In this conclusion to our trilogy, we're looking at a proposal to move beyond the concept of "rangelands" through the rewilding of the American west — meaning, the return of forgotten landscapes, species, and ecologies not commonly seen in generations (not to mention improved water and carbon storage). But at least one thing isn't compatible with this vision: grazing cattle on public lands.

Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2

And find citations, a transcript, and credits on our website

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You are listening to Season Five of

Future Ecologies.

Okay.

Hey, everyone. This is Adam,

This is Mendel. And you're listening to the

final part of our trilogy on Rangelands. So if you're only

just joining us, you may want to go back to parts one and two,

and chew on those for a bit.

Yeah, there's lots to ruminate about. Okay, so

Mendel, you know that classic folk song that's been running

through these episodes?

Yeah. [Singing] Oh, give me home, where the

buffalo roam.

[Singing] Where the deer and the antelope play.

We all know this song... I think. It's kind of the, I don't

know, unofficial anthem of the mythologized American West.

Would you agree?

I would.

But have you noticed that there's kind of

something peculiar about it?

Hmmm.... I think what you're getting at is the

fact that that song is completely absent any mention...

of cows,

Not a single cow. In every version of the lyrics

that I've reviewed, the singer waxes on about buffalo, and

deer, and antelope and also the sky, and the streams, the stars

and the wildflowers. Virtually everything under the sun, except

—

Except cows. The cowboy anthem has no cows!

Nope. And I find this kind of fascinating. I

know, there are lots of folks who just love livestock, and

they are a quintessential part of the American West. But this

song kind of highlights, maybe accidentally, that the character

of this place — what we love the most about it — goes way beyond

that.

Yeah.

And maybe, just maybe, we don't need cows to

have healthy, biodiverse rangelands. In fact, some would

argue cows are the central reason that we don't often have

healthy, biodiverse rangelands. Their arguments are also backed

up by a mountain of scientific evidence, and their vision is

nothing short of the rewilding of the West.

So let's get into it.

From Future Ecologies, this is Home on the Rangelands, part

three — Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.

Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and

asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and

Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies – exploring the shape

of our world through ecology, design, and sound.

Okay, so for starters, we're going to zoom

out from California for a minute and take a look at the rest of

the West.

Finally!

And to do that, we're going to talk with Bob

Beschta.

I'm Bob Beschta. I'm currently at Oregon State

University where I've been for now 48 years.

Bob is a forest hydrologist.

And in that field, you very quickly find out that

on Western landscapes, things that we do on the land such as

harvesting trees, building roads, grazing livestock, all of

these affect then this hydrologic cycle.

And Bob is probably most famous for his

work, alongside his colleague, William Ripple on the ecological

consequences of the reintroduction of gray wolves to

Yellowstone National Park.

Oh, okay. I haven't heard of Bob. But I've

definitely heard about the wolves in Yellowstone.

Yeah. At this point, I would say the

reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone is perhaps the

highest profile success story in the world of conservation. And

Bob has been there from the very beginning, documenting it.

My first entry into northern Yellowstone was 1996.

And I was on a field trip with some folks and we came in to

Lamar Valley and I was just dumbstruck by the impacts I was

seeing — the river and the banks were unraveling, I saw no

willows, I saw very few cottonwoods growing. And when I

went there, I didn't realize it was going to be a wolf story. I

just knew there was a herbivory story going on. Lots of elk were

eating lots of cottonwood. And I just wanted to document that.

So this is textbook ecology at this point.

But long story short, the extirpation of wolves from

Yellowstone had allowed elk and other herbivore populations to

expand dramatically. And all of the woody vegetation along the

rivers was being consumed, resulting in lots of erosion,

and the loss of the riparian ecosystem. And of course, this

also impacted other wildlife.

In other words, it's a classic trophic cascade,

just like we covered in our Kelp Worlds series.

Yeah. And in this case, one of the keystone

species, you might say the engineers of the whole

ecosystem, were beavers. And the elk literally ate them out of

house and home.

Beaver essentially disappeared from Yellowstone.

There were probably literally thousands of beaver in the

northern range of Yellowstone when the park was established.

And by the 1950s they were gone, because they had nothing to eat.

And of course, without Beaver, there was

nothing to prevent further degradation of the riparian

areas. When wolves were reintroduced in the mid 1990s.

This negative feedback loop slowly started to unwind.

With wolves back now, we are seeing the

beginnings of recovery of woody species such as aspen, such as

cottonwood, willows, berry-producing shrubs, alder.

With more predation came reduced

herbivory, which allowed the riparian vegetation to recover,

the beavers to return, and creeks to stabilize.

It was very slow, it was very localized, but

through time has become more widespread.

It's a classic success story. One I think most

people are familiar with. But what does it have to do with our

story, about rangelands?

Well, I mean, at a basic level, it launched Bob on

a career trajectory of studying the impacts of herbivory.

Herbivory has such a powerful factor, influence on

the landscape. The idea that, that an animal such as a deer or

elk takes one bite at a time doesn't seem like it's a very

important deal. But over the years, whether it's deer, elk,

or cattle or sheep, they could have really significant effects

on what's out there on the landscape, major effects.

So there's that. But also, there's an aspect to

the Yellowstone story that I think will be new to most of our

listeners, and which just completely blindsided me in this

interview.

Uh... what is that?

When you think of Yellowstone, what is the other

major conservation success story that comes to mind?

Are you talking about the big herd of bison?

I am talking about the big herd of bison. The

buffalo, which were almost wiped off the face of the earth at the

turn of the last century, have made a remarkable recovery in

Yellowstone National Park.

