FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2016
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion
— Guest Opinion—
— Special Column —
Hackneyed
attacks on
ranching
getting old
By Fred Kelly Grant
Special to The Baker County Press
“When you talk, you are only repeat-
ing what you already know. But if you
listen, you may learn something new.”
—Dalai Lama.
Would that the anti-grazing radicals
pay heed to the Dalai Lama, and listen
to facts once in great while, instead of
constantly spewing their canned viru-
lence.
Attacks on ranchers by anti-grazing
foes get so old and hackneyed they de-
serve to be ignored. But, it seems to me
to ignore them does not do justice to the
men and women ancestors to those who
made these western lands home—for
them and for us.
They did it with the same kind of hard
work their heirs continue to this day—
pre-dawn to dark, caring for the land,
the livestock and their families through
coldest winter nights and hottest sum-
mer days.
Carrying on the historic grazing
industry, they not only produce beef for
us and the nation, they provide land and
water enhancements that vitalize habitat
for game animals and birds. Their hard
work is the best prevention of the types
of desecrating wildfires that destroyed
millions of acres of rangelands during
the summer past.
On Friday, February 18, The Idaho
Statesman carried a letter that accused
ranchers of feeling “entitled to use and
abuse our land forever like their fathers
did.” The writer is a Boisean who
obviously knows little of the reality of
ranching or of livestock grazing. He
also contends that the “public deserves
their land back,” for one reason “we pay
for its management.”
I replied to his letter in the 200-word
limit which is the policy of the States-
man:
“It gets so old—attacks on Idaho
ranchers by grazing foes stubbornly de-
nying obvious value of Idaho’s historic
industry. Friday last, in this space, an
attacker said ranchers feel ‘entitled to
use and abuse our land forever like their
fathers did.’
“For decades, I have worked with
Owyhee County ranchers and have not
met one who does not respect the land.
Stop to think—why would a rancher,
dependent on the land, intentionally hurt
his family by abusing land, reducing his
chance for profit.
“The attacker said grazing decreases
numbers and habitat of deer and elk, fish
and riparian ‘fauna and flora.’ To the
contrary, a robust game animal popula-
tion depends on ranch improvements.
During winter, deer and elk are sus-
tained by the rancher’s alfalfa fields and
water developments.
“The attacker said ‘the public de-
serves their land back.’ Would the public
revive the million acres of Owyhee
County desecrated last summer by rag-
ing wildfire fueled by excess grasses
where BLM denied grazing. Ranchers
will. Will the public restore habitat
for game, fish and ‘fauna and flora?’
Ranchers will.
“Next time you read accusation of
abuse of land, take a drive to Owyhee
County and see the results of denying
grazing.”
Much of the frustration that leads to
confrontations between ranchers and
Letter to the Editor Policy: The Baker
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Advertising and Opinion Page Dis-
claimer: Opinions submitted as Guest
So I was
thinking ...
On demand
Submitted Photo
Attorney Fred Kelly Grant of the
Stand and Fight Club has fought
for the rights of farmers, ranchers,
loggers, miners, and those who use
the great outdoors for recreation.
the federal and state agencies stems
from the near constant attacks from and
by radical anti-grazing organizations.
Those same organizations represent so
much determined buying power that
they have cowered corporate sponsors
into donating millions of dollars for
their assaults. Through use of those dol-
lars they have lobbied and manhandled
bureaucrats to the point where they
issue regulations that strangle all natural
resource industries.
Their advertising and public relations
campaigns influence political votes
that should by nature favor our western
industries.
Their background campaign has been
so well financed and so successful that
all the “anti grazing” groups have to do
is submit a simple 200-word letter set-
ting forth the trigger words— “abuse of
the land,” “welfare ranchers,” “welfare
farmers,” “erosion”—and their destruc-
tive message is effective.
When a response is made, the 200-
word limit prevents the full story
because for a generation ranchers have
not been in the public relations business.
Their story is not well known. The
public does not know that the rancher’s
efforts provide winter and summer
sustenance to game animals and birds of
all shapes and sizes. It does not know
that grazing keeps grasses low enough
to avoid disastrous fires, that cows leave
hoof prints in hard soil that are used as
nesting places by sensitive species of
frogs and tortoises.
When a radical environmental-
ist likens the rancher to a “welfare
rancher,” the public does not know that
a rancher, and his family, start the day in
the pre-dawn darkness and end it in the
post-sunset darkness. The public does
not think about the icy cold in which the
rancher and his family, help a distressed
mother cow deliver a calf in the dead of
night. This industry is not your every-
day living room familiar industry, the
details of which are well known to city
dwellers.
