Mining for failure

Last century? 19th century?

Yesterday Brian Maffly had another excellent piece in the Salt Lake Tribune about the costly flailing about of the coal industry in Utah and the resulting conflicts of interest engaged by that industry's captured legislators. This morning Torrey House Press author (for which we are grateful!) Terry Tempest Williams has an op-ed in the New York Times on an inspired move she and husband Brooke have made on the same subject.

I expect I will be highlighting Maffly's work frequently on this site. He has the legislator's number and does a good job exposing their antics. That said I am a little surprised how gentle Maffly's words are. He keeps the gloves on. It took me a second read of his article to see he was accusing the actors involved in a $53 million loan of public money to the state's private coal industry of working with a blatant conflict of interest and in bad faith. For example, Jeffrey Holt, who stands to gain up to $3 million of the loan as a personal incentive fee also chaired the Utah Transportation Commission, which prioritizes projects for public funding. Holt and his crew are working to get public funding for their private gain for two projects, one a new rail line to haul the coal and two, a new port in Oakland to load the coal on ships to send to China.

Coal is Old West. Bloomberg News reported a year ago that Beijing will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants this year.

Brooke and Terry Tempest Williams are New West. The future belongs to clean energy and those who recognize this simple economic fact will be those who benefit most. It is unfortunate for Americans that virtually the only people on the planet who don't believe it are U.S. Republicans. The Republican legislators, particularly in Utah are funded by the energy industry. The industry knows the facts, but a basic failure of capitalism stems from what economists call an "externality." An externality is where someone else other than the producer bears the cost of production, in this case the cost of pollution. In order for the public to put up with the costs, the industry lavishly funds willing legislators to promote their business and, say, make them $53 million dollar loans with taxpayer funds. Brooke and Terry have a brilliant strategy to use the energy of New West thinkers to keep the Old West energy in the ground. #keepitintheground And Brooke and Terry are using their own money.

I want to say much more about this in future posts. For now, consider quickly the graph below. But before you look, given how much time and energy politicians like Utah Governor Herbert or Rep. Rob Bishop spend promoting extractive industry, what percentage would you think it makes up of Utah's economy? Are you surprised that all of agriculture, natural resources, and mining (which includes oil and gas) only add up to 3.8 percent? Extraction is Old West.

Last round-up for the Bundy clan

The party is over

I clearly remember reading about Cliven Bundy almost 20 years ago. The news report, I forget now from where, probably in the excellent New West newspaper, High Country News. It was one of those pieces of news that make you shake your head and wonder if you got it right. It might have been an example of false equivalency, where the reporter made it sound as if Bundy had a valid point. How was it possible that a guy was keeping federal authorities from doing their job by threatening violence? How was it possible that he was illegally grazing cattle on public land, threatening the desert tortoise, a protected endangered species, and getting away with it? What century were we talking about here?

Bundy continued to get away with making his own law at gunpoint. There were two subsequent federal court verdicts which he was able to somehow ignore with impunity. Tim DeChristopher technically broke the law in a no-harm no-foul no-guns way and spent 2 years in federal prison., but Bundy remained free. There was no arrest warrant, no lien on his property, no word from the Department of Justice, or FBI, or from Department of Interior that anything was going to be done. Clearly the code of the West was one of unequal justice. Environmentalists go to jail on any technicality. White males in cowboy hats go free.

In April 2014 the Bureau of Land Management finally tried to round up Bundy's federally trespassing cows. Astonishingly they were driven off by hundreds of armed ranchers and cowboys. This kind of conflict is an old story in the West that won't seem to go away. The best summary out there is by Christopher Ketcham, a modern Bernard DeVoto and writing in the same magazine as DeVoto did. The U.S. Government backed off, left the cows to the outlaw cowboys, and again did nothing.

The law seems to be different in the Intermountain West, as are the politics. When the Bundy clan moved their sedition movement to Oregon they moved a little too close to a place of rational politics and politicians. Oregon governor Kate Brown was apparently asked by the feds to remain silent on the Malheur occupation. But after almost a month of the now usual no federal response, she could not stand it and came out publicly demanding law enforcement. Immediately the action on the ground by law enforcement began to change. A week later the first Bundys were arrested. Almost certainly the word had come down from the administration to finally enforce the law. As I have posted earlier, political logrolling finally gave way to the law of the land.