Another feel good story.

Yes. But with at least one massive wrinkle

In Yellowstone, interestingly enough, bison are

limiting recovery of what's going on that ecosystem. If

bison were not present in northern Yellowstone, I think

the recovery story that we have seen would be fundamentally much

larger, more extensive and more dramatic. It would be the

ecological story of the century.

Wait, I thought Yellowstone was already the

ecological story of the century?

That very well may be. But it's not nearly the

story that it could have been. According to Bob, while the wolf

reintroduction reduced the elk herds. The dramatic recovery of

the bison has partially offset those benefits.

Because bison have replaced elk. And wolves are not

efficient at taking down bison.

Sorry, I'm still not following. What are the

bison doing?

They are doing what bison do.

Bison, throughout much of the valley systems in

the northern range of Yellowstone, are just creating

absolutely severe impacts to stream channels, to riparian

vegetation, to soils, to the spread of exotic species. And

willow can't grow, aspen can't grow, cottonwoods can't grow,

native forbs can't grow, native bunch grasses get heavily

foraged on, trampling is rampant throughout there, soils are

compacted. It's literally like a cattle allotment, if I could put

it that way, unfortunately. The effects look the same, except

it's being done by a native large herbivore that is now in

excessive large numbers in the wrong location.

Oh, so he's basically saying that the bison

in Yellowstone are kind of like cattle on an overstocked

pasture.

Precisely.

But what does he mean by "in the wrong location"?

Well, if I were to ask you where bison historically

roamed, what would you say?

The... Great Plains?

Well, the Great Plains are now mostly corn and

canola and soybean fields. Yellowstone, on the other hand,

is up in the mountains, west of the Great Plains.

Bison were never present inside the park in any

significant numbers. Male bison will wander across landscapes,

they could have been in the park, you know. But herds of

bison permanently staying inside the park, we have no evidence of

that, up until the late, let's say 1800s. When the great bison

killing was taking place on the Great Plains, just about at the

time, when bison numbers were approaching zero, some herds of

bison showed up in Yellowstone National Park. And even there,

they weren't protected. And so those numbers declined

considerably, until they got down to like a dozen bison. And

then finally the park protected them, and it's been a great

success story — the recovery. So we went from a dozen bison, now

to in the Northern Range, some 4000, bison. And 4000 Bison is

way above the carrying capacity of that ecosystem.

So it's really an accident of history that there

are so many bison in these ecosystems.

Right, it's like we've decided where they can

live, but not where they would have historically been in any

real numbers.

Exactly. And I got the distinct impression that Bob

feels like people just do not take this issue seriously

enough. I mean, I didn't even know about it.

So what does he think should happen with all the

buffalo that we have now?

I mean, it's yet another big and complex issue.

But he told me, he thinks the Park Service should get as many

of them out of there as possible, preferably by

distributing them to tribes across the Great Plains.

Hmm. Sounds like a win win.

Sure, and also a story for another day. What's

certain is that Bob is really concerned about what might

happen if the population is allowed to continue to increase.

I cannot imagine the impacts, I cannot imagine.

Do you think the American public is ready to be culling two to

three thousand Bison out of northern Yellowstone every year?

So, the takeaway is really that the wrong kind of

herbivore in the wrong place can just have devastating

consequences for an ecosystem. And Bob has been studying this

for decades, not just in Yellowstone, but also elsewhere

in the West — including his home state of Oregon, where he sees

livestock causing all of the same kinds of damage.

As I look across the landscape, the effects of

livestock are pervasive and multifaceted. They occur in

various ways.

Right... all of the familiar consequences of

cattle moving and eating their way across a landscape.

They affect plant and animal communities directly,

just by herbivory reduces plants, the composition or the

amount of plant matter that's out there, which then affects

wildlife habitat.

Not to mention soil compaction, erosion, water

quality degradation, and impacts to streams and riparian zones.

The effects have been just major, and have been

well documented.

Plus, of course, all of the climate impacts that

we discussed in the last episode, not only the methane

that cattle produce directly...

But there's a lot of other effects that go on

related to climate, that is the loss of vegetation will allow a

site to become more desiccated, if you will. So the drying or

the increased aridity that's occurring in the West now is

amplified by the loss of vegetation.

Woah... so it's actually the local climate

that's changing as a result of grazing. Less vegetation means

fewer leaves, means less water transpiration, means even higher

aridity.

And that's not all.

In the process of removing vegetation, we can't

store carbon. Removing vegetation, having no beavers

out there, just greatly reduces the amount of carbon that we

could store on these public lands in the American West.

What Bob is saying here is that not only are there

direct greenhouse gas emissions from livestock themselves and

from the associated industry, there are also significant

indirect effects or opportunity costs on water and carbon

storage. And these add up to make rangeland ecosystems less

resilient to the climate crisis.

Yeah, not great.

And I will add that those impacts are sort of

permanent, and they get worse over time. Whereas many of the

benefits claimed in terms of carbon sequestration tend to be

smaller in scale and not necessarily lasting.

Bummer!

And this isn't just speculation. These impacts

have been well documented in the scientific literature, by Bob

and others.

So I imagine just like with the bison, Bob's

solution would be to get the cows out of there.

Bingo. But it doesn't stop there. You might

have noticed he mentioned something besides excess grazers

suppressing landscape carbon storage. And that is the absence

of beavers.

Beaver were prevalent everywhere, almost all

streams in American West at one time. But during the great

trapping era, we were very efficient at removing beaver —

just like we remove bison from the Great Plains, the same thing

has happened to beaver.

