired. It remains to be seen if anti-grazing activism is solution-driven or primarily intended to disparage those with whom the activists disagree. Although Welfare Ranching seems written to motivate readers to find solutions to federal lands cattle grazing, additional material about solutions, and less ridicule, would have furthered a more constructive debate. C. Shepard is a freelance writer in Berkeley, California. She's working on a story about the federal lands grazing conflict in southeastern Oregon.
Rating: 
Summary: Book Review: Give me a home where the cattle don't roam
Review: Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West. George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson, Editors. 346 pp. Sausalito, California: Foundation for Deep Ecology, 2002. [$$$] paperback; [$$$] hardback.
At 12 x 13 inches, with beautiful and startling photographs, Welfare Ranching: the Subsidized Destruction of the American West deserves a prominent place on the environmentalist's coffee table. Don't expect a balanced view of the current issues, however; this book, a compilation of essays and articles, celebrates only the anti-livestock perspective in the conflict concerning cattle grazing on federal land in the West. The book is divided into seven parts. I, II and III introduce readers to anti-grazing views and objectives. Part IV consists of ecological research reports. Parts V and VI offer essays about related subjects such as economics, nutrition, suburban sprawl and the use of grazing permits as collateral. A handful of solutions are reviewed in two essays in part VII, followed by "Our Vision," the editors' wrap-up. The federal lands grazing conflict pits environmentalists against family ranchers and the cattle industry. Environmentalists, among whom the authors of this book count themselves, want an end to livestock grazing on federal land because it harms water, land and wildlife. And they object to leasing land to ranchers at prices below market value, which explains the book's title. The ranchers' point of view is barely mentioned. Ranching has supported generations of families for close to one-hundred-fifty years. Food for livestock is sparse in the arid West so cattle need to roam over a wide area to find enough to eat. At the same time, ranchers must raise and sell a certain number of cattle each year to avoid debt. Because there is insufficient forage on the ranchers' own land to feed the quantity of cattle needed to break even financially, ranchers lease additional grazing land from the federal government. The loss of grazing leases will, quite simply, put them out of business. Overall, Welfare Ranching is well-written and researched, and accompanied by generous footnotes and bibliographies. Some pieces were published earlier in peer-reviewed journals, a further indication of their high quality. Ninety-five pages of striking photographs illustrate the dramatic difference between grazed and natural or restored land, ranging from wildflowers scattered across rolling green hills in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley to livestock-damaged cracked earth and dry creek beds in Coronado National Forest in Arizona. The book's minimal use of degrading anti-ranching clichés makes it easier to read than some of the activist literature and websites. However, the transcript of a lecture given by Edward Abbey, one that encourages the harming and killing of cattle, seems self-indulgent and ridiculously inhumane. His and a handful of other essays employ language that may strike some readers as smug and elitist. Enviro-speak like "rewild," "keystone species" and "dewatering of fish" may strengthen the bond with the converted but grates after awhile. Can't we just say the fish died because the river dried up? "Livestock abuse" sounds like cattle torture but means land, water and wildlife abuse caused by livestock grazing. The occasional tendency to imply wrongdoing, by applying late 20th century standards to 19th century actions, seems careless in a work compiled to validate the anti-grazing position. To a certain degree, Welfare Ranching promotes a common concept in "livestock-free" literature: that federal land leased to ranchers is somehow owned by and available to anyone at any time. References to "our public land" often imply that federal land belongs to each individual American when, in fact, it belongs to the American government as a corporate entity. The grazing controversy is not as simple as removing cattle from federal land, as Welfare Ranching may lead some readers to believe. Factors other than ecology fuel this debate and need acknowledgement, for example, prejudices about city vs. ranch people, on both sides; refusals to communicate and/or negotiate; and the efficacy of the Bureau of Land Management offices in affected states. It's unfortunate that these obstacles, and the underlying history and values that motivate the parties involved, aren't within the book's scope. The small space devoted to possible solutions is surprising in view of the book's purpose to show that environmental damage needs to be repaired. It remains to be seen if anti-grazing activism is solution-driven or primarily intended to disparage those with whom the activists disagree. Although Welfare Ranching seems written to motivate readers to find solutions to federal lands cattle grazing, additional material about solutions, and less ridicule, would have furthered a more constructive debate. C. Shepard is a freelance writer in Berkeley, California. She's working on a story about the federal lands grazing conflict in southeastern Oregon.
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