It takes time, and it is usually messy, but this country seems to muddle through. Cliven Bundy is in jail and the book is being thrown at him. The laws he broke remain the same, but they are finally being enforced. The rest of the country has now had a glimpse of the backwards, backroom dealings of politics and law in the West, the Old West, but we are being dragged into the current century. And even Bundy's trespassing cows are finally, over 20 years later, going to be removed from protected public land.

A robust response was called for at Malheur

Equal justice under law

U.S. Supreme Court

The immense damage I see to public lands in southern Utah caused by private livestock grazing motivated me to start Torrey House Press. The public would not put up with current land management practices if they knew about them and I want to get the word out in literature.  The land practices are absurd, and I will get to that, but what concerns me even more about the Bundys taking siege to the public buildings at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge is how it makes a mockery of the American principle of equal justice under law. Cliven Bundy has twice been convicted in federal court for illegal livestock grazing and for failure to pay grazing fees. In April 2014, after 20 years of illegal grazing, Bundy and his sons, along with numerous heavily armed protesters in cowboy hats, held the federal government off at gunpoint from rounding up the trespassing cows. Yet Bundy and his sons remain free, free to continue illegal grazing, free from paying grazing fees, free from paying court fines, free to take siege of the public visitor center at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge where, as of this writing, these gunmen remain free to come and go as these please. In the meanwhile, public schools in the surrounding county are closed in terror.
In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher was arrested for interrupting an energy auction of public land located in Utah's red-rock country. DeChristopher was armed not with guns but with a bidding paddle. He was an out of state, non-LDS, college student at the time of the auction. Even though the auction was later ruled to be illegal because of insufficient environmental and scientific review, which was DeChristopher's point, that fact was not allowed to be heard in court by ruling judge Dee Benson and DeChristopher was convicted, sentenced and served two years in federal prison.
At Ferguson and Baltimore the national guard was called out to thwart and suppress protesters. Protesters who were mostly black. At Malheur the Bundys come and go as they please.
The principle of equal justice was once thought important enough to be carved in stone in the highest court in the land. In the West, the notion is being made a joke by the Bundys. What is apparent is that if you are white, wear a cowboy hat, and go the right church in the West, equal justice is a double standard. Allowing a precedent like this to stand is well down the pathway to fascism.

Welfare ranching

Destruction by Grazing

The ecological costs of public land livestock grazing exceed that of any other western land use. Grazing is the most widespread cause of species endangerment. By destroying vegetation, damaging wildlife habitats and disrupting natural processes, livestock grazing wreaks havoc on riparian areas, rivers, deserts, grasslands and forests alike. Yet we subsidize it. Ranchers pay $1.35 per month per two cows to graze on public lands, about 15% of the current private market rate. Ranchers get greenbelt exemptions and pay effectively no property tax. The federal government pays for fences, gates, cattle guards and water works to manage the cows on public land while extending deeply discounted agricultural loans. Finally, and most abhorant, through the euphemistically named Wildlife Services the government extirpates natural predators on behalf of ranchers, wiping out ecologically critical wildlife including wolves, bears, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes and coyotes.
You cannot feed two hamsters for $1.35 per month. And the taxpayer for you, unlike for ranchers, will not provide the cage and water. Why are these whining, coddled, subsidized, gun-wielding ranchers being tolerated?

A fish rots from the head down

There is a thing know in western conservation circles as "the Hatch effect." If a government employee of the BLM or Forest Service does something to upset a rancher, something to protect our land from cow created havoc, the rancher puts on his boots, big belt buckle and cowboy hat and goes whining to Hatch. The government agent then gets demoted and transferred and the rancher's problem disappears. I cannot for the life of me figure out why Cliven Bundy is walking around free while his boys hold a siege of terror on public property without consequence. All I got to offer is the Hatch effect.

We the people

In the end, the power lies with we the people. We need to elect different representatives. Soon would be good.

