A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

Grazing Cattle vs. Wild Horses

From Tuesday's Horse
August 2023

We are so very tired of the totally unfounded argument that wild horse grazing damages public lands. It cannot, and does not. Cattle on the other hand are very harmful to America’s public lands. Read this and weep, wild horse haters.

Pine Nut Nevada Mustangs

We are so very tired of the totally unfounded argument that wild horse grazing damages public lands. It cannot, and does not. Cattle on the other hand are very harmful to America’s public lands. Read this and weep, wild horse haters.

The Center for Biological Diversity states:

Cattle grazing

The ecological costs of livestock grazing exceed that of any other western land use. In the arid West, grazing is the most widespread cause of species endangerment, irreparably harming the ecosystems they depend on.

Despite these costs, livestock grazing continues on state and federal lands across the West. It’s promoted, protected and subsidized by federal agencies on about 270 million public acres in the 11 western states.

Ecological costs

Cattle destroy native vegetation, damage soils and stream banks, disrupt natural processes, and contaminate waterways with fecal waste. After decades of livestock grazing, once-lush streams and riparian forests have been reduced to flat, dry wastelands; once-rich topsoil has been turned to dust, causing soil erosion, stream sedimentation and wholesale elimination of some aquatic habitats; overgrazing of native fire-carrying grasses has starved some western forests of fire, making them overly dense and prone to unnaturally severe fires.

Keystone predators like the grizzly bear and Mexican gray wolf were driven extinct in southwestern ecosystems by “predator control” programs designed to protect the livestock industry. Adding insult to injury — and flying in the face of modern conservation science — the livestock industry remains the leading opponent to otherwise popular efforts to reintroduce species like the Mexican gray wolf in Arizona and New Mexico.

Economic Costs

The federal livestock grazing program is heavily subsidized, getting more than $100 million annually in direct subsidies — and possibly three times that in indirect subsidies.

The western livestock industry would evaporate as suddenly as fur trapping if it had to pay market rates for services it gets from the federal government.

In 2015 the Center commissioned resource economists to study the economic costs of livestock grazing on public lands. We found that the federal lands grazing program generated $125 million less than what the federal government spent on the program in 2014.

Further, we found that federal grazing fees are 93 percent less than fees charged for non-irrigated western private grazing land, or just $1.69 per animal per month for each cow and calf that grazes the public land. (It costs more to feed a house cat.)

Despite the extreme damage done by grazing, western federal rangelands account for less than 3 percent of all forage fed to livestock in the United States. In fact, beef prices wouldn’t be affected if all livestock were removed from public lands in the West.

Center for Biological Diversity Campaign

Since our founding, the Center has led efforts to reform overgrazing on public lands across the West. Our work protecting endangered species has removed damaging livestock from millions of public acres in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Mountain West and California.

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