WELFARE RANCHING: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West
Edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson
Foundation for Deep Ecology
Sausalito, CA
2002, 346 pp. $45.00
Available from NAVS
This enormous book is one every environmentalist and/or vegetarian should read, and preferably own. You may not be able to convince everyone you meet about the cause, but having a book that so boldly says “WELFARE RANCHING” lying on your coffee table is sure to kick-start a thought process for many a guest, if not more than a few conversations.
The topic, of course, is the American system by which our Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service rent out more than 300 million acres of Western public land – at such a pittance that it might as well be free – to livestock ranchers for cattle grazing. The land in question takes up a sizable portion of the 11 states that make up the Western half of our country, and as the authors continually point out, “this land is your land,” yet few of us know, much less care, about how it is being used.
Used? Abused might be a more appropriate term. For whatever your feelings about the necessity of livestock in a 21st-century economy, it’s hard to argue with the fact that the water and soil in these lands is being degraded to extremes, ruining habitats for countless species and perhaps driving some to extinction.
But there are those, of course, who do argue with just these facts, and this is where Welfare Ranching becomes invaluable. Methodically, gravely, the editors lay out their case with contributions from a dozen experts in the field, first with broad overviews, then by addressing the standard myths (e.g. “Ranching is the Foundation of Rural Economies”) and contrasting them with the realities of the situation. After examining cultural forces such as the Cowboy mythos, and walking the reader through exactly what is happening to the land in what locations, the book ends by considering and puncturing the counter arguments of ranchers.
While all of the foregoing description is accurate enough, it doesn’t convey the real power of Welfare Ranching, which is in the huge photographs that make the editors’ case with more impact and immediacy than could possibly be achieved by the most exhaustive statistics or the most cohesive verbal argument. Epic shots of untrammeled wilderness are contrasted with heartbreaking vistas of trampled mud and disturbing close-ups of waste-clogged streams. Though your initial reaction to this large (11-7/8" x 13-1/2"), thick book might be to remark on the irony of a pro-environment tome using up so much paper, once you’ve paged through the first handful of photo pages, you can see why it had to be done in this way.
If anything, one criticism is that the photos could have been used even more powerfully to show how land is destroyed, with more “Before/After” and side-by-side shots. There are a few of these and they do an excellent job of making the book’s central point. But it’s understandable that many of these shots were probably obtained in less-than-ideal circumstances, and it’s not easy to set up the types of photo pairs described above.
Regardless, Welfare Ranching stands as a well-conceived, well-constructed polemic that should bring home to all Americans the reality of what’s happening to Western lands while we look the other way. It’s an enormous book, wide-sweeping enough to convey the enormity involved.
— Reviewed by Vance Lehmkuhl
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