The (unequal justice) Code of the West

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Mark Bailey

Cowboy Chris

Cowboy anarchist Cliven Bundy and Utah San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman remain free. I have been writing to Utah 2nd District Congressman Chris Stewart expressing my alarm at the situation. My point to Stewart is that if conservationist Tim DeChristopher goes straight to federal prison for violating BLM law, and is given a stiff two year sentence precisely because he is exercising his First Amendment right of free speech, then certainly these cowboys need some jail time for doing the same thing. Stewart, ever the right wing politician, doesn’t get it.
Stewart’s response:

I grew up on a dairy farm. My wife’s family still ranches in Northern Utah and Southern Idaho. I understand the importance of obeying the law, including paying grazing fees. Notwithstanding this, I was shocked as the situation played out in Nevada to see the show of force by the BLM and the National Park Service agents. I had no idea that these agencies had special tactical teams that appear more like paramilitary groups than park rangers.

It is true that America loves the cowboy. I increasingly do not. The fact that Stewart likes to wear his cowboy hat does not impress me. His sentence on the importance of obeying the law is his only acknowledgement of the issue in a full one page letter. The rest is about the citizens not respecting the federal government because it can’t be trusted. He has his facts all wrong. The BLM does not have paramilitary force. That level of force that showed up at Bunkerville was the Las Vegas Sheriff Department SWAT team. Ironically, Stewart is pressing the point in his letter to me that law enforcement ought to be local. He is ignoring the fact that it was. And the law was still outgunned by the cowboy militia and had to back off to avoid a blood bath. Overwhelming force, Stewart?

Rural cowboy militia

Subsequently, on May 10, Utah’s San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman led a heavily armed vigilante gang on ATV’s into Recapture Canyon, a sacred Navajo site in San Juan County that the BLM has closed to motorized vehicles. In part Lyman chose the anniversary date to publicly object to white, Mormon, San Juan County citizens not being allowed to continue to rob Navajo graves unmolested by the law.  Sheriffs from five rural Utah counties showed up to make sure the heavily armed ATV riders were able to perform federal trespass without interference. They need not have worried. The unarmed conservation community was in reasonable fear for their lives and prudently did not show up. And, I sadly point out to you Chris Stewart, neither did the BLM.
Stewart is worried about an undue show of force.  By whom, Chris?

In the West we do not practice equal justice under the law. Around Utah, if you are white, Republican, Mormon, wear a cowboy hat and are heavily armed you can break the law with impunity. You can even have the local sheriff, on horse and with hat, make way for you. On the contrary, if you interrupt the BLM in the name of conservation, without a hat and without a weapon, you go straight to prison with a maximum sentence. Such is the case today.

Happily there is a petition going around by the more sober citizens at Alliance for a Better Utah to hold the trespassers accountable.   I am gratified to see I am not the only one alarmed at the cowboy behavior going unanswered by the law.

Cowpie National Monument

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Mark Bailey

Beautiful, fragile, poorly managed.

Grand Staircase Escalanate National Monument, Burr Trail (GSENM), May 20, 2013 
It doesn’t make sense to subsidize environmental degradation on public lands.  Kirsten and I went out for a couple of nights camping to the Deer Creek campground off the Burr Trail in the GSENM.  After a hike down Deer Creek for less than a mile we turned around, sad and disgusted, and came back a day early.
The campground is an oasis in the high desert red rock country.  Deer Creek runs off of Boulder Mountain toward the Escalante River and on to Lake Powell.  Along its banks are cottonwood trees, coyote willow, aspen and spring wildflowers.  That is, if the delicate area is protected from cows.  The campground is cattle guarded for the most part and was a delight.  Out of the gate, across the road and down the stream was another matter.
Leaving camp we came across the first ominous signs.  Inside the campground the spring grasses were knee high and robust.

Cattle guard and fence at campground. Cows hang out at viewer’s right.

On the other side of the fence the grass was already overgrazed and gone.  Ranchers and their apologists such as the responsible BLM agents call this a “sacrifice zone” saying that cattle will congregate along fences making things worse there than  in general elsewhere.  But in general cows are to be kept out of riparian zones.  In fact, that is where they primarily hang out.  We crossed the road and signed in at the trail head register.  Behind the first row of willows it smelled and looked like we had walked into a stock yard.  The trampled stream was at our feet and the cows were there strip mining away.