Right yeah, beaver, I guess kind of like the

bison are another keystone species and are super deeply

involved in the ecological history of of North America.

Right all those millennia of beaver dams trapping sediment is

why we have so many incredibly vibrant riparian ecosystems.

Have or had... of course. Because, you know,

several 100 years of colonization later, we've

removed beavers, and their dams, from the majority of ecosystems

across the West. And that has resulted in a tremendous loss in

water storage capacity, fertility, and of course in

carbon storage. I mean, by draining all of the beaver

wetlands, we've altered hydrology and the carbon cycle

on a continental scale. And Bob says that his home state of

Oregon, which is literally known as The Beaver State, should

actually be called the beaverless state because of how

deficient in beaver it is today, like so much of the West.

Two decades ago, I don't think beaver were on the

radar screen for most ecologists in the American West. Now, maybe

some, probably some, but not generally. But the scientific

literature in the last two decades has become just so

strong on what beaver can do. If we think having wolves on the

landscape is important with regard to biodiversity for

streams, and uplands and all that — and it is, they're a big

deal — the biodiversity kicker or pump, if you will, is getting

beaver back on the landscape, because they change moisture

relationships along stream systems in ways that we can't

imagine. And we can't do normally.

And it's not just Bob who thinks this way. In

2022, he signed on to this watershed proposal with a list

of co-authors that reads like a who's-who of large mammal

ecologists. And that proposal is called Rewilding the American

West.

Oooh! I like the sound of that. What are they

proposing?

It's actually pretty simple. They've

identified an interconnected network of public lands across

the intermountain west, for which they make three key

recommendations.

It's basically a three legged stool.

First things first, retiring livestock

grazing allotments on federal lands across this area,

reestablishing and protecting apex predators, like gray

wolves, and in some cases, cougar. And finally,

reintroducing beaver into suitable habitats.

We're not talking about everywhere, but we're

talking about core areas. And these are areas that have

sufficient native ungulates, deer or elk to support wolves.

Let's reintroduce and protect beaver in these ecosystems. But

in order to do that, we also then have to remove or greatly

reduce the role that livestock has in those systems, because

livestock and wolves do not get along generally. It's not

everywhere that it's a conflict, but it's a significant deal. And

livestock and beaver are incompatible. If you have heavy

browsing or grazing of livestock in riparian areas, you can't

have food for beaver. So the removal of livestock helps both

the large predators and it helps the beaver.

Bob says that cows and wolves can be compatible in

certain contexts, if stocking densities are low, and ranchers

practice inherding and other conflict avoidance strategies,

but on the same landscape, cows and beaver are basically

mutually exclusive.

Got it. So the recipe is to remove cows, add

wolves, and beaver. And what do you get?

Well, our goal is to recover biodiversity. We

believe and have knowledge that our western ecosystems were

incredibly diverse in wildlife species and plant species, had

stream systems that had high water quality, had flows that

were regulated by beaver and soils in good condition. And so

we would see an increase in productivity of native plant

species, we'd see an increase in biodiversity we'd see improved

wildlife habitat. And basically we'd begin to put these riparean

as well as upland ecosystems back into a condition that would

be helpful with regard to moving forward with climate change.

Climate change is going to be the new stressor. The best way

to be able to resist the impacts of climate change is to have

very healthy and intact and functioning ecosystems. And to

do that we need all the species present that we can get. And

right now, we don't have that.

We don't have that. It'd be nice to have that.

I think so too.

But from everything we've heard earlier

in this series, this proposal feels like it's probably a

nonstarter for the people and the communities who have strong

ties to ranching, and all of the economic arguments they like to

make.

Yes. And Bob will tell you that he and his fellow

scientists are just proposing what they think these ecosystems

need in the face of climate change, based on the best

available science. He acknowledges that the plan would

require buyouts of small ranchers in core areas, and

other cultural and economic changes. But it's not all costs.

Bob suggests that, besides saving us from some of the worst

economic impacts of climate change, improved habitat also

means improved recreation and tourism, of course. And from his

perspective, despite being the status quo for land use in the

West, the economic contribution of cattle ranching is actually

pretty marginal.

If you look at total livestock production on

public lands in American West, it's a small, small percentage

of the total. And so it's not necessary for meeting national

production goals, if I can put it that way. But in the process,

the ecological impacts, and the effects in regard to climate

change are very important and very severe.

Just how marginal are we talking about

here?

So in terms of the amount of forage that public

lands in the West provide to the beef industry as a whole, in the

United States, it's in the range of 2 to 3%.

Okay, so in other words, we use and damage a

lot of land to produce a tiny amount of the actual meat that

gets consumed.

That is a fact. What is much more contentious is

what a proposal like this would do to the economy and culture of

small communities throughout this region.

Right, just like Ashley was saying in part one,

cattle are the glue that holds some of these communities

together.

Yes, and just because their economic

production is marginal on a national scale, doesn't mean it

isn't significant locally.

Well, I can only imagine what the right wing

would do if the Biden administration actually embraced

this proposal. Like back when the Green New Deal was still

new, I remember that it was at most tepid when it came to

agricultural reform.

Yeah.

Right. Like, was there even any mention of beef

or cattle?

I don't think so.

No. And that didn't stop Republicans from

hollering about the war on hamburgers.

They want to take away your hamburgers. This

is what Stalin dreamt about, but never achieved.

I mean, if you can find something that will stop

conservatives from hollering about the war on hamburgers,

just let me know, okay?

Sure.

We might as well have one. I mean, it's clear

that certain members of government are very happy to

performatively eat fast food or collect campaign contributions

from the US Cattlemen's Association, right?

