Canada’s Cowboys May Be Endangered Species : Environment: Groups target the practice of grazing cattle on public grasslands, saying it is ecologically harmful. Ranch hands accuse them of hypocrisy.

Eight cowboys are dotted among the 1,500 bellowing cattle inching down the mountains to this high-country camp on Canada’s largest beef ranch.

Then there are seven, as an explosive cow pony kicks up its heels, throws its rider into the grass and gallops off through the snow.

Terry Cecil Milliken, camp foreman for the Douglas Lake Cattle Co., views the high jinks on the autumn roundup with more admiration for the bronc than sympathy for the cowhand.

“He’s just a smart horse. I broke him, I started him. He was one of the smartest horses I ever rode,” he said.

Milliken, 47, has broken scores of horses in the 16 years he has spent at the British Columbia ranch, which dates back 120 years, stretches for more than 60 miles and feeds 18,000 cattle.

These days he and his fellow cowboys have more to contend with than bucking horses on the 4,000-foot-high grasslands between the Rockies and British Columbia’s Coast Mountains.

Their way of life is increasingly threatened by environmentally conscious residents of fast-growing cities such as Vancouver, Denver and Salt Lake City.

Urban environmental groups say feeding cattle on public grazing lands such as the 500,000 acres leased by the Douglas Lake Ranch causes irreparable damage to the ecology.

Armed with bumper stickers saying “No Moo in ‘92,” some even suggest that cows’ flatulence contributes to global warming.

“Raising cattle on public land threatens wildlife populations because the ranchers kill the wolves and other animals to protect their vested interest,” said Peter Hamilton, director of Vancouver-based Lifeforce Foundation.

Lifeforce and other ecology groups are not won over by the cowboy’s rugged image. “If more people saw how the animals are inhumanely raised and slaughtered, they would become vegetarian,” Hamilton said.

He said animal husbandry practices such as dehorning, castration and hot-branding without anesthesia are brutal--as is the cowboy sport of rodeo.

But Milliken says cowboys are a different breed from city slickers. They love being outdoors all day with animals, and they do not work bankers’ hours.

“If we have to work seven days a week, we work seven days a week. Sometimes we start at 1 a.m. and we’re finished when the job is done,” he said.

Today, Milliken mounts up at 7 a.m. in the bitter cold and remains on horseback for the next eight hours, herding the cattle into corrals, counting and sorting them for sale.

With his piercing blue eyes, graying mustache and weather-beaten face, Milliken says he keeps cowboying because he must.

“It’s a pretty tough way to make a living. It’s just hard work; it’s hard on the body. But if I was to quit, I would probably cripple up real fast,” he said.

He said his annual holiday consists of driving down to Arizona with a horse trailer to take part in roping competitions. “I go down to do what I do here.”

Camp cook Marilyn Tomkins, 47, is equally puzzled by the “Greenpeacers” and their complaints about cattle ranches.

Tomkins considers them tenderfoot busybodies. “I have a hard time relating to these younger people. They’ve never had to carry a pail of water or cut firewood,” she said.

A former trapper and jill-of-all-trades, Tomkins says she is paid $890 a month to cook and cowboy.

“I am treated like a queen. I don’t care whether they don’t pay much. I’m just happy,” she said.

Feminism is not a big issue for her.

“Cowboys have got to be one of the most polite people. They never swear in here. They’re very much gentlemen. They wouldn’t dare talk back to the cook anyway,” she said.

Douglas Lake ranch manager Joe Gardner, a helicopter pilot with a master’s degree in agriculture, also finds it hard to understand the growing anti-ranching sentiment.

“I can’t relate to it--most of those people are wearing leather shoes and a belt. They’re frying their vegetables in animal fat. It just doesn’t add up.”

Gardner, 45, believes ranching is the best use for this semi-arid grassland. “There’s nothing else that it’s good for except cattle . . . or making movies,” he said.

And he isn’t so sure about movies after letting makers of the film “The Grey Fox” use the ranch as a set.

“We had 150 useless Hollywood types for about 10 days. We made some money off them, but it wasn’t worth it,” he said.

He believes the real danger to the environment is from the public and the pressure the government is putting on ranchers to open up their land for fishing and other recreation.

But he does not think cowboys are a dying breed. “The true cattle ranches are always going to need cowboys,” he said.