It costs a rancher $1.35 per month for a permit to graze a cow and her calf on public land.  It is the same price they paid in 1962 and 1/10 to 1/20 the going market rate and less than it costs for you to feed your gerbil.  It costs the taxpayer more to manage the ranching/permittees than the ranchers make doing it.  It’s the reason for the pejorative “welfare rancher.”  These folks couldn’t afford to keep doing it with out subsidy.

The grass, wildflowers and willows should be hip high in this riparian area.

In addition to paying for gates and fences, the taxpayer also pays to exterminate wildlife that might threaten the cows like wolves and coyotes and even beaver (beaver are virtually outlawed by the county commissioners in Garfield County where much of the Monument is).

Cow burnt.

It is wolves and other predators that keep ungulates on the move in riparian areas allowing the supporting undergrowth like the grasses, wildflowers, and the cottonwoods, aspen and willows to prosper.  That bugs ranchers so even federal agencies like the so called “Wildlife Resources” spend millions making creeksides like this one a virtual private ranch where, as if they are the only concern, there is no need to monitor and manage the cows.  A half a dozen of the hooved locusts were munching nearby.

The ranchers answer that this is their way of life.  But who gets that?  Torrey House Press is losing money, and it is my way of life, but I am not asking for subsidies.  I have to make it work or get out of the business.  The commissioners ask who I am going to put out of a job.  Great rhetoric but the wrong question.  I am not qualified to say who should have a job and who shouldn’t and the government certainly isn’t.  Ask the Soviet Union about that practice.  The market could be allowed to work it out and there are market solutions.  The conservation community is standing by ready to buyout grazing permits but only if the permits can be retired.  By current law permit retirement on BLM land literally requires an act of congress.



Cows made sense for a little while in the arid Intermountain West and the Colorado Plateau but with the advent of the railroad and easy transportation, such things as grazing need to be done on private land where it rains.  There is plenty of it east of the 100th meridian.  It is nuts to keep hammering our public treasures this way.

Exclosures – August 2012

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Mark Bailey

First cup

Kirsten and I went up to the Fish Lake National Forest and camped on Thousand Lake Mountain in southern Utah for a couple of nights this last Thursday through Saturday August 16-18.  This area is just north of Torrey and we like to get up there in the summer just to get out and to do a little volunteer assessment of the management practices on these public lands.

We came away glad to have been out but distressed at how the land is being over used particularly for grazing and logging.  Working with Mary O’Brien of the Grand Canyon Trust we have become aware of how the open spaces of the public lands in the West are in a state of what Mary calls normalized degradation.  I’m afraid she is right.  The national forest above the Wasatch Front is managed for people.  These dry desert mountains in southern Utah have a multiple use directive, but the use in fact is dominated by ranching.  The contrasts are distinct.  Wildflowers are hip deep all summer in the Wasatch.  The southern meadows are grazed every year down to a 4″ stubble height.  That’s the goal, it is usually worse.  Riparian areas in particular take a beating.  Because of pressure by environmentalists some small areas called “exclosures”  have been set aside and somewhat protected from grazing.  The ecological difference in these exclosures is tremendous.  The cowboys obviously still let the cows into these protected spaces but not enough to erase the evidence of what these mountain meadows could be without public land grazing.

I have blogged about it more here and elsewhere, but the reasoning behind public land grazing defies common sense.  It is not economic.  The ranchers/livestock permittees depend heavily on subsidies for water, gates, fences, rangeland “treatments” and pasture control.  Most of them make very little money all the same.  Public land grazing is probably the number one source of public land degradation and yet the public subsidizes it.  It is a story of a very narrow special interest taking advantage of the public’s clueless largesse.  It has long been a problem and one that seems to be intractable.  At $1.35 per AUM (Animal Unit Month – one cow and calf for a month of grazing) ranchers pay the same fee to graze as they did in 1966.  Who gets such treatment today?  One way out, the best one I can see, is to give ranchers a right they do not now have and allow them to accept grazing retirement buyouts.   -Mark Bailey