Yeah, big ranch.

On a more serious note, this whole series, we have

been talking about ranching as if it is, you know, all small

family-run businesses – the multi generational cowboy

rancher operation.

Sure, like Clayton and his family.

Yeah. And there are still lots of folks like

Clayton around. But they are increasingly the exception in

what is otherwise a mega-scale industry.

The western mythology has just provided us

with this concept that Western ranchers are doing wonderful

things on the land, and we should just leave them alone.

It's a mom and pop operation. When the reality today is most

grazing is not mom and pop anymore.

And that is not just the rewilding people

talking. Ashley also pointed this out.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the mega

businesses that are trashing public lands. Like, full stop,

don't really give a shit about those ranchers and how they're

doing their business is like frankly, upsetting to me on

public lands. I will say that full on.

And the consolidation within the

meatpacking and ranching industries is not just a huge

issue for the land, but also for the remaining mom and pop

operations like those that Ashley featured in Women's Work.

I would not presume to say that the ranchers

that I featured in this series represent a giant shift that is

happening. I think that the entrenched system is very, very

strong. It is very, very wealthy. It is fighting attempts

by the Biden administration to regulate it and to break it

apart.

Okay, so a friendly reminder that

agribusiness is often big business, and maybe doesn't

deserve our sympathy when it's wrecking wildlands, reaping huge

profits, and then playing the victim.

Yeah.

So I was counting arguments in the

pro-cow episode. Why don't we track them here too?

Oh, sure. Go ahead.

Okay, so I would say argument number one would be

that the rewilding folks point out that ranching in the West is

often big business that represents a tiny amount of

overall national production.

But uses a lot of land and water. And while the

issue of smallholders is a concern for this rewilding

proposal, it might not have to be a make or break because of

this. There's no question that, even if implemented in small

parts, in stages, this proposal has the potential to be

transformative for Western wild lands facing down the climate

crisis. And Bob says, ecologically, cows just don't

have a place in it.

From an ecological perspective, I would suggest

there's probably no reason why we need to have livestock in our

western ecosystems. Overall, these ecosystems thrived, did

very well, without this large herbivore at large densities

across the landscape every year. We have no analogue for that

prior to the introduction of livestock.

But what about bison? Right, like aren't aren't

those an analogue for the livestock we have now?

You could make an argument for that, again, in the

Great Plains, and also perhaps in some parts of the

intermountain west and even out east. But most of California,

the coastal West, and other parts of the intermountain west,

don't appear to have much of a history with bison, at least

within the Holocene.

Okay, then what about all the benefits of

grazing in California? Like, everything we've been covering

in the last two episodes?

You know, I asked Bob about that. Because it's

been a central question of this series for me. The conservation

community in California, for the most part, has embraced the cow.

And so is that something that is happening elsewhere in the West?

Or is it like so many things, a California thing?

Um, I guess I would almost have to say it's a

California thing.

I gotta say, that's been my general

observation as well. There are lots of pro-cattle folks

throughout the West. And they're, you know, are some

notable circumstances where cows are being used for conservation.

But outside of California, that's just not that common.

So what would a rewilding proposal like this

look like in the state of California?

That is what we are about to discuss... after

the break.

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you. Okay, back to the show.

We are back. I am Adam.

I am Mendel. This is Future Ecologies.

And today we are all about rewilding, and maybe

not so hot on cows. And we're coming back to California now to

ask what's going on here. So, I've got two folks to introduce

you to, Mendel.

Let's do it.

The first is Jon Keeley.

I'm a research scientist with the US Geological

Survey, and an adjunct professor at UCLA. And in my research

specialty is fire and the ecological impacts of fire and

how climate impacts fires.

John has been studying and writing about fire

in California for decades. And I just want to read you a few of

the titles of some of his many published papers.

Sure.

Fire as global herbivore

Woah...

Fire as an evolutionary pressure shaping

plant traits.

Wow.

Wildfires as an ecosystem service.

Mm.

The role of fire in the history of life.

Fire... it's everywhere, and everything!

It feels like our entire podcast is just one long

running series on fire sometimes.

Sure does. Okay, who else are we talking to?

Last but not least for this series, we have Laura

Cunningham. She's an artist, naturalist, author, and

California director for the Western Watersheds Project. And

she is also, Mendel, the rare person that I encountered who

has changed their mind about livestock.

Yeah, I actually was sort of a little

more pro livestock grazing. And now I'm a little bit less pro

livestock grazing. So I mean, I'll admit that my perspectives

have shifted over the decades, when I get new input and more

experience and maybe broader experience outside of the Bay

Area.

Among other things, Laura wrote and

illustrated a book called A State of Change - Forgotten

Landscapes of California. And I haven't really seen anything

else like it. It's this fascinating combination of

paleo-ecological research, archival work, natural history

studies, all culminating in these beautiful illustrations,

imagining the landscapes of pre colonial California.

Oh, that's so cool. And I bet there aren't any

cows in her illustrations.

No cows in the cowboy song, and no cows in

Laurens book. But there are birds, and bunchgrasses, and

grizzly bears, and salmon.

Deer, antelope?

Playing even. And of course, Indigenous people,

and the ecosystems that they were stewarding using fire,

among other things.

Of course.

So when you ask someone like Laura, what a

rangeland is, she has a very different answer from Lynn.

Yeah, I would call a rangeland, kind of an

extractive use of a grassland. And I would call a native

grassland, a grassland. So I'm a little bit thinking that range

land is like a artificial, managed system for production

of, you know, livestock and forage. So my, my idea of a

range land is it's post European contact.

