COLUMN ONE : Cowboys Hanging Up Spurs : Ranchers are hiring foreign hands who will put up with low pay and hard work. Herds are thinned and helicopters are used in roundups.

The American cowboy, that lanky, leather-faced, bowlegged archetype of the West, is a vanishing breed.

From the Texas Panhandle to Montana’s Big Sky country, frustrated cattle ranchers say the once-ample supply of savvy, reliable cowhands has plumb dried up.

“Finding a good cowpuncher is darn near impossible these days,” griped Lynn Anderson, a lifelong cattleman with a ranch outside Kingman, Ariz. “There’s nobody around who’s willing to put up with the hard, sweaty work, the isolation, the low pay and the dangers of the job.”

The decline of the buckaroo amounts to more than a sad historical footnote. The labor shortage is redefining life on American ranches, prompting many members of the $37-billion cattle industry to thin herds, team up with neighbors and alter management practices to stay afloat. On some sprawling spreads in West Texas, for instance, ranchers are saving hours of saddle time by using helicopters to round up livestock.

Here in Wyoming, the situation is particularly grim--and a tad embarrassing. After all, there are bronco-riding cowboys on every license plate and helmeted Cowboys on the University of Wyoming football team.

But dadgummit, the state’s ranch owners say, there just ain’t any real-life cowboys to be found.

In desperation, some cattlemen have begun importing foreign workers to ride the range. Under a provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act passed by Congress in 1986, ranchers may hire temporary foreign help if they first prove that no qualified Americans want the job.

Rory Cross struggled fruitlessly to find local hands to work his Powder Horn Ranch in Beaver, a tiny settlement 50 miles south of Casper in the foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains.

“They either don’t know cattle, don’t want to work hard or tend to want to go into town and get drunk,” lamented Cross, 53, a third generation rancher and representative in the state Legislature.

Frustrated, Cross opted to take advantage of the new law and hired two foreign vaqueros--one from Mexico, another from Peru. The process was tortuous and expensive, but worth it, the rancher says.

“These guys are great workers,” Cross said recently as he watched Cesario Celestino Soto, from Lima, Peru, ride in across the rolling grassland after a morning of branding. “They’re steady and they don’t complain when you ask them to fix a fence or dig an irrigation trench.”

Like Cross, ranchers in Montana, Arizona and Colorado have brought in cowboys from south of the border. Cattlemen in Texas, New Mexico and Utah may soon follow suit. Before long, some industry experts predict, foreign cowboys may be as common a sight on the range as a white-faced Hereford.

“Cowboys have a romantic image, but it takes a lot of dedication, skill and desire to do the job, and Americans don’t seem to want to make the sacrifices the life demands anymore,” said Peter Decker, a Colorado rancher and former state agricultural commissioner.

Source of Problem

The roots of the cowboy crunch go back several decades, as higher paying, less grueling jobs in the nation’s cities drained rural populations. Ranchers “scrounged up and shared whatever hands they could find” and began modernizing their operations to cut their use of labor, said Byron Price, executive director of the Oklahoma City-based National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Still, slicker management could not eliminate the need for manpower, and thus many ranchers began filling the gap by hiring Mexican hands. This proved a fruitful relationship. With cattle a major commodity in northern Mexico, most of the undocumented workers had already mastered the rudiments of the cowboy life--riding, roping and branding.

In 1986, however, Congress broke up this friendly arrangement, passing an immigration reform package that sought to stem the tide of illegal immigrants entering the United States. Suddenly, ranchers--like other employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers--faced the threat of hefty sanctions by the government.

“The law was a big jolt,” said Jack Huning, who owns a ranch outside Albuquerque. “You started seeing articles in the papers about raids and big fines. It made you nervous.”

Huning said he “had to let two good (Mexican) cowboys go” because he “just couldn’t take the risk.”

Many veteran vaqueros qualified for amnesty under the immigration reform law and these men--like Americans before them--hung up their lariats and moved into more lucrative industries. At the same time, new applicants seemed scarcer, perhaps deterred by reports that many outfits were no longer hiring illegal immigrants.

Ranchers have redoubled labor-saving efforts, such as using helicopters and all-terrain cycles for chasing down wayward heifers and for traveling pastures on fence-mending missions.

“You try to cut your calving time; you pool resources with other ranches; you basically do anything to get by with fewer bodies,” said Chandler Keys, a spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Assn. in Washington.

But most cattle raisers still say they are scraping by with smaller crews than they need to manage their herds. As Decker put it: “Of the ranchers I know, throughout the West, they are all, every day, looking for good workers.”

Guest Workers

Last year, cattlemen for the first time began importing cowboys under a guest worker program called H2a. Established in 1952, the program has been used for decades by sheep ranchers to import herders from Spain, Peru and, more recently, Mongolia. Sugar cane growers in Florida also use the H2a system to hire thousands of temporary field workers.

