A Toast to Nature

This one’s for you, Budweiser, for doing the right thing.

Let’s first explain why beer industry giant Anheuser-Busch happened to become the owner of 900 cattle that were damaging some pristine meadows in the Sierra Nevada high country. The brewery bought the 700-acre Cabin Bar Ranch at Olancha, near the southern end of the Owens Valley, back in 1988, mainly to get the water rights. The idea was that the ranch’s aquifers would provide a reserve water supply in the event the brewery’s regular deliveries were interrupted or curtailed by drought. The water would be shipped south via the Los Angeles Aqueduct to the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys. So far, the firm has not used any of the water.

The cattle came with the purchase of the Cabin Bar. Also in the deal was a lease to graze the cows on 100,000 acres of National Forest land on the Kern Plateau during summers. The plateau is a High Sierra wilderness region known for its golden trout, the official state fish.

In recent years, the Sierra Club and others protested the damage that the cattle were doing to streams in the lease area. University of California scientists recommended that they be kept off the range for at least 10 years to allow the stream areas to recover.

Anheuser-Busch could have fought back, as Western ranchers often do when anyone tries to tell them how to run their business. Instead, the company announced it has decided to “pursue a more limited cattle operation” and will not return the cows to the leased summer range next year.

One environmental leader called it “a real and welcome gesture of goodwill.” The Forest Service will decide how to best manage the area in future years. Grazing should be stricken from the list.