Right. Okay, so rangeland is a utilitarian term

from her perspective.

I mean, would you call a forest a timberland?

Only if I were a logging company.

So no surprise, ranchers use the term

rangelands.

I guess not.

But I should add that Laura works with ranchers a

lot. And so she has a healthy respect for what they do, and

the problems that they face.

Not all ranchers are the same,

obviously. And I've seen really well-managed ranches. Then I've

seen ranchers who are struggling, and they try to

stuff as many cows onto that landscape as possible. And it

looks like crap. So there are some ranchers who you just can't

justify that they're doing a good job managing the land. To

be fair, I think that a lot of ranchers, and I talk with a lot

of them, do a better job. And it's a hard way to make a living

too. I don't think the goal is to, you know, we're just gonna

go out there and get rid of all the cattle immediately. A lot of

what I do is work with ranchers and land managers to make things

better on the land.

But when it comes to the new science supporting

cows for conservation in California, her view is actually

pretty dim.

I mean, there's a lot of so-called

scientific papers coming out now that are claiming cattle and

ranching can benefit landscapes. But I kind of call them gray

literature, because I think they're taking the conclusion

that some groups want and coming up with that conclusion.

And there are a few reasons for this. For one,

all of the rangelands people will tell you that it was from

witnessing the negative impacts of removing cattle from

conservation areas that we started to learn about and

finally study the benefits. It's a bit tough to generalize about

all of this, obviously. But so many of the studies promoting

the benefits of grazing compare grazed to ungrazed areas. And

these studies generally share some common features. They are

relatively short term, and the ungrazed areas don't usually

have any other treatments applied. They're just left

alone,

We've had a huge impact with cattle. You

take the cattle out, you're left with a heavily disturbed

impacted landscape. And so yes, if you just leave it, like

passive restoration, yeah, it may just take a trajectory that

you don't like. But I guess I'm looking at active restoration,

as opposed to that passive restoration. You have to maybe

actively go back in there and use things like cultural fire,

or native elk grazers, or hand pulling the weeds to get it back

into a trajectory where you're gonna get more natives.

That sounds like a lot more work, but it makes

sense. You have what everyone agrees is a highly altered,

highly invaded ecosystem. So if you compare some treatment —

Any treatment...

Yeah, to no treatment, then it will probably

make the treatment look good. If your treatment is grazing,

grazing looks good.

Exactly. And the other critique is all about

time. Here's Bob, again,

They'll talk about all the wonderful things they

can do. And I'll say that's great. And I said, we should be

doing some experiments, and they'll say, yeah. And my

experiment always is "let's remove livestock temporarily".

Initially, they might be agreeable to that kind of thing.

But then I will indicate by temporarily, I mean at least two

decades. We've been grazing Western landscapes with exotic

large herbivores for over a century, okay — every year for

over a century. So a period of rest is not a one year

phenomenon or a two year phenomenon. These ecosystems

need a significant period of rest. So my argument would be is

we need to rest these systems for at least two decades, and

then we get to assess whether or not we should be grazing these

landscapes at all, or if so how much.

He told me that it took years and years for an

intervention as dramatic as reintroducing wolves to show

positive impacts in Yellowstone.

Okay, so then, argument number two, the

evidence supporting grazing for biodiversity and associated

values is often based on short term studies that don't consider

other forms of active management.

That's what the rewilding folks say. Plus, if

ranchers are such great land managers, like they say they

are, and good management can mitigate the negative impacts

that we've been discussing, then why do we continue to see those

negative impacts on rangelands everywhere?

Well, I've heard those arguments — that we can

avoid things, we can do a better job. And my comment is, well

then do it. Show me.

So argument number three, good management is

better than bad management. But even well managed herds can have

obvious negative impacts.

Yes, for the rewilding folks, not all that

much has changed since the bad old days of the 60s 70s and 80s.

Let alone the gold rush.

There's a new trend in California called

Wait... I thought the native grasses were all but wiped out

"conservation grazing" or "conservation ranching", which I

disagree with. But there's an attempt to sort of cover up the

big impacts of grazing livestock on the land, and it involves

things like, you know, "Oh, we're going to reduce fuel.

We're going to provide a carbon sink. You know, the manure from

all these cows supposedly puts carbon back into the soil". But

when I go look at what I call my reference sites, these are

relict native bunchgrasslands or meadows of perennial meadow

grasses. I really see what we have lost.

by introduced species. What's Laura talking about here?

What Laura is talking about are the small

pockets — not many, but a few — where you can still see

fragments of native California grassland, relict grasslands,

just hanging in there. So when she thinks about what's possible

for rangelands in California, she sees more than just this

novel ecosystem that we have to accept and graze with cows.

People say "Oh, it's a changed California

annual grassland. Now it's permanent. You know, all you can

do is use cattle to graze it". I think that's wrong, because I

changed my perspective since the 1990s, where I've collected data

on all these relict reference sites, I call them, of ungrazed,

or lightly grazed lightly, disturbed native grasslands.

They're not just on serpentine areas. They're not just on north

slopes. They're everywhere. And the key is they're protected

from heavy grazing, or disturbance of some kind.

They're not grazed, except maybe by an elk here and there. But

you get down on your hands and knees. And it's like, there's

this cloud forest of lichens and mosses under the bunchgrasses,

and you walk on this prairie and it's spongy. It feels like

you're walking on a sponge. There's no bare ground, no

erosion. When the rain falls onto this prairie, the water

soaks in. And then you go to a cow pasture on the other side of

the barbed wire fence, and it's completely different. It's bare

dirt, there's erosion, there's manure, that in our wintry

rainstorms gets washed into the creeks and starts polluting, you

know, salmon habitat. You have a lot of invasive European

annuals, thistles, poison hemlock, it's just a completely

different thing.

