Just Deserts
Ranching is a key cause of desertification, and the impact of cattle on arid and semiarid desert lands is immense. While most think of deserts as hot lowlands such as California’s Death Valley, the high or cold deserts of North America cover millions of acres and average 3,000–6,000 feet above sea level. Much of the Great Basin, covering Eastern Oregon and Washington is considered high desert. The majority of the high desert rangelands are overgrazed, and this overgrazing has brought increased erosion and massive gullies to an arid ecosystem prone to the process. The deserts are now under threat from climate change as well as overgrazing. As temperatures increase and snowpack melts earlier, invasive species are wreaking havoc across these delicate ecosystems, already strained from centuries of overgrazing. According to the 2022 Climate Report, many natural systems are near the hard limits of their natural adaptation capacity and additional systems will reach limits with increased global warming. So why are cattle grazing on our fragile public deserts?
While the Swamp Lands Acts of the late 1800s were decimating the biodiversity of North American waterways, the Desert Land Act was creating similar devastation elsewhere in the United States. In 1877 this act was passed by Congress to “encourage and promote the economic development of the arid and semiarid public lands of the western United States.” Within similar goals as the Swamp Lands Acts, the Desert Land Act allowed for individuals to apply for a Desert Land Entry, which allowed one to live on public arid land and “reclaim, irrigate, and cultivate” it. Only one eighth of the land applied for was required to be actually irrigated and cultivated, and the rest was generally used by the individuals as cattle grazing land. One of the vagaries of the DLA was that the claimant didn’t actually have to live on the land- merely use it. This loophole meant that large cattle companies grabbed thousands of acres of land through fake claims known as “dummy entry men”. In 1910 alone over 15,000 claimants took advantage of the act. One cattle company which engaged in the practice was the Pacific Livestock Company. The Burns East Oregon Herald described the conglomerate as;
“Perhaps the strongest [company] on this coast if not the strongest in the world. Their dominions extend from Grant County, Oregon to the southern confines of California. They can travel hundreds of miles in a southerly direction and camp every night on their freeholds.”
Oregonian Timothy Davenport described their presence in Oregon as disastrous for settlers. “They are the virtual masters… of the cattle business [and], to a ruinous extent, the sovereigns of the people of that section.” At their height the Pacific Livestock Company owned over 1.25 million acres across the states of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and California, cutting off settlers from water.
The practice of controlling waterways to land-grab was not limited to the state of Oregon. In Nebraska, John W Iliff, known as the “Cattle King of the Plains”, strategically bought water rights along the South Platte River, and, taking full advantage of the vague system, used his employees as buyers as well. Iliff controlled over 100 miles of prime grazing land along the Platte and ran a herd of over 35,000 cattle. In Texas in 1882 the Matador Cattle Company (which still operates today, owned by the Koch family and Rupert Murdoch) owned 100,000 acres of stream front land, effectively claiming a range of over 1.5 million acres by blocking others from the water.
Even today in dry states where water tables have dropped, such as Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and California, cattle conglomerates now move into the areas and drill incredibly deep, expensive wells on the cheap land (often deeper than 1,000 feet). This undercuts existing well owners and lowers the entire water table, forcing residents and small farms to sell their land on the cheap to the same company that forced them off it. Water regulation legislation which would require water use reports or pumping statistics are opposed by the Cattle Growers Association lobbyists and lawmakers with vested interests in the meat industry.
The ecological impacts of long-term grazing in the desert are many. Cattle have flat, wide hooves which compact arid soil, further reducing its ability to absorb water and nutrients. Cattle trails on hillsides deepen into gullies that sluice rainwater over the topsoil, increasing erosion. Cattle graze native species of grass to extinction, creating ecological voids that more aggressive non-native species fill. In the Southwest, groundwater levels declined between 300 and 500 feet between 1964 and 2003, lowering the water table so dramatically that some streams no longer can support vegetation on their banks. According to the Grand Canyon Trust,
“In the Southwest, cows aren’t grazing in green, bucolic pastures. They roam around parched lands and marginal forests looking for scarce food and even scarcer water. They damage biological soil crusts, erode streambeds, and crush native plants.”
Our public lands belong to all of us, not just to megacorporate cattle companies. As the double threat of centuries of overgrazing and a warming climate add stress to our precious desert ecosystems, it is up to us to challenge the status quo of “business as usual” to save these unique and diverse landscapes.