Ranchers, farmers, loggers, min-
ers, and all those who support them
are the protectors of the quality of our
natural resources. But for them and
their efforts, range fires and forest fires
would be even more devastating. It
gets old defending them in 200 words
or less. They deserve better. They are
the conservative conscience of America
as it was meant to be. They are the
Americans who are most closely linked
to the ways of life of the Founders. We
were settled as an agricultural nation,
but today the moneyed class would
have us forget that fact. The idea of the
day is to eliminate the conservatism of
rural America, and the way to do that is
to eliminate the traditional industry of
the rangelands and forest lands. God
help us all if the effort to do so is not
defeated.
If the anti-grazers, anti-farmers, anti-
loggers, anti-miners have their way, the
America of our ancestors will be lost.
Let it not be on our watch!
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By Jimmy Ingram
Special to The Baker County Press
On demand: It’s not just a conve-
nience in this day and age, it’s a way of
life we’ve all become accustomed to.
From the ability to bid on useless
trinkets you didn’t know you needed on
eBay mobile to downloading a 50-year-
old Beatles album in less than a minute.
It’s all right there at our fingertips.
Has it made life easier? Yes.
Has it made us lazy? Probably.
It has certainly has changed us and
made us more impatient.
Over a month ago a tragedy of modern
convenience struck my household: Our
DirecTV DVR hard drive went bad. An
accumulation of hours upon recorded
hours of “Dora the Explorer” and
“Power Rangers” was gone.
To me this meant little, but to my four-
year-old son it was the equivalent of the
US government misplacing the footage
of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the
moon.
Suddenly the 30 minutes of TV my
son was allotted before bedtime had
been reduced to the unfamiliar squealing
of SpongeBob SquarePants.
He’d didnt like it.
Neither did I.
Because also gone was the 30 minutes
of daily reprieve my wife and I get from
answering the endless questions of a
curious four-year-old.
As most parents know, sometimes
a half hour of peace can do wonders
for your sanity. In a feeble attempt to
put things in perspective for him, I
explained that in my youth my favor-
ite cartoon was on only once a week,
and often times I didn’t get to see it if
I wasn’t home, or if my mom and dad
wanted to watch the news.
Needless to say, my son didn’t under-
stand the concept.
“Why didn’t you just push the button
and turn it on?” he asked.
At that moment something that prob-
ably should have been obvious hit me:
Nearly everything in his life will be
available to him in ways never imagined
even 20 years ago.
He won’t ever have to search through
index cards and wander around like a
lost puppy to find a book in the library.
He’ll download it to his e-reader.
He won’t have to experience the dis-
appointment of spending $15 for a CD
or cassette tape only to find out that 14
out of 15 songs are terrible. He’ll pre-
view and download a song from iTunes.
He won’t experience spending 30
Submitted Photo
Jimmy Ingram is a local farmer and
father of two who enjoys people
watching within our wonderful
community and beyond.
minutes in the video store settling for
an unfamiliar movie because the one he
really wanted to see was checked out. It
wasn’t bad back when we were younger,
but things required more effort, time,
and patience.
Generational gaps are part of life.
We’ve all heard stories from our par-
ents or grandparents about how things
were in their day.
But somewhere along the line, the
world offered to bring everything right
to us.
I did almost all my Christmas shop-
ping from my couch. I chose to dodge
the hordes of people on Black Friday
and didn’t pay my shopping “dues” by
having to park three miles from a mall
entrance and lug five bags of overpriced
merchandise back to the car.
The truth is, I’m spoiled by technol-
ogy every bit as much as my kids are
going to be.
The difference is that I got to experi-
ence life before the Information Age.
When life’s moments weren’t displayed
on a Facebook page, you had to ask
someone how they were in person.
When we didn’t communicate using 200
characters and emoticons. When “selfie”
wasn’t a word, and Amazon was a rain-
forest in South America. I’m not that
old, but sometimes technology makes
me feel that way.
Something tells me the phrase, “What
do you mean I can’t have it now?” will
be uttered far more in the next century
than ever before.
We’ve grown accustomed to having
so much of life’s needs and wants at
our fingertips it’s easy to forget when
it wasn’t. You’d think that in this more
user-friendly modern world we’d have
way more time to spare ... but we don’t
seem to. Everyone you ask is busy,
busy, busy.
It often reminds me of a comedy bit
from the late, great Mitch Hedberg: “I
get up in the morning and make myself
a bowl of instant oatmeal and then I
don’t do anything for an hour ... which
makes me wonder why I need the
instant oatmeal. I could get the regular
oatmeal and feel productive.”
I guess getting everything instantly
just makes us feel better.
It must.
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