And, you know, this tracks with my own personal

experience, Mendel. For every spectacular success story like

Tulare Hill, there are a dozen pretty barren hillsides that

don't really look like they're benefiting from grazing. On the

other hand, these relict grassland sites that Laura is

talking about. They just don't seem to need cows to be

beautiful and biodiverse. All on their own.

It's like I call it "old growth grassland".

That is actually what sequestering carbon — deep, six

feet down into the soil with the roots of these perennial,

long-lived bunchgrasses. And I try to take groups of people

like field trips to show them and some of them don't even

believe it. They see the actual native grassland. And they're

like, astonished. It's completely different than what

you see when you're driving around most of California.

And interwoven with those deep, long lived

perennial bunchgrass roots. You have something called biological

soil crusts.

They're so cool. They deserve their own episode.

Yeah, biological soil crusts are

really interesting because they're a symbiotic network of

plants, and lichens, fungi, and blue-green algae that are doing

their work mostly in the soil. So you don't see it most of the

time. The mycelial networks, and blue green algae filaments of

the soil crust connect with the root tips of shrubs, trees and

grasses, and actually help deliver nutrients to these

plants. So there's a symbiosis going on under the soil, and we

just completely, mostly aren't aware of it. And when you

trample it, drive on it, over-graze it, or scrape it, you

lose that... you completely lose that. Those are very delicate,

old growth living systems. Finding an intact biological

soil crust has actually become rarer now, especially on

rangelands where they can't take the heavy hoof trampling and

constant grazing of cattle and sheep.

Bob also mentioned these remarkable living soils.

It's something we've almost forgotten about in

the American West, but these were common everywhere. They

protected soil surfaces from erosion. They provided micro

habitats for plants. And in many cases that they're gone.

In my own personal experience, I just haven't seen

these on annual grasslands with livestock grazing.

So argument number four, maybe these

ecosystems don't have to be thought of as novel. Maybe

they're just really, really damaged by centuries of cattle

grazing, but there is still some potential that they could be

restored.

Yeah, and Bob can point to sites where this has

occurred in Oregon, like Hart Mountain.

Hart Mountain National antelope refuge in

Southern Oregon. We've now got 30 years of recovery. Every year

it gets just more impressive. It takes time. Hart Mountain today,

30 years after livestock removal, from an ecological

standpoint is just an incredibly different place than it was 30

years ago, after almost a century of livestock grazing.

And then Laura pointed to all sorts of

different initiatives in California, from Indigenous

tribes like the Karuk Reclaiming cultural fire.

Which we covered in season one.

To small projects in city parks, just using

handtools. Restoring California native grasslands is hard, she

says, but not impossible.

Using cattle to manage ecosystems, to me is

kind of the lazy way to do it. And in the last 10 years, I've

learned that you can restore native grasslands without

cattle. And maybe it takes a little bit more planning. I

think it's lazy to just say, "Okay, put cows on it. Now we

can justify the cattle and say that they're all these

conservation management tools", when there are other options.

And I have had personal experience looking at these

other options, and they're working.

So instead of cows, it's fire and mowing.

And elk, and beaver.

Okay, so it's also rewilding.

Yes. Laura, and the folks at the Western

watersheds project really love that proposal.

Oh, yeah. We've been talking about that

proposal a lot. Western Watersheds Project, I mean, our

focus is livestock grazing, but our mission is restoration. And

we definitely support rewilding with beavers and wolves. That

would be a paradise to me.

So beavers were almost completely extirpated in

California. So much so that many people just assumed that they

were never even here in the first place. It's a kind of

beaver erasure. But they are making a comeback. And the

argument from the rewilding folks is, "Why should we rely on

stock ponds for amphibian habitat, when we could just

restore their actual historic habitats using beaver? And for

that matter, why should we have cows grazing all of these

grasslands when we have the native Tule elk, which are also

making a comeback?" And so on, reintroducing wolves and

traditional cultural management. With all of this, we could

recover a richness of species and habitats not seen in

generations. And you know, as dreamy as that would be,

everyone I spoke to — both the rewilders and the rangelands

folks — agree that it's simply not compatible with ecosystems

that are managing cattle for meat production, and barbed wire

fences.

Okay, but we're calling today "Rewilding Day",

right?

My favorite day of the year.

So can we at least entertain the idea?

Oh, yeah. I mean, what are we doing? Right? I will

take elk and beaver and wolves over cows any day of the week,

personally. I think that's clear. But while we're

entertaining wild ideas, I have one more for you.

Is that so?

Yes, as a matter of fact. So all of this time,

I've been talking with rangelands folks. And as you'll

remember from the first episode, they're really concerned about

how many of California's grasslands are being invaded by

shrubs.

Shrubs!

Here's Lynn Huntsinger.

Now shrubland is interesting around here. We

have certain species that tend to be very invasive, they're

native. One of them is coyote brush.

Coyote brush is an early succession native species,

very common in California. But all of the rangelands folks

refer to it as invasive, because they're concerned with keeping

these grasslands open — for the grass for the cows, and for all

of those rare grassland species.

Fair enough, I guess.

Yeah. But at the same time, this discourse of

"shrub invasion" has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. You

know, my own personal values are, I'd love to restore native

cover. And meanwhile, these folks are intent on killing the

one native plant trying to make a go of it on these invaded

grasslands. And I kind of thought I was alone in thinking

this... until I spoke with Jon Keeley.

