Renegades on the Range Try Saddle-Worn Antics

In America’s mythology, the rancher holds favored ground. Idealized as a symbol of American character, the rancher and his calloused cousin, the farmer, have been our connection to solid earth. Other nations glorify their workers or their students. Americans glorify those who give us food. Salt of the earth, gaunt and weather-beaten but never bowed, they are custodians of values now endangered but not forgotten.

But these are hard times on the Western range. Aren’t they always? And some of our ranchers and farmers are trying to stir up another regrettable Sagebrush Rebellion. You know, complaining that they have privileged rights to land and resources that we all own. They want to do with it as they please.

I think they are doing real harm to their cause.

In Fallon, Nev., a couple of renegade cattlemen decided to jump claim on public range lands, hoping to stare down federal officials or at least spark a local uprising against Washington.

Instead they came out looking cartoonish.

In drought-stricken Klamath Falls, Ore., farmers have tried to seize emergency water impounded for endangered salmon and suckers.

They got plenty of attention in the news, but even the Bush administration shows little stomach for their antics.

In San Bernardino, elected officials are egging on a range war against the federal government because of restrictions on grazing and mining.

Instead of winning sympathy as brave-hearted souls, they’re winding up as some grotesque Hollywood caricature of the redneck sheriff.

In Utah, a band of Mormon zealots called for people to arm themselves against, of all things, the United Nations, warning of an international conspiracy to seize their land and water.

The church disavowed the group.

Things are changing in the West. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Sagebrush Rebellion polarized many in America, but it served to unite rural sympathizers. For awhile, ranchers and small-scale Western farmers felt a little better for blowing their tops against the federal government. But that movement produced too many crackpots for its own good.

By the mid-1990s, groups like eastern Montana’s Freemen pretty much exposed the heart of this rebellion for what it was: a menace. The Freemen were gun-slinging ranchers, you might remember, who gave the Constitution a second reading and discovered, why lordy, they were owed the right to kite checks around town and put out arrest warrants for anybody who said no.

This time around, renegade ranchers and their ilk are playing to a weary audience. Federal land managers who are trying to protect endangered animals and fish are not so easily marginalized as heavies by those who beat down range lands and show disregard for hard-pressed wildlife.

In Nevada, even the Cattlemen’s Assn. didn’t offer support to those two ranchers who refused to pay the $1.35 grazing fee, what ranchers are charged to feed one cow and her calf for a month on public lands. This is barely more than the cost of a can of dog food.

Government officials tried to talk sense to the lawbreakers for years before removing the offending cattle. And the ranchers had little luck trying to sell the fraudulent idea that they were victims of gub’ment “rustling.”

Personally, I think our ranchers and small-scale farmers in the West deserve some help. But they can’t expect it anymore as an automatic dividend from their romanticized, saddle-worn image. If they won’t lead the way, or at least cooperate, when it comes to land restoration, they will be slowly driven off public lands in the years ahead. Only 2% of our beef is grown on Western public allotments anyway.

If farmers along the California-Oregon border insist on sacrificing wild salmon and claiming it won’t really matter, all they are doing is providing ammunition to critics who say: Don’t trust farmers when they promise to be stewards of our resources.

The problem is cultural, rural Westerners say. They complain that city people are heedless to their plight. Yet I don’t hear of many small-town bake sales for the 1,128,746 urban and suburban Americans whose jobs were lost and families torn apart by mass layoffs so far this year, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Social dislocation is not limited to the farm.

Rural Americans only diminish themselves when they flout the values of wildlife, clean water and healthy public lands. The people would be better off as stewards who can remind urban Americans that the alternative to farms and ranches is too often suburban sprawl.

Progressive ideas abound in modern ranching and farming. Urban consumers are hungry for organic produce, boutique vegetables, free-range poultry, brand-name meat from ranchers they can trust. Japanese-owned cattle operations in Montana are proving that you can raise a better-tasting steer and make money in the bargain.

The pathfinders who are leading the way toward this future should be the ones getting our attention. They should be the ones heard in Washington and in our cities, not the old-timers who think they know best, by God, so get out of the way.