Brewery’s Herd Sparks Battle Over Wilderness

When Anheuser-Busch took over a cattle ranch here in 1988, people assumed it was another case of a wealthy stranger lusting after water rights in the Owens Valley.

But the world’s largest brewery was serious about going into the cattle business. And its decision to graze 1,000 head in the high country next to Sequoia National Park has proved far more contentious than its claim to Eastern Sierra water.

A company that has contributed millions of dollars to environmental causes, Anheuser-Busch is now in the awkward position of defending itself against charges that its cattle are running roughshod over a magnificent wilderness, and in the process, driving the exquisite golden trout, California’s state fish, toward extinction.

With its bright yellow sides, scarlet belly and burnt orange fins, the golden trout has beguiled anglers since President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the first study of the fish in 1905. Conservationists have been struggling since then to protect it from a variety of perils--drought, over fishing, cannibalization by nonnative species and degradation of stream systems by grazing stock.

The Anheuser-Busch herd roams about one-third of the 300,000-acre Golden Trout Wilderness, sharing the mountain meadows with bears, mountain lions, coyotes and mule deer--not to mention hikers and anglers who have been raising a stink about the cattle for several years.

Last year, the company began resisting efforts by the U.S. Forest Service to move its livestock off at least one mountain meadow bordering the trout’s last remaining spawning waters.

With the approach of spring and a new grazing season, environmentalists are renewing pressure on federal officials to get tough with Anheuser-Busch.

Jim Edmundson, director of California Trout, a statewide organization of anglers and conservationists, argues that the 1,500 cattle in the Golden Trout ought to be cut back by two-thirds--a figure that happens to coincide with the size of Anheuser-Busch herd.

“At current levels of stocking, the fish’s habitat is being disassembled,” Edmundson said. “Remember, we are talking about the only 20 miles of stream on earth where this fish is found in its natural habitat.”

During the past two decades, he said, the golden trout population has declined from 7,000 per mile to 1,000 per mile.

Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the fish was a candidate for the endangered species list, and blamed its declining population on damage from grazing.

*

Forest Service officials are struggling to come up with a grazing plan for the 1996 season that will protect the wilderness without forcing Anheuser-Busch to make a substantial reduction in its herd.

“There are serious problems up there, and we need to jump on them this year,” said Ron Keil, a natural resource specialist with the Forest Service.

The brewery’s cattle are not the only ones in the wilderness. Three local families who have been ranching in the area for generations also have grazing rights.

But the Anheuser-Busch herd is by far the largest. And as the only corporate rancher in the neighborhood, the firm makes an inviting target for critics who say that letting big companies raise private stock on public land amounts to corporate welfare.

Anheuser-Busch pays between $3,000 and $4,000 a year for the right to graze its cattle on 77,000 acres of wilderness. The Forest Service spends between $175,000 and $350,000 annually taking care of the land, which is part of Inyo National Forest, and collects just $46,000 from all grazing permit holders. The rest comes from taxpayers.

The Forest Service says it isn’t leaning any harder on Anheuser-Busch than on other livestock operations in the area.

But privately some government officials say Anheuser-Busch ought to be held to a higher standard than its neighbors.

“On the one hand, we’re dealing with a couple of families trying to eke out a living on the land,” said one official. “On the other, we’re talking about a huge conglomerate that spends more on a 30-second commercial than it does on annual grazing management.”

Anheuser-Busch executives insist that they are responsible stewards of the land, and they complain that they are being singled out for environmental problems that date back 100 years before their arrival.

“We have difficulty with the premise that others could graze cattle there but Anheuser-Busch shouldn’t,” said John Martz, a vice president of the company’s land division.

“We think our ranching practices are the best in the area. We have built fences to keep the cattle off sensitive places. We have hired a range consultant to monitor our operations, and we have worked very hard with the Forest Service to protect plants and wildlife.”

Others disagree.

“The area has just never really recovered from the pounding it took over the last century,” said Tom Dudley, an aquatic biologist at UC Santa Barbara who has been studying meadow recovery in the Golden Trout Wilderness as part of a research project conducted by the Forest Service since 1982.

What were once lush meadows have become sagebrush flats, Dudley said.

“Many of those meadows are very badly beaten up and ought to be rested for 10 years,” he said. “To keep grazing them is like ripping a scab off an old wound.”

As cattle forage along riverbanks, manure, erosion and the loss of vegetation all affect water quality, temperature and flow, as well as insect life critical to trout survival.

But the trout is not the only potential casualty of overgrazing.

*

Forest Service officials warned last year that grazing practices by Anheuser-Busch were threatening an endangered plant. A statewide organization of hunters and wildlife photographers say that the cattle herd is pushing deer out of the area.

Last year, the Forest Service recommended that Anheuser-Busch move its stock out of one of the 20 meadows it uses to protect stream banks and an endangered plant, the purple flowered abronia alpina.

Anheuser-Busch rejected the recommendation.

“Resting the meadow would have had an economic impact on the operation,” Martz said. “I guess from our perspective we do not believe such a measure was necessary.”

The company did use the meadow less last year. But by intensifying grazing elsewhere, it aggravated old problems in four nearby meadows, according to Forest Service records.

“The problem up there is that the soils are so thin it doesn’t take much to stir up the old cycle of erosion,” said Dudley, the Forest Service research consultant.

But concerns about the brewery’s operations extend beyond the wilderness boundary to its private ranch headquarters--500 acres of winter pasture at the southern end of the Owens Valley.

The company said it bought the ranch for the water rights, intending to pump water south to its Van Nuys brewery via the aqueduct. The plan raised fears that neighboring wells would be drawn down and that local wetlands would be drained.

“The private portion of the ranch is home to some unique aquatic life and swarms of birds,” said Darrell Wong, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

Anheuser-Busch officials say the company has not decided whether to go ahead with its original pumping plan. But in the meantime, ranch irrigation practices have drawn criticism from Wong’s office.

As spring water is diverted to grow hay for wintering cattle, Wong said, irrigation canals are not being kept up to ensure the survival of an endangered fish, the Owens tui chub, known to be in the water.

“A lot of things could be done to improve that situation,” Wong said. “We’ve asked for their cooperation. But, so far, have not gotten it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ranch Controversy

Critics say cattle from Anheuser-Busch’s ranch in the Owens Valley are overgrazing a national wilderness area in the High Sierra and threatening survival of the state fish, the California golden trout.