Oh, right, fireman! I was wondering when

you're going to bring him back.

Right now. When I talked to Jon, it was like a

light bulb went off. He's like, "Well, of course, the coyote

brush moves in. And so what you're looking at"

Is what the natural successional processes are. And

eventually the coyote brush will be invaded by other more

permanent shrubs and produce a coastal scrub vegetation. And

that's really the natural state. The problem is, is people don't

necessarily like that natural state.

I actually don't get it. What does he mean by

"natural state"?

I mean, what does anybody mean what that term?

What he's referring to is succession.

People talk about how shrublands are encroaching.

The word encroachment is really a misnomer. Encroaching means

you're moving into a system where it's not natural. When we

see shrubs moving into grasslands, that's not

encroachment, it's returning to the original state, due to the

removal of human interference through frequent burning. Get

over the idea that they should be grasslands. They're not

grasslands.

One of Jon's papers compares the Bay Area —

so that's coastal California — with the Sierra Nevadas, in the

interior. Up in the mountains, lightning strikes are super

common, and so were wildfires historically. But in coastal

California, lightning strikes are almost unheard of.

The bottom line is historically, those landscapes

which are dominated by grasslands, if you take

livestock off and you don't do anything with the burning — you

just allow a natural frequency to occur. They all return to

shrublands. And it's because there is no natural frequent

fire regime in the East Bay. If you look at lightning ignitions

in the East Bay, I think counties like Alameda and Contra

Costa maybe have two lightning fires every 100 years. They

don't have a high fire frequency.

So historically, if fire was keeping lands clear,

and there's no lightning to light the fires...

Then Indigenous people were lighting fire, which

we know because they've been telling us.

Yes, Indigenous people were lighting fires

throughout coastal California, to create open ecosystems — to

produce acorns, and wildflower seeds, and game, and other

cultural values.

I would call this familiar history. What's your point?

The grasslands produced seed bearing plants

that were a lot more valuable to them than the shrublands. So

Native Americans started managing their landscape through

burning. When the Europeans came on the scene, they basically

exacerbated the situation by greatly increasing fire

frequency, in large part because they wanted to get rid of woody

vegetation and replace it with herbaceous vegetation because it

was better for grazing. And in fact, this is a global pattern

Well, my point is that, if many of these

throughout the world. Wherever Europeans invaded a landscape,

they eliminated the woody vegetation, and they replaced it

with herbaceous vegetation. They also brought a lot of herbaceous

species from Europe. Those species were very aggressive and

non-native annual grasslands aren't really doing what

have the ability to take over disturbed landscapes. A lot of

what we see today, when you look in California at any herbaceous

vegetation and coastal region, most all of it is non-native,

Indigenous people created them to do, and at the same time they

invasive species from Europe that are better adapted to that

disturbance regime. And so we've lost a lot of our native

shrubland vegetation. It's been replaced by non native grasslands.

are creating fire danger, and require all of these inputs to

maintain as mostly novel ecosystems, like what are we

doing here? Why not just allow the native shrublands and native

oak woodlands that are trying so hard to come back to do just

that? They are super biodiverse and super important for native

wildlife as well. They're more fire resistant, and they require

much less work to maintain. We could use our, you know,

admittedly limited resources to restore native grasslands

wherever it seems practical or feasible. And then we could

allow shrub lands and woodlands to return on other sites — where

it's not so practical.

So you're saying that just because Indigenous

people, and then Europeans kept all of these ecosystems open

manually, it doesn't mean that we have to keep doing it. And

that it might not even be the best approach in the climate

crisis.

Yes.

So is this Jon's proposal or yours?

Oh, this is maybe my realization. And, you know, I

guess it's blowing my mind because I grew up in these novel

grasslands, breathing in all the pollen and sneezing like crazy,

but I'm not alone.

I actually completely agree with you. You

know, my vision for parts of the Bay Area would be to have a

mosaic of coastal scrub, coyote brush, and then you know, a

patch of prairie here and an oak woodland there. And I actually

think that's how it used to be for hundreds of years. I think

it was a complex shifting patchwork of different habitats.

And so yeah, have one area full of coyote brush. It's a native

plant. It shouldn't be, you know, always eliminated. Rabbits

and white-crowned sparrows nest in coyote brush — you need that

too. You know this, either-or absolutism we get in our

restoration thinking land management? No, I think we

should have a complex mosaic, including the coyote brush.

Well, that makes two of you. What about Jon?

Well, Jon is a fire guy, remember? So while

Lynn was expressing concern about the higher fuel loads that

you find in shrublands, and woodlands and forests, in part

one, Jon is actually much more worried about the places that

tend to ignite more easily. Because no ignition, no fire.

Most fires start in grasslands. And most of those

grasslands are non-native annual grasses, because they're very

flammable, they carry a fire very rapidly. So if your concern

is to reduce fires in the landscape, then we probably want

to convert those systems back into the native shrublands,

which are less amenable to frequent fires.

This has been a lot to take in. But I guess I'd

have to say that argument number five goes something like these

novel grasslands could be allowed to develop into native

shrublands and woodlands. And that there are benefits to that.

Yeah. And I mean, one thing that all of the folks

that I talked to agreed about is that all of these questions are

really a matter of what we value the most. Do we value beef

production and small family ranches? Do we value the

recovery of riparian ecosystems? Or the survival of grassland

birds? Or super rare wildflowers? Or beavers? Do we

value grasslands or shrublands?

