Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey has issued a proposal to sell off 300,000 acres of public lands including some 14,000 in South Dakota’s Black Hills, Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre National Grasslands.
Rey, a political appointee of President Bush, doesn’t think about public land the way most of us commoners do – a place where we can hunt and fish without a fee or gaining permission because it belongs to all of us. Instead, to him, it’s a place to make money.
But only a few get to do it, including logging and mining companies, energy and oil drillers, and ranchers lucky enough to own base property adjacent to public land.
So that’s why I was talking with Tony DeToy the other day. He manages the 116,000-acre Fort Pierre National Grasslands (FPNG) in South Dakota, the only national grassland that has a wildlife priority. Well, not exactly a priority, because cows still get the first grass, but since prairie chickens are a sensitive species, they get more nesting cover, which means more and taller grass on the landscape when the cows are done.
What a novel idea. It almost sounds like multiple use, not the “multiple abuse” it tends to morph into on most public land.
“We have 211 pastures and we graze about 8 to 10,000 cattle, but we don’t graze every pasture we have,” he said.
They do a range analysis on every pasture to learn the carrying capacity, and move cattle frequently to maintain good cover all year. About 10 percent of the pastures are rested each year but more are rested in dry years. Some even get a two-year rest, enabling range managers to learn how much grass they can grow in a dry year.
The grass cover does more than provide a home for the birds. It protects watersheds, important since the FPNG drains into the Missouri River. The taller stands of grass maintain and protect soil, while improving fisheries by stopping sedimentation.
Under DeToy’s management, woody draws, absent for much of the past 40 years, have reappeared. That’s because livestock are kept out of them during the hottest months.
His grazing program reflects something else that would also make sense anywhere. Cattle are heavier now than they were 15 years ago, when a typical cow weighed 1,000 pounds. Today, the figure is pegged at more like 1,200 pounds, a fact DeToy says is supported by research at almost any land grant college.
Bigger cows eat more grass, thus DeToy has reduced cow numbers, using 1,100 pounds as his index, and he says, this is based on a North Dakota study. That means about seven fewer cows per hundred.
They’ve tried to institute the same practice on North Dakota grasslands but powerful ranchers in the west have called for a study area instead. Apparently they want “good science,” which usually means science that delivers what they want. Meanwhile, DeToy consistently delivers more grass each year on the FPNG.
And a lot more prairie grouse. Each autumn, hunters from more than 30 states travel to the FPNG to hunt prairie grouse, sharptails and prairie chickens – spending a lot of money in nearby communities.
Service establishments see the impact and the money spreads among a wider range of businesses than that of raising livestock, though it is also an important industry on the national grasslands.
With such management, public lands become more valuable to more people, and that kind of thinking makes Mark Rey’s public land sell-off idea pure nonsense.