Under the law, ranchers must first advertise for cowboys and interview all interested applicants. If the number of qualified candidates falls short of the rancher’s needs, the U.S. Department of Labor then certifies that there are insufficient American workers to fill the jobs.

Foreign cowboys are given visas for a maximum of three years, but their status must be renewed annually. The vaqueros’ transportation to the ranch is paid by the employer, and their wage is determined by the state after a market survey. In Wyoming, the pay is $600 a month, in Arizona $650. Workers also receive room and board and worker’s compensation insurance.

But after hiring the H2a cowboys, ranchers must continue advertising for help throughout the first half of the foreign workers’ contract. If an American cowboy shows up during that period, he must be given a job.

“This is a real concern for the rancher, because he might have to fire the foreign worker or else pay the salaries of two men,” said Oralia Mercado, executive director of Mountain Plains Agricultural Service, which processes H2a applications for 38 ranchers in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Montana, and Idaho.

Foreign cowboys say the H2a program has been a godsend. Cesario Celestino Soto, 35, left a wife and three children in Lima. He misses them, but, unable to find steady work in Peru, he decided to come to Wyoming after a relative heard there was a job on the Cross ranch. He now shares a small red house--outfitted with a rare ranch luxury, a satellite dish--with another hand.

“The work is not too hard, and I’m liking it,” said Celestino, a slight man with a broad smile. “It is difficult for my family, but they are happy about the money.”

Ranchers’ Complaints

Among ranchers, the temporary worker program receives mixed reviews. Many complain that the hiring process is too laborious and say the federal government responds too sluggishly to their applications, often leaving them without help during peak periods like branding or calving season.

In 1988, Republican Rep. Lamar Smith--whose West Texas district is home to some of the nation’s largest ranches--introduced legislation designed to ease the H2a process, but the effort failed.

“The regulations are so burdensome, the red tape so long and the delays so terrible that it’s awfully difficult to find the cowboys you need when you need them,” said Smith, a cattleman himself.

In 1989, only 50 foreign cowhand jobs were approved by the federal government--a tiny fraction of the 26,000 H2a workers employed that year. John Hancock, the Department of Labor’s chief of agricultural certification, expects the number of cowboys to rise as word of the program spreads.

Ranchers agree with that assessment because, outside of hiring illegal aliens, they have no choice. Fewer and fewer Americans, it seems, are willing--and able--to lead a life in the saddle.

There are, ranchers report, plenty of “TV cowboys”--people who fancy Western wear and Hank Williams songs.

“I get a lot of (applicants) who seem to think being a cowboy means looking at some nice scenery--kind of a dude ranch holiday,” New Mexico cattleman Huning said.

“Out of 15 (American) guys who come looking for a job, 13 of them want to spend the day in a bar acting like a cowboy,” Decker said.

In fact, an honest-to-goodness cowpuncher needs more than a drawl and a 10-gallon hat to measure up. In Arizona, the advertisement seeking cowboys demands someone who can “round up, castrate, brand and vaccinate cattle, build and repair fences, windmills and irrigation equipment and ride, break and shoe horses,” said Lisa Bray, who runs a Phoenix-based firm that hires H2a workers for ranchers across the state. It helps if you’re an amateur mechanic who can fix farm machinery.

“Just this season I interviewed 100 (American applicants),” Bray said. “Out of that I hired six. The first guy lied, saying he could break horses when he couldn’t, and he lasted two weeks. Two others didn’t show up. A third found a better job . . . . So we’re left with two, and I’m not holding my breath about them.”

Theories on the sagging domestic interest in the cowboy life abound. Conservatives blame welfare programs or the erosion of a work ethic among younger generations. Others suggest the dip in rural populations means there are fewer kids growing up with an interest in ranching and cowboy know-how.

Still others say it’s simply a matter of economics. Wages and benefits lag behind those offered by urban employers and, although many ranchers are attempting to provide such incentives as television, most outfits are in isolated areas and can’t offer amenities to compensate for the low pay.

Moreover, a modern cowboy must be someone who is not really interested in getting ahead. With land, machinery and livestock costs high, ranching is so capital-intensive that a cowpuncher earning $900 or less a month has little hope of ever striking out on his own.

C. L. Sonnichsen summed up this dilemma in his book, “Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life on the Range Today.” A cowhand, Sonnichsen wrote, has “about as much chance to become a cattleman as a rustler has of getting to heaven.”

Arizona rancher Anderson, whose grandfather launched a ranching business after building railroads in the 1870s, offers a dose of typical cowboy philosophy when asked about the demise of his breed.

“It’s a bit sad,” Anderson said, “and I regret the loss of it because it’s my background.

“On the other hand, there’s a lot of things more productive than sitting on your horse and letting your feet hang down.”

Times researcher Ann Rovin in Denver contributed to this story.