That's really the heart of the problem — coming up

with what your goal is. There's no question that, for a lot of

reasons, people prefer open grasslands. If you want just a

pleasant scene with lots of grasslands, we're probably there

for a lot of people. If your concern is natives versus

non-natives and the conservation value, we're not there for a lot

of our landscapes. If your concern is erosion control,

we're not there for a lot of our landscapes, because the

grasslands don't hold it. If your concern is the length of

the fire season, right now we're seeing fires that have increased

in the duration of the fire season, lasting much longer. A

lot of that is due to the invasion on grasses which carry

fire for a much longer period in the year than the native

shrublands. So you really have to decide what you want.

And on the other side of the fence, Lynn said

very much the same thing.

That's the problem with all these things.

It's an opinion, a policy decision, a human decision, a

value judgment. What's good or bad is up for grabs. It's a

definition by people. Shrubs, grass, forests — it's a human

decision, to a certain extent. There's natural limitations, of

course. But what we're experiencing with climate change

means that we have to come to terms with that, because we're

heading into a new climate.

So here we are.

Here we are, heading into a brand new climate

at the end of our final episode, with more questions than

answers, as usual.

Yeah, maybe that was to be expected.

Yeah. I mean, it's difficult for us. I have done my

best to present these arguments clearly. But I do think it's

really important to reiterate that there are just some

fundamental disagreements here, both in terms of values and also

basic facts. For example, here's Jon, reflecting some of my own

frustrations in reporting this series.

I've heard at least four different accounts from

different proponents of grazing. And they only talk about the

positive things, and they don't talk about the negative. And,

for example, I travel a lot across the coastal ranges of

California, and those landscapes are grazed and they've been

grazed for a long time. That's the most horrible looking

landscape I can imagine. It's nothing but cow tracks all

across the landscape. They try and suggest that "Well, grazing

has value as increasing biodiversity", and they refer to

the fact that "Well, grazing reduces the thatch of non native

grasses and that opens habitat". I haven't seen it. I've seen a

lot of grazed areas, and I've never seen grazed areas that

have higher biodiversity, just never seen it.

And then on the other hand, from folks like Stu

Weiss, you hear things like this.

What I often find is that the kind of hardcore

anti-grazing people always pick what have to be the high impact

areas, like around watering troughs, and places that are

very heavily used. And then they they don't go, you know, a

couple 100 meters away and see that, "oh, look, there's lots of

room for the wildflowers here, as opposed to the ungrazed areas

that are just, you know, a build up of thatch"

And if you speak to ranchers and rangeland

managers like Clayton, you might hear something like this,

You still have your your hardcore doubters or

anti-grazers. I don't think you're ever gonna change their

opinion no matter what you show them, which is unfortunate. But

that's going to be the way it is with I think any subject —

you're just gonna have your far left and your far right and

probably won't change their opinion.

Well, Adam, I'd say we've heard more than a few

discouraging words.

More than seldom. And I know it's easy to feel

grazed and confused. But even with all of the disagreements, I

think everyone that I spoke to cares a lot, and knows a lot

about the land. And they are all working in different ways to

promote biodiversity, to address the climate crisis, and to

support human values as well. And since it does all come down

to what we value, I want to leave listeners with a few final

thoughts about the lands where the sky isn't cloudy all day.

So definitely not here.

That's right. So one last time, let's hear it for

rangelands.

Grazing is not a black box. It's not a yes or

no thing. It's a when, where, how many, why thing, right? It's

complicated. You can have three cows, you can have 10, you can

have 100 sheep. There's a lot of decisions. They can be there in

the spring, fall, they can be there for two weeks, they can be

there for a year. You make that decision based on what you know

about the impacts of what they do. It's not just grazing.

It's the fabric that stitches the community

together. And that, to me is something that I'm not okay with

just giving up on or just throwing out because we've

decided beef is bad. What I want is a way to see those values.

And that way of life is something that is worth

preserving. But does need to be changed a little bit, does need

to be made more sustainable, does need to be brought into the

21st century in terms of how we care for the land and how we use

cows as a tool.

And finally, let's hear it for rewilding.

I mean, I'm definitely for more wildlife and

more native grasslands. And I think it would be nice to have

less cattle. Cattle are so abundant. Even Point Reyes

National Seashore is full of cattle, in a lot of it — and

takes away from the elk. If we could have some parts and

preserves that are truly rewilded — that are managed,

maybe with prescribed fire, and native elk grazers, and less

cattle on the landscape. Where maybe wolves could be able to

travel through the state more like they're trying to do. Big

networks of rewilded parks and preserves that are connected by

wildlife corridors, where wildlife can safely move without

traffic impacts or hunting. It seems like a gigantic ask to me,

but I think we really should consider it.

This is based on our best science as we know

today, what we think these ecosystems need. And so this is

why we put forth this proposal. But in order for it to move

forward now it really has to be grabbed by others, particularly

those with political component. See if we can get changes in how

we manage public lands in the American West so that agencies

change what they do. So, it's like recovery of an ecosystem.

You may start slowly at first, but after we begin to see the

benefits, we think that this would increase the pressure to

do more and more and more on public lands.

This episode of Future Ecologies features the

voices of Bob Beschta, Ashley Ahearn, Jon Keely, Laura

Cunningham, Lynn Huntsinger, Stuart Weiss, and Clayton

Koopman. Music by Thumbug, C. Diab, Meg Iredale, Saltwater

Hank, and Sunfish Moon Light, cover art by Ale Silva, and was

produced by Adam Huggins and me, Mendel Skulski — with sound

design help from our intern, Brennen King, and with special

thanks to Saxon Richardson.

You can find the proposal to rewild the American West, along

with all of our other citations, a transcript of this episode,

and lots more on our website - futureecologies.net

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